Trajectories of Design and Construction Practice in the 21st Century

This Research & Knowledge Exchange Doctoral Project brief summarises our priority areas of research interest under the heading of: Trajectories of Design and Construction Practice in the 21st Century

We welcome all research degree applications aligned with and in response to this brief.

The practices of design and construction in architecture and urbanism have agency on the spaces that are created. How we set up the design process, how we choreograph and perform construction, and the modes of representation we select for each stage of a proposal both constrain and open up possibilities for modes of inhabitation in the resulting built environment (Brown L., 2016; Chard, 2005; Evans, 1995; Petrescu, 2007).  

This doctoral project welcomes those interested in exploring the design and construction processes through which our built environment is mediated and created. Research practice in this field may be based in the architectural studio, the arts studio (Rendell, 2003), the urban realm or on live sites of community construction (Ferro, 2024). Such research can focus on current design practice, may delve into commercial or site-based trajectories of construction, or could work through parallel forms of representation that investigate and/or impact how our architectural or urban space is inhabited.  

A PhD here gives opportunities to investigate areas such as the impact of our built environment on communities in terms of their social resilience; the design and inhabitation of spaces located on the boundaries of the human, non-human and more-than-human (Harraway, 2016); spaces of participatory, ethical or political contestation (Borden et al., 2000; Miessen, 2010); or spatial practice through inter-disciplinary including ficto-critical approaches (Frichot & Stead, 2022).  

Applicants will be working with social and self-reflective ambitions (Rendell, 2003; Rendell, 2006) aiming to question and transform architectural and/or urban spatial practice through methodologies that challenge disciplinary boundaries.  

Projects deriving from this brief are expected to sit within the Research & Knowledge Exchange strategy and the following department.

All successful research degree project proposals must emphasise a clear alignment between the project idea and our Research & Knowledge Exchange strategy.