Architecture at the University of Sheffield

Join us tonight for a talk by Olga Touloumi, Associate Professor of Architectural History at Bard College.

Drawing from her book Assembly by Design, this talk, entitled 'Impossible Charts or the Architecture of Security Power', will present architects’ and diplomats’ designs for the United Nations Conference on International Organisation, where the UN officially came into existence during two months of public negotiations.

will discuss the role that architecture played in building the new organisation, by resolving the paradox of a global assembly. The result was the emergence of a new type of space, the “global interior,” a diplomatic spatial apparatus formed in the intersection of debates on media governmentality, security power, and corporate technique.

She will situate those spaces within debates on liberal democracies, the public sphere and multilateral internationalism. These spaces, originally designed as the anchors of the UN Headquarters, she argues, framed the political activity of the United Nations but also endowed the organisation with metaphors to invoke on a global scale, while concealing liberal political and economic forces installing new asymmetries in the background.

When: Tuesday 25 March
Where: Arts Tower, Room 13.19

Join us for the next in our Architecture and Landscape Architecture Research Matters talks.

For this talk we will be joined by Associate Professor of Architectural History at Bard College Olga Touloumi who will give a lecture entitled 'Impossible Charts or the Architecture of Security Power'.

Drawing from her book Assembly by Design, this talk will present architects’ and diplomats’ designs for the United Nations Conference on International Organisation, where the UN officially came into existence during two months of public negotiations.

will discuss the role that architecture played in building the new organisation, by resolving the paradox of a global assembly. The result was the emergence of a new type of space, the “global interior,” a diplomatic spatial apparatus formed in the intersection of debates on media governmentality, security power, and corporate technique.

She will situate those spaces within debates on liberal democracies, the public sphere and multilateral internationalism. These spaces, originally designed as the anchors of the UN Headquarters, she argues, framed the political activity of the United Nations but also endowed the organisation with metaphors to invoke on a global scale, while concealing liberal political and economic forces installing new asymmetries in the background.

When: Tuesday 25 March
Where: Arts Tower, Room 13.19

Join us this evening for Beyond the Capitalocene: Design Practices for a Planetary Crisis by Jose Alfredo Ramirez Galindo.

Contemporary planetary urbanisation is structured by policies that respond to the dominant capitalist system governing our societies, economies and ecologies, and which have been shaped by human relations of power, production and environment-making (colonial and imperialistic).

In this lecture, José Alfredo Ramírez Galindo, programme head of Landscape Urbanism and director of at the , will present examples of projects and design thesis beyond the design of single buildings or pieces of urban design.

In both his academic and professional practices develops spatial policies that directly impact urban and rural landscapes: design strategies and models, innovative regulatory plans and visual decision-making tools that integrate design within world-ecology frameworks and planetary urbanisation processes.

When: Tuesday 18 March, 5pm
Where: Arts Tower, Room 13.19

Image caption: Alejandra Iturrizaga, Priyanka Awatramani, Emily Bowerman, Cultivating Commons, biobased retrofit proposal for BGS, LU 2024. Image by Alejandra Iturrizaga Andrich, May 2024.

Join us on Tuesday for the next talk in our Architecture and Landscape Architecture Research Matters series.

Contemporary planetary urbanisation is structured by policies that respond to the dominant capitalist system governing our societies, economies and ecologies, and which have been shaped by human relations of power, production and environment-making (colonial and imperialistic).

In this lecture, entitled 'Beyond the Capitalocene: Design Practices for a Planetary Crisis', José Alfredo Ramírez Galindo, programme head of Landscape Urbanism and director of at the , will present examples of projects and design thesis beyond the design of single buildings or pieces of urban design.

In both his academic and professional practices develops spatial policies that directly impact urban and rural landscapes: design strategies and models, innovative regulatory plans and visual decision-making tools that integrate design within world-ecology frameworks and planetary urbanisation processes.

When: Tuesday 18 March, 5pm
Where: Arts Tower, Room 13.19

Image caption: Alejandra Iturrizaga, Priyanka Awatramani, Emily Bowerman, Cultivating Commons, biobased retrofit proposal for BGS, LU 2024. Image by Alejandra Iturrizaga Andrich, May 2024.

Join us at 5pm today in Room 13.19 for our next ALARM talk. Today we will be hearing from Professor Clare Rishbeth and architect and co-founder of@we_made_that Holly Lewis.

Clare Rishbeth and Holly Lewis will discuss participatory research methods used to understand ‘feelings in place’ – a process adapted for effective use in academia and practice that resulted from a year-long research partnership between the architectural practice and landscape architecture academic, which was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council UK.

This will feature the methodological approaches developed through Clare’s recent secondment to We Made That. This includes how participatory methods used in academia to understand ‘feelings in place’ can be adapted for effective use in practice. This was tested predominantly through a Women’s Safety Audit pilot, commissioned by Transport for London and the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime.

Join us in Arts Tower Lecture Theatre 06 at 5pm today to hear a talk from our Professor Emeritus James Hitchmough.

Since retiring from the Department of Landscape Architecture in 2022, James Hitchmough has spent the majority of his time creating a garden in the Somerset countryside. In this talk he will flesh out a picture of the processes involved in this and its meaning.

Although landscape architecture sometimes has an uneasy relationship with the private garden, he believes that gardens, even with inherent scale and context differences, can contribute to aspects of landscape architecture. In particular, gardens provide insights into how intrinsically greater levels of ‘caring’, ‘meaning’, ‘working iteratively’ (in the longer term), and ‘diversity and complexity’, might provide useful reflection for thought and practice in the public landscape.

In our second ALARM talk of the week, Professor Clare Rishbeth will be joined by architect and co-founder of We Made That Holly Lewis to discuss the methodological approaches developed through Clare’s recent secondment to .

In this talk they will discuss participatory research methods used to understand ‘feelings in place’ – a process adapted for effective use in academia and practice that resulted from a year-long research partnership between the architectural practice and landscape architecture academic, which was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council UK.

This will also include how participatory methods used in academia to understand ‘feelings in place’ can be adapted for effective use in practice. This was tested predominantly through a Women’s Safety Audit pilot, commissioned by Transport for London and the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime.

When: Tuesday 11 March 2025, 5pm
Where: Arts Tower, Room 13.19

Join us next week to hear from Professor Emeritus James Hitchmough.

In his talk entitled ' Does making a garden have anything useful to say to landscape architectural thought and practice?', James will talk about the garden he has been creating in the Somerset countryside since he retired from the school in 2022. He will flesh out a picture of the processes involved in this and its meaning. Although landscape architecture sometimes has an uneasy relationship with the private garden, he believes that gardens, even with inherent scale and context differences, can contribute to aspects of landscape architecture. In particular, gardens provide insights into how intrinsically greater levels of ‘caring’, ‘meaning’, ‘working iteratively’ (in the longer term), and ‘diversity and complexity’, might provide useful reflection for thought and practice in the public landscape.

When: Monday 10 March 2025, 5pm
Where: Arts Tower, Lecture Theatre 6

Join us tonight for the next in our series of Architecture & Landscape Architecture Research Matters Talks.

This evening Lecturer in Urban Design Iulia Statica will be discussing her latest book 'Urban Phantasmagorias: Domesticity, Production, and the Politics of Modernity in Communist Bucharest'.

Urban Phantasmagorias explores the legacies of socialist housing in the city of Bucharest, examining how the Romanian state reimagined the city through acts of demolition and construction, alongside legal interventions aimed at regulating women's reproductive autonomy.

Join us for a talk and discussion from 5pm in Arts Tower 13.19.

Come hear Barbara Penner give a talk on the Frankfurt Kitchen TONIGHT!

We will be joined by Professor at the Bartlett School of Architecture Barbara Penner who will give a talk entitled 'A Cooking Box. A Kitchen. A Shed: The Biotechnics of New Frankfurt'.

In this talk, we will revisit the jewel of New Frankfurt, Römerstadt, celebrated as an icon of modernity, especially through one of its most famous 'product', the Frankfurt Kitchen, designed by architect Margarete Lihotsky. But Lihotsky did not only design the kitchen; she also designed the shed for the allotment gardens, which were integral to all of the new towns designed by Ernst May and his landscape architect, Leberecht Migge, and were planned to produce enough vegetables for a family of four. Garden and kitchen were planned together as part of an interlocking 'biotechnical' food system.

This talk argues that understanding New Frankfurt as a system for managing the flow of resources promises productively to complicate our understanding of Römerstadt, the Frankfurt Kitchen, and ultimately the modern project itself.

The talk forms part of our Architecture & Landscape Architecture Research Matters (ALARM) talks and takes place on Tuesday 17 December in the Arts Tower at LT06 at 5.30pm.

Join us for the next in our Architecture & Landscape Architecture Research Matters (ALARM) talks on Tuesday 17 December in the Arts Tower at LT06.

We will be joined by Professor at the Bartlett School of Architecture Barbara Penner who will give a talk entitled 'A Cooking Box. A Kitchen. A Shed: The Biotechnics of New Frankfurt'.

In this talk, we will revisit the jewel of New Frankfurt, Römerstadt, celebrated as an icon of modernity, especially through one of its most famous 'product', the Frankfurt Kitchen, designed by architect Margarete Lihotsky. But Lihotsky did not only design the kitchen; she also designed the shed for the allotment gardens, which were integral to all of the new towns designed by Ernst May and his landscape architect, Leberecht Migge, and were planned to produce enough vegetables for a family of four. Garden and kitchen were planned together as part of an interlocking 'biotechnical' food system.

This talk argues that understanding New Frankfurt as a system for managing the flow of resources promises productively to complicate our understanding of Römerstadt, the Frankfurt Kitchen, and ultimately the modern project itself.

It's time for the next in our Architecture and Landscape Architecture Research Matters (ALARM) talks!

Tonight we will hear from the architect, artistic researcher and educator Kirsty Badenoch.

's talk entitled 'Q***r, muddy and not-knowing: Dialogues with the land', will explore alternative methods of conducting landscape-led research.

She asks: Walking off the beaten track, drawing with your eyes closed, and leaving your papers out in a thunderstorm - how can we look towards more dialogic, reciprocal and multi-species modes of engaging with the land?

The talk is the fourth in an ongoing series which takes place every Tuesday evening in Arts Tower LT06 at 5.30pm.

Join us on Tuesday for the next in our Architecture and Landscape Architecture Research Matters (ALARM) talks. Next week we will hear from the architect, artistic researcher and educator Kirsty Badenoch.

's talk entitled 'Q***r, muddy and not-knowing: Dialogues with the land', will explore alternative methods of conducting landscape-led research.

She asks: Walking off the beaten track, drawing with your eyes closed, and leaving your papers out in a thunderstorm - how can we look towards more dialogic, reciprocal and multi-species modes of engaging with the land?

The talk is the fourth in an ongoing series which takes place every Tuesday evening in Arts Tower LT06 at 5.30pm.

Join us tomorrow for the next in our Architecture & Landscape Architecture Research Matters (ALARM) series of talks organised by .

Tomorrow we will be joined by Professor of Architectural Criticism at the University of Edinburgh, Suzanne Ewing for a lecture entitled 'Critical Suspensions'.

In this talk Suzanne will explore how we might approach and establish terms of temporal reference for a suspended project, Carmody Groarke’s Hill House Box, by drawing out time-related vocabularies embedded in work by Siegfried Giedion, Kevin Lynch, Stuart Brand, Michel Trachtenburg and others.

It forms part of her ongoing research: Studies in Architecture as Moving Project.
Building on her work on disciplinary practices, visual research methods and the critical imagination in Architecture, this research aims to establish a mode of critique and lexicon pertaining to architectural works as projects-in-motion, architectural design as a temporal practice.

Join us in the Arts Tower, Lecture Theatre 06 at 5.30pm on Tuesday 3 December.

Tomorrow we are hosting the next talk in our Architecture & Landscape Architecture Matters series.

Ross Cameron, Professor of Environmental Horticulture at Sheffield School of Architecture & Landscape, will give a talk entitled Riding the Botanical ‘Bucking Bronco’!. How do you retain urban plant viability and functionality in a changed climate?

He will highlight the benefits (ecosystem services) urban plants confer to the city and how these are / will be impacted by a changing climate.

Join us in Lecture Theatre 06 in the Arts Tower from 5.30pm on Tuesday 26 November.

Architecture & Landscape Architecture Research Matters is an upcoming series of talks exploring new research in the fields of architecture and landscape architecture.

In this inaugural event speakers from architecture will share their papers ahead of the 2024 AHRA Body Matters conference in Norwich. Themes will include bodies, archives, memories and borders.

This is the first in an ongoing series and future speakers include Suzanne Ewing, Barbara Penner and Kirsty Badenoch.

Join us for the first talk on Tuesday 19 November 2024.

are coming to an end - and it's such an exciting time! It's really fun to catch a glimpse of some of the project work as students are getting ready for the public presentations tomorrow. Here's a sneak peek of a Live Project based at Worsbrough Mill, one of the oldest working mills in the UK, milling flour using water power from the River Dove. The project has looked at various aspects, including sustainable energy and visitor experience.

Last week we hosted an informal Open Studio, featuring work from students across all our courses, researchers and staff. The event was amazing, and here's a small peek at the work on display! Thank you everyone who took part and made such amazing displays for us all to enjoy.

Thank you everyone who took part and made such amazing displays for us all to enjoy - with especial thanks to SUAS (our Architecture student Society) and our tour guides for all their hard work on this!