
Design Tutor
BA (Hons), BArch (Hons), Registered Architect
As a practitioner and teacher, the power of architecture to resolve and innovate hinges on a delight in the search for lyrical and informed answers to an evolving series of key environmental questions. Individuals’ lives and stories, as influenced by smart husbandry of shared resources, guides and informs design thinking at every scale.
Year 3 studio design tutor at Sheffield since 2003, formerly teaching in M.Arch and running a year 3 design studio at University of Liverpool. In parallel with teaching, independent architectural practice has continued to deliver a series of built projects starting 5 years after graduating, including a £3m regeneration project in Liverpool delivered in a single-project partnership which received RIBA National award in 1995 (Pickles Martinez Architects) Artistic collaborations followed, and subsequent series of projects have been designed and delivered both within and at the helm of design teams, and in collaborative consultancies. (Pickles Associates, Bauman Lyons) Complementary cultural influences in design and practice have been incorporated from periods designing and building in Vancouver, central USA, and central Italy.
Early regeneration work creating bespoke homes for co-ops and facilitating community groups in Liverpool, was precursor to ongoing commissions for a personal, curious design service, often in historic environments, in which contemporary interventions evolved. Design drivers prioritise phenomenological appreciation, an underpinning holistic and integrated ethic of sustainability, and the crafts of articulating space and forming materials, in an endeavour to anonymously inspire all future users with the gift of their own optimism.
| Teaching Activities |
Year 3 Studio Tutor Hosting one of the parallel projects set within 3rd year studio, students are encouraged to develop their own position within a contextual and thematic framework. The search for lyrical answers to environmental questions drives the teaching, developing students’ skills in placing the design process at the centre of an informed resolution that could shape the future. The briefs are devised as a set of structured and progressive tasks that guide students through complex physical relationships, producing at each stage a piece of work which develops not only the relevance of the themes, but also accumulates over time to give rise to the character, form and material of the architectural proposition. The process begins with immersion in the locality and chosen aspects of the topic, bringing together through physical interaction on site a mode of visualizing and representing the poetic potential of inter-related characteristics. Visits to and studies of precedents kick starts the definition of a personal brief. Some recent themes integrated into Year 3 studio projects: Integrated carbon –neutral landscape strategies: Water – politics, potential, resilience, fear and fun Dynamic Energy Transfer – Thermal and optical Manufacturing – skills transfer, materials and energy Differentiated Climatic Environments Sustainable urban transport strategies: |
| Professional Standing & Distinctions |
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