The University of Sheffield
School of Architecture
Maggie Pickles
  • Threshold
    sexton cycling city interchange section York
  • Adaptation
    pountney floating market clay factory strategy section
  • Luminosity
    bradley fisherman's rest section flow
  • Kiln process National Glass Centre
    taylor river responsive model hydro
  • Foss river flood barrier explained york
    cutter riverfront permeability model flow york
  • Flow: Fisherman's rest: Bradley
    broadstock dynamic market plan dynamo
  • Hydro: River Response : Taylor
    burnett density model flow
  • Flow: Riverfront permeability model: Cutter
    threshold
  • Flow: Density model: Burnett
    luminosity
  • Dynamo : Plan: Dynamic market: Broadstock
    adaptation

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:
Crop 2011
Docking 2011
- Reconnected transport infrastructures incl. freight canal/port links
- crop rotation, brownfield interim reclamation strategies and pop-up productivity
- non-food crops, and helix of sustainability
- cradle to cradle ethos of commodity production
- innovative/ organic construction materials and temporal adaptation

Water – politics, potential, resilience, fear and fun
Hydro 2008 - Vertical water potential - rural
Flow 2009 - Horizontal water potential – urban
Docking 2011 – social access and urban dynamism
Dynamo 2012 and Latent Dynamo 2012 – community micro generation
- regional strategies for changeable water levels and resilient urban management; wetland ecologies
- resource recognition and enhancement – embodied materials, transport, education
- micro hydro power generation;
- environmental education: interaction, play and unpredictability
- morphology of water-sculpted localities

Dynamic Energy Transfer – Thermal and optical
Liquid: Light + Heat 2012
Latent Dynamo 2012
- qualitative entrainment and enhancement of natural light
- state changes of materials; alchemical flux
- creation, management, time-related use of energy
- thermal retention and movement
- microclimate, topography, orientation

Manufacturing – skills transfer, materials and energy
Liquid: Light + Heat 2012
Latent Dynamo 2012
Docking 2011
- processes and requirements for materials conversion – scale and proximity
- training, skills transfer, social focus, apprenticeship, community ownership
- young and old – interdependence and continuity

Differentiated Climatic Environments
Crop 2011
Routes and Shoots 2008
Hydro 2008
Latent Dynamo 2012
- proximate and distinct environmental requirements – strategy and detail
- adaptation and control – degrees of shelter and enclosure
- tempering of climate – for growing, for propagation, drying, exhibiting

Sustainable urban transport strategies:
Route 66 active transport hub 2008
Gear 2009
Docking 2011
- rethinking connections for rail and pedal power links; slow freight
- urban connectivity and time/ route mapping and propositions
- innovation of pedal-friendly typologies
- reprioritising and incentivizing public realm for sustainability

Professional Standing & Distinctions

Awards

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