Preston is a dynamic City to study architecture — an architectural laboratory of industrial docks, 60’s brutalism and modern intervention. The institute maintains strong links with the City and with architects in the region, with the key aim of giving students a dynamic and practical education.
The Institute is situated in the Harris Building in Preston, once the Harris Institute where Sir George Grenfell-Baines first studied before going on to establish the Building Design Partnership (BDP) in 1961. Part of the School of Art, Design and Fashion (ADF) in the College of Culture and Creative Industries, the Institute resides within a vibrant creative environment; maintaining strong historic ties with the construction and engineering disciplines, while retaining its identity and culture as a thriving architecture school.
Des Fagan is Academic Leader for Architecture at the University of Central Lancashire and director of Design Research North. He Leads the Institute of Architecture and is responsible for the strategic delivery of several courses including Architecture RIBA Part I, Master of Architecture RIBA Part II, Architectural Technology CIAT and MSc Conservation and Adaptation. He worked for a number of practices prior to working in academia, most recently as Project Architect for the London 2012 Olympic Village and as Lead Architect at Zaha Hadid Architects. He is founder and director of Design Research North – an award-winning architectural practice and research group at the University.
Professor Craig Lee Martin began his passion for urban sustainability at Manchester School of Architecture. As an international specialist in urban bioclimatic design, Craig later joined the Faculty of Architecture at TU Delft. Working jointly at TU Delft and the Grenfell-Baines Institute of Architecture Craig is now eager to share his networks and knowledge of co-creative stakeholder initiatives to forge wider European partnerships and commitments to zero energy cities.
Professor Adrian Friend is an award winning architect, researcher and educator. In questioning the traditional role of the architect as the author of an architectural project my research seeks to initiate collaborative practice with clients and other consultants all of whom extend the architects’ authorship and contribute to new forms of emerging ways to practice as well as a construction ethic based more on the ‘workshop’ as the site of production and democratic practice.
Simon Kay-Jones is a part-time PhD student at the University of Manchester whose topic is ‘Learning from our Elders’, he is currently researching how the elderly govern or become governed by their relationship to Ecological Processes associated in defining, observing and practicing Sustainable Development.
Chris is a Senior Lecturer in Architectural Design and the Subject Lead for Building Technology at the Institute for Architecture, UCLan. His research follows two primary, often crossing, paths which explore the physical making of architecture and the position of architectural drawing as both explorative and representative tool.
Abdul’s research interests are in intelligent buildings and their impact on their users; the impact of information technology on the design and construction process; the use of computer visualisation in the design and construction process; computer support for creativity and cognition; and buildability and information communication during the design and construction process.
Currently, Ehab is researching the relation between city cultures, and users’ perception and wellbeing, which investigates how design for culturally rich sites learn from the past to create sustainable environments. The applications vary from small-scale functional spaces (e.g. offices, pharmacies, etc.) to cultural city scapes.
Ann is a qualified Architect and Architectural Technologist and has worked at UCLan since 2009. She is a Senior Lecturer and third year leader for the BSc (Hons) Architectural Studies Programme. She works with a range of people, groups and organisations to develop ‘live’ studio projects.
Louise’s experience includes lecturing in fine art, graphic design, photography, architectural technology and architecture. She is interested in site and place interventions that reveal the dynamics of spaces. Territory, borders and identity are factors that impact on the politics of location that can determine architectural interventions.
Mary’s research and practice activities have always been strongly inter‐dependent — one always supporting active engagement with, and development of, the other. Her research interests focus on sustainability & effects of the designed/ physical environment on people using/ living in or with it.
Adam Evans is an architectural historian and cultural theorist. He teaches history, theory and culture of architecture within the BSc and MArch Architecture programmes and also runs the MSc in Urban Design. His research is connected to issues of (sub)cultures and liminal space, multiplexity, pluralism and the subaltern, and socio-cultural spaces of otherness.