As a Course Unit Leader at the University of Manchester, I convened a Research 1: Methods workshop and two Research 2: Dissertation groups for the Manchester School of Architecture (MArch). This series of research-led postgraduate taught units introduce first-year MArch students to STS-informed architectural research.
The staircase of TfL’s New Routemaster (Heatherwick, 2012)
The “communicating stair” of The New School’s University Center (SOM, 2013; Photo © James Ewing)
This Methods Workshop extends the fields of architectural humanities and urban studies to study the architectural, urban, and/or infrastructural modes of connection across environments of movement, beyond the common figures of the building and the city. We expand on Yaneva’s theorisation of the architectural as an association (Yaneva, 2010; Shayya, 2021) and learn from the philosophy of technology (Combes, 2012; Simondon, 1958/2017; Shayya, 2021) and science and technology studies (Akrich, 1992; Latour, 2005). While the figures of the building and the city remain useful, there is ample potential in studying the envelopes and atmospheric enclosures of new figures in an increasingly mobile world, evolving the experimental architectural thought of the 1960s on walking cities.
Download >>> Research 1 Syllabus: Mobile Architectures
Student Groups’ Projects:
01\\\ Mobile Inhabitation: The Architectural Associations of Sejima’s Train Design (Group: Abdul Muaz Aiman bin Masri, Zeyu Che, Mohamad Danial Haziq bin Mohd Hamdan, Jianxuan Wang)
02\\\ Manoeuvrable Rooms: Architectural Associations from Station Wagons to SUVs (Group: Ahmed Ali, Yutong Liu, Daryl Quayle, Zilang Zhao)
03\\\ Inhabiting the Skies: The Technogeographic Milieu of the Bowing 747 (Group: Omkar Salvi, Rucha Anand Valimbe, Sehaam Usmani, Yi-Cheng Tai)
04\\\ The Eco-architectural and Socio-technical Associations of Heatherwick’s New Routemaster (Group: Fangfei Li, Johan bin Nor Azman, Leonardo Forcignano, Writushree Saha)
