31st May 2018
PhD Week
Ricardo Ruivo Pereira
Architecture and Counter-revolution: The Ideology of the Historiography of the Soviet Avant-garde
Supervisors: Mark Cousins, Dr Pier Vittorio Aureli
The thesis produces a history of the Western historiography of Soviet architecture, looking at its trends and the evolution of its narratives. It focuses on the development of historiographical categories and their transformations, as an exercise of what Reinhart Koselleck calls conceptual history, framed as a Marxist critique of ideology. It frames a persistent link to the present from the Soviet “avant-garde” as an ideological projection of meanings the Western historiography of Soviet architecture produces over its own geo-political reality, where “the avant-garde” as a meta-category is itself constructed of legitimation of Western presents
Arturo Revilla
Plastic. The use of everyday materials as a design tool for the understanding of contemporary urbanisation.
Supervisors: Dr Marina Lathouri
Plastic is in everything we touch and see drastically affecting our day to day. This material form has extended its influence beyond our direct experience in to areas such as infrastructure, global commerce and communication, playing a central role in the complexity of our contemporary material culture. This thesis examines the impact that the everyday use of materials such as plastic has had in the configuration of the physical environment to explore the relationships and synergies between urbanization processes and architectural design.
Nihal Al Sabbagh
Urban Design and Outdoor Thermal Comfort
Supervisors: Dr Simos Yannas, Dr Paula Cadima
The study aims to improve walkability, prolonging the distances that can be travelled by pedestrians at different times of the year. Design strategies were investigated through field studies and computational simulation with case studies for the urban communities of Greens and Jumeirah Lakes Towers in Dubai.
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