The Bartlett Research Conversations

Find out more information about this week's speakers below: 

16:00 – Naomi Gibson 

Speech and the Construction of a Virtual Building

Supervisors: Jane Rendell and Sophia Psarra

Naomi’s research investigates how speech constructs and represents the idea for a building within the conversations between architects and other professionals in the early stages of a design project. She questions how this spoken construction interacts with architectural models, drawings and sketches. Following English Language academic Peter Medway's notion of the virtual building, Naomi pays attention to the way the virtual building is discussed, manipulated and generated through talk in design workshops.
 
Naomi’s research positions the study and practice of speech at the interdisciplinary junction of ethnography, sound arts practice and architecture. Ethnographic fieldwork will be conducted in UK architectural practices to understand the role of speech in the act of design. Recorded speech will be analysed, then transformed to produce texts and scores to be performed. The project aims to generate new knowledge about the value of speech as a creative and collaborative design medium.

Image: 'Permeations of projection – an expanded conception of Robin Evans' model of architectural projection'. Naomi Gibson (2019)

17:30 – Danielle Hewitt 

London’s World War II Bombsites: a Neurotic History

Supervisors: Jane Rendell and Robin Wilson

Danielle’s thesis produces a history of London’s World War II bombsites as complex material and psychological locations. By proposing the writing of a ‘neurotic history’ Danielle aims to properly acknowledge the traumatic nature of these sites and contribute to existing debates regarding the impact of aerial bombing on the civilian population in Britain. 

Employing original archival research, Danielle reveals how the production of London’s bombsites continued after the initial event of bombing through activities of clearance and salvage undertaken by the London County Council War Debris Service. Through an expanded practice of writing – which manifests through performance, video, sound and the printed page – Danielle’s thesis produces a number of ‘elsewheres’ which attempt to locate the displaced bombsite materials. Traced through both the archival and the fictional, these ‘elsewheres’ ask where a trauma of the bombsites might be located, and what is to be taken as evidence of this trauma.
 
Danielle’s research is supported by the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain through a scholarship funded by the Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation.

Image: 'Sculpture students carving bomb debris in East London'. Still from an unidentified film. London Metropolitan University Archives.

About The Bartlett Research Conversations

The Bartlett School of Architecture’s Research Conversations seminars comprise work-in-progress and upgrade presentations by students undertaking the MPhil/PhD Architectural Design and MPhil/PhD Architectural and Urban History and Theory. All current UCL staff and students are welcome to attend.

Held regularly throughout the academic year, the seminars are attended by the programme directors, Professor Jonathan Hill and Professor Sophia Psarra, PhD Coordinators, Dr. Nina Vollenbröker and Dr Sophie Read, and other PhD supervisors.

Lead image: International Solidarity Exchange. River Bruno in La Guajira and Meeting with the Durham Miners Association. 

Other image: Tom Keeley, ‘Vote Nadine (Derry, Doire), Fear (Fermanagh, Fear Manach)’