The Bartlett’s Albert Brenchat-Aguilar Awarded UCL Global Engagement Funding

UCL’s Global Engagement Funds support UCL staff to collaborate with colleagues across the world, and are part of the wider Research, Innovation and Global Engagement (RIGE) funding streams. They provide seed funding to UCL staff to support and catalyse quality research, education, capacity building, global policy and/or public engagement, in collaboration with overseas organisations, with the potential for global reach and real-world impact. 

The Fund has awarded £5,000 to a team convened by The Bartlett School of Architecture’s Albert Brenchat-Aguilar to establish long-term relations between and UCL, to mark the 70th anniversary of UCL’s Development Planning Unit. This project continues Albert’s ongoing work surrounding the history of the DPU and its close links with Global South countries.

The Development Planning Unit (DPU), formerly the Department of Tropical Studies, was established in 1954 at the Architectural Association, and moved to UCL in 1971. The DPU exported climate-based models of architectural practice to countries in the Global South. These models were subsequently developed as the DPU reshaped architectural institutions and their curricula, regulated planning practice and legislation, and trained leading architects in and from the area. Particularly important was the collaboration set up with Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi (KNUST) from 1963 onward. As part of this, DPU lecturers reshaped its Faculty of Architecture whilst enabling exchanges between students in London and Kumasi. Now, as the DPU enters its 70th anniversary, this project will revitalise the links between between KNUST and UCL.

The UCL team comprises: Prof Michael Walls, Prof Julio D. Dávila, and Prof Haim Yacobi at UCL Development Planning Unit; Prof Tamar Garb at UCL History of Art; Prof Ama de-Graft Aikins at the UCL Institute of Advanced Studies; Prof Ingrid Schroder at the Architectural Association; and Dr Chris Turner at the V&A. 

Four outcomes are planned from the funding, all taking place in 2024: two public conversations, presented as part of The Bartlett School of Architecture’s new flagship lecture series CRUNCH, and two PhD workshops with curator Dr Kwasi Ohene-Ayeh (KNUST and blaxTARLINES) and architect practitioner Ruth-Anne Richardson (researcher at the African Futures Institute).

The project follows on from an exhibition that Albert curated at the AA last year, which challenged the single perspective of the DPU’s early archives and centred unheard voices from the archive, working with diverse, global voices to explore potential histories for alternative futures. With the funding for this new project, he intends to continue nurturing these historic global relationships and expanding the remit of collaborators at UCL and at KNUST. Albert also plans to apply for further funding to organise a symposium or other large exchange event at KNUST in the coming years.

The CRUNCH conversations will take place at The Bartlett’s 22 Gordon Street campus on 02 and 16 May 2024, and the workshops will take place at UCL’s Institute of Advanced Studies (Ground floor, Wilkins Building) on 01 and 17 May 2024. Expressions of interest for the two workshops are currently open:

• Workshop 1, 01 May, 14:00–16:00: 'The Curatorial, vis-à-vis the pedagogical', with Dr. Kwasi-Ohene Ayeh
• Workshop 2, 17 May, 14:00–16:00: 'From the City of Plans', with Ruth-Anne NAS Richardson

Expressions of interest can be submitted on the event pages for each workshop.

Albert Brenchat-Aguilar is co-Director of Public Programmes at The Bartlett School of Architecture (along with Déborah López Lobato), and a lecturer in Contextual Theory. He teaches Architectural Design MArch (RC1), Year 3 of Architecture BSc (ARB/RIBA Part 1) and Architecture and MSci (Y3), and tutors the Landscape Architecture MLA dissertation. Previously, he co-curated the public programme and publications of the Institute of Advanced Studies, UCL; edited the digital platform Ceramic Architectures; and worked as an architect in Bombas Gens Arts Centre. He is a CHASE-funded doctoral student at Birkbeck and the Architectural Association with the project “Architecture's Human Resource: Kumasi, London and the Consutancy for Independence”, and is also cataloging the archive of educator, architect, and planner Otto Koenigsberger. He co-edited ‘Wastiary: A bestiary of waste’, published shortly by UCL Press, and another edited book is coming up with AA Publications in 2024. He has published in Architectural Theory Review, Architecture&Culture, Espacio Fronterizo, and The Scottish Left Review; curated shows at UCL and the Polytechnic University of Valencia; and exhibited his work at Museu Nogueira Da Silva in Braga, Portugal.

More information

• Read more about the ‘As Hardly Found in the Architecture Archive’ exhibition last year at the AA
• Find out more about UCL Global Engagement Funds
• Find out more about The Bartlett Development Planning Unit
• Visit Albert Brenchat-Aguilar’s profile

Image: KNUST in Kumasi, April 2022. Photograph by Albert Brenchat-Aguilar