Profile

My background is in architecture, including several years in professional practice. I completed an interdisciplinary PhD at Lancaster University, developing a novel design and fabrication approach termed Tuneable Environments. This research explored how relationships between digital design parameters and physical material properties could be interactively configured and adapted.

My subsequent research has developed across architecture, design, engineering, computer science and material sciences, resulting in interdisciplinary publications and research collaborations. I have also secured research funding to investigate adaptive material systems.

More recently, my research has expanded from the design of adaptive material systems towards questions concerning how relationships are established, sustained and transformed within open, evolving environments. This includes exploring ecological twinning as an alternative to conventional digital twin approaches, with an emphasis on interaction, uncertainty and the evolving relationships between digital, physical and ecological systems.

Research Through Design (RtD) provides a methodological foundation for this work. Physical prototypes, material experiments, computational environments and speculative design interventions are developed as means of enquiry, enabling interdisciplinary conversations and revealing both the possibilities and limitations of proposed relationships.

Research Interests

My research investigates how design might engage with the complex relationships between materials, computational systems and wider ecologies. Rather than considering objects, structures or environments as isolated systems, it explores how they interact with and are influenced by processes operating across different spatial and temporal scales.

An underlying concern is how these relationships can be developed without assuming that their behaviour, boundaries or outcomes remain stable or predictable.

Current research interests are organised around four interconnected areas:

1. Adaptive Open Material Systems and Tuneable Environments

Investigating how digital and physical material relationships can be iteratively configured, adapted and reconsidered through design. Building upon Tuneable Environments, this research explores the challenges of maintaining intended relationships between design parameters and material behaviours as systems become increasingly interconnected and open to external influences.

Of particular interest is how material responses fluctuate, diverge or become reconfigured, and what these behaviours reveal about the limitations of predetermined design relationships.

2. Ecological Twinning and Open Systems

Exploring ecological twinning as a process through which digital and physical environments might participate in ongoing, reciprocal exchanges. Rather than reproducing physical environments as digital representations for monitoring and optimisation, this research considers how digital systems might enable new forms of interaction, interpretation and engagement with evolving ecological processes.

This includes questions of uncertainty, multiple timescales, partial knowledge and differing interpretations of ecological change. It also considers how digital environments might accommodate competing values and perspectives without reducing complex ecologies to a singular representation or predetermined definition of desirable outcomes.

3. Scaffolds, Material Exchanges and Ecological Relationships

Investigating how designed interventions might participate in existing material, ecological and environmental processes rather than operating independently of them.

This includes an interest in temporary or evolving scaffolds, material exchanges, processes of decay and renewal, and the potential for structures and systems to develop relationships with their wider environments.

The research questions how such interventions might enable reciprocal relationships while recognising that their effects, values and consequences may change across scales and over time.

4. Research Through Design and Speculative Experimentation

Employing Research Through Design as an exploratory approach in which making, experimentation and critical reflection generate knowledge.

Physical material probes, computational environments, speculative prototypes and visual representations are developed to investigate relationships that may be difficult to anticipate or fully describe in advance.

These experiments provide opportunities to question design assumptions, explore alternative possibilities and facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration, rather than exclusively seeking validated or optimised solutions.

Across these areas, an overarching question concerns how design can engage with complex and evolving systems while remaining responsive to relationships, behaviours and consequences that cannot be entirely predicted or controlled.

Current Teaching

My current teaching focuses on architectural technology and design across undergraduate and postgraduate programmes at Lancaster University.

I lead the Master of Architecture technology module, supporting students in developing an understanding of the relationships between architectural design, construction, material systems, environmental performance and building regulations.

I also contribute to first-year undergraduate architectural design studio teaching and undergraduate architectural technology teaching.

My teaching interests include integrating architectural design with technical understanding, material experimentation and critical consideration of the environmental and ecological implications of architectural decisions.

Current Research

• Ecological Twinning: Digital–Physical Relationships in Open Systems

  Ongoing conceptual and exploratory research investigating ecological twinning as a means of establishing and examining relationships between digital, physical and ecological environments. The research questions conventional digital twin approaches centred on representation, prediction and optimisation, and instead explores reciprocal interactions, evolving relationships and alternative ways of interpreting ecological change.

  Current developmental work includes conceptual investigations, interdisciplinary discussions and the identification of lightweight, modular digital infrastructure to support future experimental work. Potential applications within forest and landscape ecologies are being explored through preliminary conversations with external collaborators.

  Adaptive Open Material Systems: Tuneable Environments

  Continuing research into adaptive material systems and the relationships between design parameters, physical stimuli and material behaviours.

  Building upon earlier work on Tuneable Environments, recent research investigates the challenges of maintaining intended relationships between different material properties during iterative adaptation. Experimental work involving magnetised thermoplastic materials and digitally controlled actuation explores how responses may fluctuate, decouple or re-emerge through changing material configurations.

  The research considers what such behaviours reveal about design approaches that assume persistent and controllable relationships, and how these insights might inform future approaches to adaptive and open material systems.

  Adaptive Prosthetics: Material Systems and Design Applications

  Research investigating how adaptive material systems and associated design and fabrication approaches might inform future prosthetic applications.

  This includes speculative investigations into the relationships between pressure, material configuration, thickness and rigidity, alongside questions concerning how multiple material properties might be adjusted through interactive design processes.

  Previous interdisciplinary work has involved collaboration with engineering, chemistry and clinical specialists, including Preston Hospital's Specialist Mobility Rehabilitation Centre. Current involvement focuses on maintaining research connections and identifying opportunities for further interdisciplinary development.

PhD Supervision Interests

Architecture, responsive or adaptive architecture, speculative architecture, digital design and fabrication, material computation, shape-changing materials, material and ecological bi-direction intercations (digital twins), interdisciplinary research between design and chemistry or bio-materials