Profile

I am Professor of Architecture, Director of Research, PGR Lead and Humanities Lead. I qualified as an Architect in 2007 after eight years in practice with BDP. in Manchester. Between 2000 and 2004 I was a part-time design tutor at the University of Liverpool and in the same period competed a Masters by Research into branding, identity and architecture. From 2004-2007 I taught part-time at the Manchester School of Architecture (MSA) in the Landscape & Urbanism College. In 2007 I entered academia full time and became Head of Second Year at the MSA. Over the following fifteen years, I was Head of Third Year, Programme Director for the BA(Hons) Architecture and eventually research lead for the department and responsible for the submission to REF2021, for which my work formed an Impact Case Study.

I gained my PhD by studying part-time, 2012-2018, under the supervision of Professor Mark Crinson at the University of Manchester. My doctoral thesis examined the networked condition of the production of space in a regional capital and advanced the term ‘regionality’ as a way of understanding the interrelationships of the manifold forces acting upon design and construction in a pre-digital age. I take a holistic view of architecture as an expanded field of practice and one that is closely bound to planning legislation, urban and landscape design. Understanding these associations, for me, is the key to situating buildings in a much wider context and enabling architecture as a vehicle for other historical narratives.

I am an advisor to the Modernist Society, a member of the Twentieth Century Society’s Casework Committee and an active member of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain, the European Architectural History Network, DoCoMoMo UK and the Architectural Humanities Research Association.

Research Interests

My research generally concerns the post-war period (1945-1980) and is largely focussed on British architecture, landscape and urbanism. One area of particular focus are the renewal cities of the UK – those that undertook the majority of their reconstruction after 1959 – they are complex places where burgeoning planning legislation and municipally sponsored urban design met with commercial investment and rising consumerism. Buildings in these settings typically manifested as mainstream modernism and, until recently, were viewed as derivative and not always worthy of study. I have contributed to the development of scholarly work that recognises the value of provincial cities and their architecture in terms of what it has to say about the rest of society. My funded research has explored the digital preservation of buildings and I am interested in how new technologies can enrich and activate archive holdings and have worked extensively with archivists to open up collections through my work. Most recently, I have been working on the landscapes of post-war infrastructure, in an attempt to recover lost design knowledge and to understand the various roles of design professionals within an ostensibly engineering realm. The ways in which infrastructure met with society and its networks in an era of nationalisation and powerful state interventions in the built environment is an area of particular concern. I have an enduring fascination with the entire project of modernising Britain after 1945 with special attention on provincial and regional settings that can be overlooked in architectural history.

Current Teaching

At the moment, I teach on Humanities modules ARCH104 and ARCH304 and ARCH505 as well as leading the Humanities area for both of our taught programmes. These modules involve many other members of staff, as we explore the manifold histories and theories of architecture using different lenses and non-linear accounts led by critical theory.

Current Research

I remain engaged with the landscapes of post-war infrastructure and have been closely examining sites including Scammonden Reservoir and its hybrid dam-motorway structure and Ffestiniog pumped storage hydro-electric power station. These sites hold fascination for the way in which they both altered, and adapted to, the landscape and in their connection to much wider networks that make them a part of urban systems despite their apparently rural geographies. My interest is not exclusively in the objects themselves, but also in the state structures and organisations that enabled their construction and their wider association with the sweeping programme of modernisation across the UK in the 1960s and 1970s. I have started some work on the new town of Skelmersdale and am slowly exploring its development and growth in relation to civic and cultural amenity. I am working with Lancashire County Archives in the cataloguing of Roger Booth’s papers – Booth was County Architect between 1962 and 1983 and his personal archive was recently acceded to the collections. My fieldwork that supports my research is an ongoing project that is recorded via my website – www.mainstreammodern.co.uk – and represents sustained research activity over the course of three decades.

I am also engaged in scoping work about the use of artificial intelligence in practice and academia.

PhD Supervision Interests

I am interested in the supervision of projects related to the built environment, especially of the twentieth century. Matters concerning policy, its interpretation and implementation are a particular focus. I am fascinated by the visual culture of the planning and urban design documents of the state and the role that such publications play in shaping town, cities and their extended fields. I take a holistic view of planning, architecture, urbanism, infrastructure and landscape and welcome proposals that explore the complex systems and networks at play in the production of space.