Research themes within the Architecture Research Group (ARG)

The long-term key priority and focus of the Architecture Research Group is to establish UWE Bristol as an innovative, diverse and progressive force in architectural research and beacon of excellence that will embrace the range of research that falls within its remit. Broadly, this research falls into three themes which are described below. Note that it is not a requirement for members to work within one specific theme; indeed, working across themes is encouraged. 

Architectural contexts and cultures

Place / Memory / Identity / Communities / Participatory Design / Social Value / Social Sustainability / Social Transformation / Ethnography / Wellbeing / Psychology / Care / Behaviour / Ecology / Gender / Post Colonialism / Inclusion /

This theme focuses on the value of architecture and design in shaping the world around us. It explores how architecture connects with the world, how it is experienced and its transformational impact – socially, environmentally and culturally. Research in this theme critically engages with contemporary debates in climate and ecology; social transformation, gender, race, sexuality and the body; identity and place; the cultural politics of representation and language; and to the global and postcolonial contexts in which these are addressed.

Architectural making and material processes

Material Processes And Discourses / Making / Design Through Making / Fabrication Methods / Design Detail and Architectural Technology / Experimental Material Applications And Design / Critical Tectonics / Experimental Digital Fabrication / Critical Computational Approaches To Design / Parametric Generative Processes /

This theme explores architecture’s relationship with making and investigational material processes and acknowledges the resurgence of interest by architects in the processes of making and the renewed interest within architectural culture in the act of making, from exploratory material experiments and fabrication methods to design through making, the relationships between design and construction and the processes and theories we use to understand this. Its approach is rooted in critical analysis and experimental practice, examining technological issues in a broader context of political, social, cultural concerns and as part of a larger cycle of sustainable use and reuse of resources that includes research into the purpose of making and material investigations that moves beyond technocratic acts of production and situates these enquiries within a wider conceptual and theoretical context.

Design thinking and representation

Design Procesess / Design Thinking / Architectural Conventions/ History/ Humanities / Critical Theory / Media / Representation / Visual Culture / Language / Design Pedagogy/Digital/Physical Hybrid Environments / 

This theme focuses on the historical and cultural aspects of architecture through interdisciplinary, experimental, speculative, arts-based and humanities-led approaches. It explores architecture using experimental and creative methods such as artefacts, sound and film alongside conventional academic methods. This theme also explores how unique design methodologies and unique models of design interaction have evolved with digital and other design media, including how digital tools, machine learning, networks, and computation have, and continue to, shape architectural practice and theory.