Newcastle University

‌Architectural, landscape and urban design proposals are inevitably future-projecting and have values inscribed within them, values that may be highly historically and culturally contingent. Research in this theme addresses the various ways in which design production, both historically and in the present, has engaged with the future. Work in the theme is therefore concerned not only with the specific content of particular proposals, but also with interpreting the broader cultural imaginaries from whence they emerge and are imparted value. Research into this also entails the question of the specific agency of particular representational forms and technologies, the way in which they circulate, and their persuasive or rhetorical capacities.

The theme includes Ian Thompson's work on the  imaginaries in play during post-industrial land reclamation, the research of Steven Dudek, Graham Farmer and Neveen Hamza into sustainable technologies and contemporary discourses, Nathaniel Coleman’s on the history and future of utopian thinking and Adam Sharr’s book on Sir Leslie Martin’s project for the development of Whitehall in its relation to the technocratic agenda of the 1960s Wilson government (Demolishing Whitehall). A joint common project in this area was the 2012 ISPA international conference held at Newcastle Ethics and Aesthetics of Architecture and the Environment organised by Kati Blom with Andrew Ballantyne and a former PhD student Carolyn Fahey. With Adam Stock (SELLL)  and Lisa Garforth (SGPS), Nathaniel Coleman is organising the European Utopian Studies Society International Conference at Newcastle in July 2015.

People: Andrew Ballantyne, Kati Blom, Nathaniel Coleman, Steven Dudek, Graham Farmer, Neveen Hamza, Matt Ozga-Lawn, Adam Sharr and Ian Thompson.

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