Open Studio is an interactive project run by the School of Architecture + Cities at the University of Westminster to make its design, research and practice-based work available online while it is happening. The site acts as a real time teaching and learning environment in which the work of both students and staff is curated and documented – the work of its design studios, or its other teaching and research groups and workshops. Read more in Blog, follow us on Twitter and like us on Instagram.
Where: AED Studio M612, Marylebone Campus, University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, NW1 5LS
You are invited to the lunchtime talk by Prof Jacopo Gaspari, visiting from the University of Bologna under the Erasmus plus agreement. The lecture will be on one of Jacopo’s research topics, which very much resonates with the work done in ProBE and in the UK.
The transition towards zero carbon is calling for more effective retrofitting solutions to maximize energy savings while reducing construction time and disruption for tenants. In the background, the rise of energy costs, the disparities in spending capacity, and the cost of living are exacerbating differences, fostering energy poverty as a more diffuse issue. A cross-scale and cross-disciplinary approach is needed to address more responsive solutions. The lecture will review examples and case studies from the Italian context and identify opportunities for future strategic solutions.
Jacopo Gaspari is an Architect and Professor of Architectural Technology at the University of Bologna where he teaches Building design for climate change and Technologies for energy efficiency, and he also runs his research activity in the field of building and district renovation; high performing building envelopes; adaptation and climate responsive strategies; LCA and service life of buildings and components. He also leads the NEXTBUILT observatory aimed to report promising facts, events, and trends that give a contribution to a future-proof built environment.
Where: AED Studio M612, Marylebone Campus, University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, NW1 5LS
You are invited to the lunchtime talk by Juan Carlos Ragel Bonilla, Visiting Researcher at ProBE this summer. Juan Carlos is a doctoral student and researcher in the Department of Engineering at the University of Seville and his PhD topic is on the application of machine learning to thermal comfort models in public buildings.
When: Tuesday, 9th of July 2024 from 10am to 5pm (BST)
Where: Centre for the Study of the Production of the Built Environment (ProBE), Room C1.15-16, University of Westminster, New Cavendish Campus, 115 New Cavendish St, London W1W 6UW
The Centre for the Study of the Production of the Built Environment (ProBE) – a multi-faculty research centre spanning Westminster Business School (WBS) and the School of Architecture and Cities (SA+C) at the University of Westminster – is inviting you to a research symposium on reassessing research priorities for the study of the production of the built environment.
The symposium will be an opportunity to hear about ProBE’s current and recently completed research and to discuss priorities for future research on the production of the built environment, in particular the issues that most urgently need addressing, such as combatting climate change, improving vocational education and training (VET), and addressing sectoral equality, diversity and inclusion challenges in UK, Europe and across the globe. It will bring together ProBE members, past, existing and prospective collaborators, project partners from within the University of Westminster and beyond, including academic organisations, unions, industry practitioners, environmental organisations, policymakers and the wider society, for an interactive day of discussion.
The symposium will include keynote presentations from ProBE members and external speakers and panel discussions on the following key research areas:
embedding climate literacy into construction VET in different countries,
women in construction in Europe and beyond,
fuel poverty and energy retrofit in housing in the UK,
transforming VET and working conditions in the scaffolding sector across Europe.
According to Dr Rosa Schiano-Phan: “the report provides a toolkit for organisations to increase and improve the presence of women in construction, so it is set to have a high impact. However, it also highlights significant shortfalls in data on the presence and impact of Women In Construction in Europe and a slow progress compared to a similar study by Professor Linda Clarke 20 years ago. We are preparing a journal article on the study and will organise an event later in the semester to launch the report in the UK. We are also currently searching for appropriate research calls for possible bids.”
The report investigates women’s experience in the construction, wood and forestry industry based on a survey sent out by the EFBWW, the research partner on this project, to 77 Unions representing the industry across Europe. The survey focuses on the obstacles women in the field face and what solutions are needed to increase recruitment and retention. It is authored by Dr Guedes, a Research Associate at Westminster, and co-authored by ProBE’s co-directors Dr Rosa Schiano-Phan, Dr Maria Christina Georgiadou, Professor Linda Clarke and Dr Fernando Duran Palma.
The project began earlier in 2023 when the ProBE team successfully answered the call put out by the EFBWW and funded by the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES), to analyse the survey data and produce a report.
The presentation in Helsinki was split into three sections, first introducing the report, secondly offering practical recommendations based on the survey results and finally highlighting what stood out the most from what they found. […]
University of Westminster, News: “Dr Coralie Guedes presents report on women in construction at conference in Helsinki”
Centre for the Study of the Production of the Built Environment (ProBE)
To mark the Centre’s relaunch, the new leadership team of the Centre for the Study of the Production of the Built Environment (ProBE 2) – a multi-faculty research centre spanning Westminster Business School (WBS) and the School of Architecture and Cities (SA+C) at the University of Westminster – is inviting you to a research symposium on the future of the study of the production of the built environment.
In a time of crisis, when social relations of building production are faced with rapid transformation, the symposium will be an opportunity to discuss and formulate proposals to help set the agenda for the future direction of research on the production of the built environment, in particular the issues that most urgently need addressing such as combatting climate change. It will bring together ProBE members, past, existing and prospective collaborators, project partners from the within the University of Westminster and beyond, including academic organisations, unions, industry practitioners, environmental organisations, policy makers and the wider society, for an interactive day of discussion.
The symposium will include keynote presentations, roundtables and panel discussions on the following key research areas – Vocational Education and Training, Oral and Labour Histories, Sustainable Urban Settlements and Low Carbon Construction, Equality in Construction, Climate Change, Work and Environmental Technologies, and Capital and Labour Relations.
Prof Dejan Mumovic – Professor of Building Performance Analysis
Institute for Environmental Design and Engineering – UCL
Prof Mumovic is a building scientist with a background in heating, ventilation and air conditioning engineering and the extensive experience of monitoring and modelling work in the field of the built environment. In the last 20 years Prof Mumovic has led, co-led or significantly contributed to 60 research projects, and co-authored over 250 peer reviewed publications. 17 doctoral researchers graduated under his supervision. Prof Mumovic’s research expertise include:
(a) modelling aspects of building performance analysis, including the application and development of advanced modelling techniques utilizing performance data and simulation as a design driver
(b) monitoring aspects of building performance analysis in the context of health, comfort and cognitive performance
(c) building stock performance analysis, including the development of semi-empirical bottom-up physically disaggregated building stock models as well as top-down statistical modelling studies.
Prof Katie Lloyd Thomas – Professor of Theory and History of Architecture
School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape – University of Newcastle
She is an editor at the international journal arq: Architectural Research Quarterly, and a founder member of the feminist collective taking placewww.takingplace.org.uk. Her research is concerned with materiality and technology, and their intersections with architectural concepts, practice and design, and with feminist practice and theory. Notable edited collections include Material Matters (Routledge, 2007) and with Tilo Amhoff and Nick Beech Industries of Architecture (Routledge Critiques, 2015). Her monograph Building Materials: Material theory and the architectural specification was recently published in London (Bloomsbury, 2021). In her current joint Brazil/UK project Translating Ferro / Transforming Knowledges of Architecture, Design and Labour for the New Field of Production Studies,http://www.tf-tk.com/(funded by the AHRC and FAPESP), she, together with an international team of researchers, debates and explores the cross-cultural potential of the unique and significant body of the work of the Brazilian architect, artist and theorist Sérgio Ferro for understanding art, architecture and desgin through the lens of labour and production.
Prof João Marcos Almeida de Lopes
Institute of Architecture and Urbanism – University of São Paulo
He holds a PhD in Philosophy and Methodology of Science from the Federal University of São Carlos. He currently is one of the coordinator of the research group on Housing and Sustainability (HABIS), and an associate researcher with Usina, where he acted as coordinator between 1990 and 2005. Usina was founded in June 1990 by a multidisciplinary working group as a technical advisory to social movements, since, it has worked to mobilize processes that engage the workers’ own capacity to plan, design and build, mobilizing public finances to aid the struggle for urban and agrarian land reform. Usina’s team strives to overcome narrowly conceived individualist and commercially-minded modes of Architecture and Urbanism and to that effect, strives to integrate and engender processes that may subvert the logic of capital through counter-hegemonic social, spatial, technical, and aesthetic experiences.
Together with Professor Katie Lloyd Thomas (University of Newcastle) and Dr Silke Kapp (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais), Prof João Marcos Almeida de Lopes is also developing Translating Ferro/Translating Production.
Prof Linda Clarke – Professor of European Industrial Relations
School of Organisations, Economy and Society – University of Westminster
Former co-director of the Centre for the Study of the Production of the Built Environment (ProBE), on the European Institute for Construction Labour Research (CLR) (www.clr-news.org) board, and Associate Director and partner in the Canadian ACW project on climate change and work (see https://adaptingcanadianwork.ca/), Prof Clarke has extensive experience of comparative research on labour, equality and diversity, vocational education and training (VET), and wage relations in the European construction sector. Current research interests cover a) building labour history, particularly focussed direct labour organisations; b) VET and low energy construction, including retrofitting; c) labour and climate transition; d) women in construction; and e) blacklisting in the construction sector. In 2022, Prof Clarke was awarded the VET Research Excellence award by the European Commission.
Recent projects include:
Climate Literacy for Construction: Integrating climate literacy into the construction trades to prepare the construction workforce to better meet Canada’s climate change commitment,SkillPlan, Canadian Building Trade Unions, $4.2m, 2021-2025, part of Climate Industry and Research Team (CIRT) with responsibility for Europe, funded by Canadian government ‘Employment and Social Development Canada: Union Training and Innovation Fund’;
Vocational Education and Training for Low Energy Construction, European Commission project led by European Construction Industry Federation (FIEC) and European Federation of Building and Woodworkers (EFBWW), with 10 country partners (Belgium, Bulgaria, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Romania, Slovenia, Spain), external expert (Prof. Linda Clarke, Dr. Colin Gleeson, Dr Melahat Sahin-Dikmen), January 2017-December 2018.
Prof Christine Wall – Professor of Architectural History
School of Architecture and Cities, University of Westminster
Former co-director of the Centre for the Study of the Production of the Built Environment (ProBE), Trustee of The Construction History Society, Editor of The Construction History Journal and a member of the Editorial Committee for The Oral History Journal.
Prof Wall has developed a distinctive multi-disciplinary approach, using oral histories together with documentary and visual research, to reveal and examine the social processes underpinning the production of the built environment. This has proved effective in broadening both investigation and theoretical interpretation in architectural and construction history and built environment heritage; for example, her research on the women involved in constructing Waterloo Bridge. She led the Leverhulme Trust funded oral history project, Constructing Post-War Britain: building workers’ stories 1950-1970, and her books include An Architecture of Parts: architects, building workers and industrialised building in Britain 1940-70, (2013) and Work and Identity (2011). In 2022 she was awarded a two-year Leverhulme Emeritus Fellowship for her current research project, ‘If I had a hammer’: feminist activism and the built environment 1975-2000.
Dr Claudia Loggia
Associate Professor and Academic Leader for the Housing Programme at the School of Built Environment & Development Studies (SoBEDS), University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa.
She holds a PhD and a MEng in Building Engineering from Cagliari University (Italy). Since 2016, Claudia is a Royal Society Newton Advanced Fellow (2016-2024), for a project in partnership with the University of Westminster (London), titled: “Building Urban Resilience for Self-Reliance in African Cities”. She was also Principal Investigator for the South African team of the ISULABANTU project (www.isulabantu.org) focused on Community-led Upgrading for self-reliance in informal settlements in South Africa. She is also collaborating on valuable research projects in South Africa with local governmental institutions, NGOs and local communities, such as the uMngeni Resilience Project aimed at increasing resilience of vulnerable communities in a rural area in KwaZulu-Natal and the informal settlement upgrading of Khan Rd settlement in Pietermaritzburg.
Dr Viloshin Govender
Lecturer in Architecture at the School of Built Environment and Development Studies at UKZN.
His research involves working with Marginalized communities, especially those in Informal settlements, using drone technologies and community collaboration to create solutions that form a bottom-up approach. He is also an Architect with research interests that include resilient cities, building adaptability, and how insurgency affects city planning.
Stephen Craig
National Development Officer, Unite the Union
Stephen Craig is National Development Officer with Unite the Union (UK), responsible for learning, and skills activities at public and private sector level. Previously, a Trade Union Studies/Industrial Relations Lecturer in Further and Higher Education, he has taught at the ILO Training Centre in Turin and was researcher on several learning and skills-related reports. Foe over twenty years he worked as a Project Manager on several national/international learning and skills initiatives (including European Social Fund, Union Modernisation, and the Union Learning Fund).
A Full-Time Official in union’s covering the maritime industry, education and construction sectors, Stephen has progressed skills and joint union-management programmes with companies including EDF, Fords, BP, Skanska. He was on the Drafting Group for the ILC ‘Shaping skills and lifelong learning for the future of work’ (2021) report; is Trade Union Coordinator (Ethical Trade Initiative); Advisory Board member Work & Equalities (University of Manchester); on the Unite Environment Taskforce.
