The Architectural Future(s) website has been updated with new journal entries, events, publications, and student work from across the module. The growing archive documents lectures, discussions, field visits, essays, and other activities, offering an evolving record of the questions, ideas, and futures explored by the cohort.
Publication, Just Environments Incubator, The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL
The publication documents the first five years of History and Theory teaching within the Architecture MSci programme, established in 2020 in response to new UK accreditation standards. The publication traces a four-year pedagogical arc: from Year 1’s decentring of canonical architectural historiography, through Year 2’s analysis of architecture as a network of processes, actors and power relations; to Year 3’s interdisciplinary, research-led Thesis; and culminating in Year 4’s Architectural Future(s), where students critically position themselves as agents shaping the discipline’s next trajectories.
Bringing together selected essays from cohorts between 2021 and 2025, the volume presents a curated cross-section of critical enquiries, methods and thematic concerns emerging across the stream. The extracts reflect not only intellectual diversity but also a commitment to experimentation, primary research and propositional thinking. Conceived and edited with a student editorial team, the publication embodies the ethos of the MSci History and Theory strand: co-learning, increased student agency, and the active reconfiguration of architectural education. It positions history not as retrospective knowledge, but as a foundation for future practice.
Student Editorial Team:
Charlotte Pike
Gini Smart
Mimi Blanksby
Nadia Kwiecinska
Staff Editorial Team:
Albert Brenchat Aguilar
Guang Yu Ren
Kay Sedki
Download Link:
From Global History to Architectural Future(s) (PDF)
Students submit and document their completed essay-publications. Produced as both digital and crafted physical artefacts, the essays are photographed and archived, capturing the diverse formats, visual languages, and critical positions developed throughout the year.
The Editorial Review marked the midpoint of the module, bringing students together in a studio-style forum to present their developing essay-publications. Through a series of short presentations and discussions, students shared their propositions, research methods, and editorial strategies, reflecting on how image, text, layout, and narrative contribute to the construction of an argument. Accompanied by tabletop displays of printed drafts, the review functioned as both critique and exhibition, providing an opportunity to test ideas, refine positions, and strengthen the relationship between content and form.
Review Guests:
Charlie Hayles
Clare St George
Guang Yu Ren
Hlib Velyhorskyi
Murray Fraser
Peg Rawes
Rory Sherlock
Tim Waterman
Saturday 18 October, 11:30 am at Kairos
The event will explore the work of the influential social theorist through a programme of talks, discussions, and workshops. Focusing on themes of mutual aid, participation, self-organisation, and grassroots urbanism, the event will consider how alternative futures can emerge through collective action and everyday practices.
Speakers:
Tim Waterman
Ruth Kinna
Paul Dobraszczyk
David McEwen
Roman Krznaric
Carl Levy
Rhiannon Firth
Jere Kuzmanić
Publishing as Proposition will explore the relationship between architecture, language, and publishing as a form of architectural practice. Featuring talks by Clare St George and Hlib Velyhorskyi, alongside a display of artists’ books, the event will examine how writing, libraries, and publications can operate as sites of speculation, research, and agency. Through discussions spanning literature, architectural theory, and contemporary publishing, the session will consider how propositions for architectural futures can be constructed not only through buildings, but through books, texts, and other forms of cultural production.
Talk 1: ‘Language as a Building Site’: Speculations on Space in the Contemporary Novel
Clare St George, Editor
Talk 2: From Book to Book: The Library as a Medium
Hlib Velyhorskyi, Biblioteka
The launch of Voices Vol. I celebrates the first publication emerging from Architectural Future(s) and developed through the support of UCL ChangeMakers. Bringing together students from different programmes and year groups across The Bartlett School of Architecture, the volume presents a diverse collection of essays exploring topics ranging from climate, infrastructure, and technology to labour, politics, media, and culture. Framed by writing as a speculative and propositional practice, the publication extends conversations beyond the classroom, showcasing the breadth of student research and the collective imagination shaping architecture’s possible futures.
Students are invited to join the launch of Voices Vol. I at the Bartlett Summer Show. The event will feature presentations by students from across programmes and year groups at The Bartlett School of Architecture, offering an opportunity to hear about the ideas, research, and projects featured in the publication. Attendees will also receive a complimentary copy of the first edition and celebrate the work of its contributors, editors, and collaborators.
A preview of Voices Vol. I, the first student publication emerging from The Bartlett School of Architecture, is now online. The volume brings together essays, images, and research from students across the School, offering a snapshot of the questions, concerns, and propositions shaping contemporary architectural thought. The publication will be officially launched later this year at a public release event.
Content:
01 From Flood to Flow: Rethinking Governance and Resilience on Urban Floodplains — Jihoon Baek
02 The 1001 Tales of Somers Town: A Neighbourhood as One Social House — Faezeh Besharat
03 Affective Change within Interactive Tactility: Tactile Architecture and Emotional Response — Jianhao Chen
04 A Case for Doing (Almost) Nothing: Growth, Decay and Heritage in Post-Human Convergence — Charlie Hayles
05 Rhetorical Dissonance: Semiotic Veils in Urban Regeneration — Nikki Ifeobu-Zubis
06 Modelling Edge Computing for Smart Cities: Probabilitistic Models Compared in Barcelona — Ye Ha Kim
07 From the “Back Seat”: Urban Equity for Private Hire Drivers in london — Aiala Samula Lopez
08 A Regressive Environmentalism — Karna Majdian
09 Eva Hesse, Sans III (1969), 2025 — Caspar Meurisse
10 Tidal Nexus: Toward a Mutispecies Architecture on the River Lea — Caelen Parsons
11 The Life of Death and Burial in Ireland — May Parkes-Young
12 Crafting Acceptance through Minor Art: Art and Stigmatised Access for Minority Youth — Raihan Syed
13 Letting the Eel Pass — Afshan Tanweer
14 Navigating Informality in the Market — Charlie Timms
15 Urbanism + Infrastructure, Consumerism: Shibuya’s Subterranean Journey (1957—) — Yuichiro Tomita
16 Reading Between the Lines: Observing Angling as a Form of Control and Resistance — Forrest Xie
17 Material Manifesto — Enrique Zhang Zhuo
Students from all programmes at The Bartlett School of Architecture are invited to participate in a new student-led symposium and publication supported by UCL ChangeMakers. The initiative provides a platform to share research, projects, ideas, and propositions with a wider audience, fostering dialogue across year groups and disciplines. Through presentations, discussion, and publication, the project aims to amplify student voices and create opportunities for collective reflection on the future of architecture, education, and practice.
Lecture and walk guided by Emily Mann
This field visit and lecture will explore the historical and contemporary development of London’s Docklands, examining how imperial trade, colonial capitalism, and urban redevelopment have shaped the area. Through a guided walk across Canary Wharf and Limehouse, students will investigate the relationship between architecture, power, memory, and economic transformation, using the city itself as a site of research. The visit introduces walking as a critical method for reading urban change and considering how histories of empire continue to inform the production of contemporary space.
Book launch and panel discussion with Reinier de Graaf (OMA/AMO)
MSci Architecture, The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL
Architect and writer Reinier de Graaf will visit Architectural Future(s) to present his latest book, Architect, Verb, followed by a discussion with Year 4 MSci students and an open Q&A. Reflecting on the changing language, expectations, and responsibilities of architecture, the event will examine how contemporary practice navigates increasingly complex social, political, and economic demands. The discussion forms part of the module’s ongoing exploration of the forces shaping architecture’s future, inviting students and the wider Bartlett community to critically reflect on the values, assumptions, and ambitions that underpin the discipline today.
Be it sci-fi megastructures in the Middle East or historicist towns in the UK, new projects are invariably marketed with the same buzzwords: “world-class”, “award-winning”, “creative”, “innovative”, “sustainable”, “livable”, “beautiful” or fostering “a sense of place and wellbeing”. What is the significance of such terms? When does a building warrant the label “world-class”? Why is one city more “liveable” than the next? What is the meaning of “innovation” in architecture? And what building can credibly claim to improve anyone's “wellbeing”? If De Graaf’s debut book Four Walls and a Roof was about debunking myths within the architecture profession, architect, verb aims to debunk myths projected onto architecture by the outside world – a rebuttal of doctrines which have been applied to architecture over the last twenty years. The incorporation of extraneous terms such as “livability”, “innovation” or “wellbeing” into the glossary of architecture is part of an ongoing trend in which the language to debate architecture is less and less architects' own, and more and more that of outside forces imposing outside expectations. Once a profession known for its manifestos, architecture finds itself increasingly forced to adopt ever-more extreme postures of virtue, held accountable by the world of finance, the social sciences or the medical sector.
This pin-up exhibition presents a selection of abstract posters from Architectural Future(s). Developed by Year 4 MSci students, the posters communicate the central questions, arguments, and propositions of their essays through concise texts and visual strategies. Together, they offer a snapshot of the diverse themes, concerns, and futures being explored across the module, transforming the space into a temporary forum for debate, speculation, and exchange.
Architectural Future(s) launches as the Year 4 History and Theory module on the Architecture MSci programme at The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. The module invites students to investigate emerging domains of change and develop their own critical propositions for architecture’s future. Through seminars, lectures, research, writing, and publication, students are encouraged to position themselves not only as observers of change, but as active participants in shaping the discipline’s next trajectories.