Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic caused an economic and physical exodus within the City of London. The guilds seized the opportunity to reclaim their historic seat of power. New guilds arose. The construction of the Replica Makers Livery Hall is rooted in the poetics of the process. Histories of the Postman’s Park site and London’s Brutalism elements are reinterpreted via the construction.

This paper intends to prove that the underlying spatial logic of central Singapore has been shaped by the evolving ethnic discourse, and by extension, language.

Description This dissertation examines China’s contemporary nostalgia towards the 1980s-2000s by aligning it with nostalgia for the disappearing shijing (市井) place in the cities. Shijing, in the 1980s and 1990s, was characterised by the increasing inflow of rural migrant workers searching for urban membership. They appropriate shijing places into their mediating ground to contest the right to the city, but in contemporary contexts, such places are often tagged as urban villages (城中村; Chengzhongcun) to be demolished in city renewal schemas. The disappearance of shijing places led to the nostalgic construction of a duplicated shijing place in the catering complex Wenheyou (文和友) in Changsha, Hunan province. This essay evaluates this nostalgia by regarding it as a process of negotiating urban membership, rather than an event representing authentic/fake memory. This real-fake dualism is challenged by recognising Wenheyou as a Duplitecture that do not intend to be an exact copy of shijing. Furthermore, by adopting shijing as an evaluative concept, this dissertation scrutinises this process through the prism of dynamic interactions between the authors, readers, and spectators of nostalgia. Shijing in three memory frames – the “real” shijing (in memory), the “fake and material” shijing (in Wenheyou), and the “fake and virtual” shijing (on social media) – are analysed to reveal this dynamism. While the “real” shijing is inevitably irretrievable, the “fake and material” shijing still contests the right to narrate and to create heterogenous atmospheres. From a feminist perspective, this heterogeneity also enables female spectators to be in a state of uncertainty, unfettered by existing binds and bonds. However, in effect, this indeterminacy is overshadowed by the determinacy of spectatorship in an atmosphere where the political is rendered as cultural and cultural as anti-cultural. Description This dissertation examines China’s contemporary nostalgia towards the 1980s-2000s by aligning it with nostalgia for the disappearing shijing (市井) place in the cities. Shijing, in the 1980s and 1990s, was characterised by the increasing inflow of rural migrant workers searching for urban membership. They appropriate shijing places into their mediating ground to contest the right to the city, but in contemporary contexts, such places are often tagged as urban villages (城中村; Chengzhongcun) to be demolished in city renewal schemas. The disappearance of shijing places led to the nostalgic construction of a duplicated shijing place in the catering complex Wenheyou (文和友) in Changsha, Hunan province. This essay evaluates this nostalgia by regarding it as a process of negotiating urban membership, rather than an event representing authentic/fake memory. This real-fake dualism is challenged by recognising Wenheyou as a Duplitecture that do not intend to be an exact copy of shijing. Furthermore, by adopting shijing as an evaluative concept, this dissertation scrutinises this process through the prism of dynamic interactions between the authors, readers, and spectators of nostalgia. Shijing in three memory frames – the “real” shijing (in memory), the “fake and material” shijing (in Wenheyou), and the “fake and virtual” shijing (on social media) – are analysed to reveal this dynamism. While the “real” shijing is inevitably irretrievable, the “fake and material” shijing still contests the right to narrate and to create heterogenous atmospheres. From a feminist perspective, this heterogeneity also enables female spectators to be in a state of uncertainty, unfettered by existing binds and bonds. However, in effect, this indeterminacy is overshadowed by the determinacy of spectatorship in an atmosphere where the political is rendered as cultural and cultural as anti-cultural.

This research studies the Jeddah Waterfront in an attempt to model, then understand the pedestrian-waterfront engagement dynamics. A new tool for creating visibility graphs was created, with components allowing the use of directed visibility graphs, night-time lighting and weighted visual attractors. Pedestrian activity subgroups were then defined and associated with various spatial metric patterns resulting in a set of design recommendations for the ongoing Jeddah Waterfront expansions.

The main purpose of this study is to explore the general impact of centrality on urban space and to verify the relationship between the centrality structure in urban networks and the concrete centre and barrier areas in urban spaces. The core question of the research is: what is the potential impact of the integration-based centre, the functional centre and the physical barrier on the social-economic conditions of communities? Based on the question, this study takes 457 communities in central and northern London as case studies, and measure the spatial relation between the community and various adjacent centres and barriers with network analysis methods. On this basis, Multi-scale Geographically Weighted Regression(MGWR) and Binary Logistics Regression methods are employed to test the correlation between spatial relation and the socio-economic conditions of the local communities.

This is a dissertation project completed as part of the MSc Space Syntax: Architecture and Cities course at the Bartlett School of Architecture, which explores the urban morphological implications of the motorway in the city centre. The study takes the Westway motorway as an example of a Modernist approach to urban transport infrastructure and analyses its long-term impact on the hierarchy of centrality in the neighbourhood. Relations between change in spatial configurations and building attributes such as land use diversity and density are statistically examined. Finally, the study discusses to what extent the impact of top-down urban design manifested in urban growth would implicate community severance.

Located at the centre of Swindon, the Swindon Railway Village (SRV) was a residential and social hub for Swindon and its Great Western Railway (GWR) locomotive and carriage works. The SRV was established in 1841 to the designs of the famous engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel and expanded throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century to serve the GWR’s needs. By 1891, it comprised of around 287 cottages, a large mechanics’ institute, a market, a cottage hospital, an expansive company park, an Anglican church, a Methodist chapel, swimming baths and a medical dispensary. The SRV was a complex multi-functional space that could support a railway worker from cradle to grave. This report aims to reinvigorate an understudied area and to answer the central research question— what were the architectural and ideological functions of the SRV?

This research diverges away from the sacred narratives which have rendered Varanasi as an ahistorical spiritual construct, and delves into the operative realm of embodied identity politics. With the aim to broaden scholarship which frames the intersectionality of political-power, ideological representation and the built environment, this investigation focuses on the politicized appropriation of Kashi by the in-power right-wing government under the leadership of India’s prime minister, Sri Narendra Modi. Through the articulation of this politicization, the dissertation reveals the masked ideological agendas of the bodies in power which simulate an image of Hindutva. Employing the events revolving around the Kashi Vishwanath-corridor Temple precinct complex as the nexus of analysis, the research contextualizes the bodies in power, in activated sacred space. The research unravels the underlying socio-political and economic structures which lay dormant, but feed the projected timeless narratives of Varanasi. Through the lens of the Kashi-corridor project, the analysis also sheds light on the re-activation of the hegemonic structures of caste and religion which appendage post-democratic and post-secularist narratives, subverting the voices of bodies positioned in alterity. By deconstructing the iconography and iconopraxis revolving around the Kashi-corridor precinct, I explore larger existential conditions at global, national, local and bodily scales through the activation of Identity-politics, Body-politics, Theo-politics, and Noo-politics, along with the representation of power through the projected built. The archival objects of study originate from varied material sources like images, newspaper-articles, political-speeches, public-presentations, the constructed and even the deconstructed environments. By articulating and unpacking these evidential artifacts, this dissertation surfaces the apparently peripheral threads which are critical to the sacred project.

This dissertation will use Dulwich Picture Gallery as a case study for exploring how art institutions can revaluate their own histories in light of the urgent contemporary issue of systemic racism. The history of the public life of Dulwich Picture Gallery will be presented through a site writing methodology (Rendell 2010). Utilising a fictocritical approach archival sources will be reanimated to subvert the history of one of Sir John Soane’s most famous surviving buildings

Description Although Apartheid officially ended in 1994, scant empirical evidence exists into spatial factors which may serve to afford the generation of racial heterogeneity. This research, centred on Cape Town, as a primary case study is an empirical examination of the relationship between demographic racial integration and urban configuration in South African cities. The principal argument of this dissertation is that the spatial configuration and mobility systems of an urban environment can either reinforce existing racial homogeneity or allow for the creation of new networks of racial heterogeneity. Furthermore, it is argued that within this context, urban systems, which emerged organically, have the strongest relation with demographic racial integration. The research required a methodological approach which could encompass both physical and behavioural aspects. The precise descriptions offered by the evidence-based research techniques of space syntax allowed for a configurational understanding of both the spatial and social aspects of this study. A morphological analysis of Cape Town over three crucial time periods using space syntax analytical techniques, South African Census and GIS data confirmed that, on a global scale, the city remains predominantly racially and economically stratified. Despite the global trend of segregation, a local analysis of demographic racial integration, revealed that, residential racial heterogeneity is emerging in particular neighbourhoods. Through a compendium of neighbourhood case studies, specific spatial morphological characteristics were identified and shown to have a relation with demographic residential racial integration. Finally, the research examined mobility systems, from the perspective of how they may provide affordances for the creation of patterns of multi-racial co-presence, with a specific emphasis on the emergent minibus taxi system. Whilst this system has been widely stigmatised as chaotic and haphazard, the evidence has shown that it has an intrinsic spatial and social logic, forming the largest network of accessibility in the city. Finally, the thesis draws a series of conclusions which lead to a broad set of proposed recommendations.

Canal structure was designed alongside the planning of the street configuration in Amsterdam and it was added to the existing urban form in London during the city’s growth. On that basis this study aims to demonstrate the possible impact of this difference on the potential movement and spatial distribution of functions between Amsterdam and London.

The results reveal that the rail network has an important optimization effect Spatial Accessibility in at multi dimensions

Architectural re-imagination of the red-light district of Tehran known as Shahrinaw