2018 CRITICAL AND UCL URBAN CREATIVE LABORATORY URBAN RESEARCH, TEACHING, PRACTICE And ACTIVITIES PARTICIPATION REPORT 2015 UCL URBAN LABORATORY ACTIVITIES REPORT 2015—2018 3 Welcome, UCL Urban Laboratory is a crossdisciplinary centre for critical and creative urban thinking, teaching, research and practice, which has made a vital contribution to the research culture at University College London for more than a decade. This new edition of our Activities Report provides an overview of the key areas of activity and engagement which we have programmed over the last three years (2015—18), in collaboration with a wide range of committed academics from across departments. We are indebted to the Faculties which continue to support our work: the Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment, Engineering, Social and Historical Sciences, and Arts and Humanities—as well as to UCL Grand Challenges, Global Engagement Office and Centre for Critical Heritage Studies, which have provided support for specific projects. We would also like to thank all our partners from different sectors outside UCL who have worked with us to develop and deliver our vision of an ‘engaged urbanism’ which offers new approaches to urban problems, grounded in an understanding of everyday realities. The first part of this report contains details of selected highlights from the last three years followed by an update on our recent activities. The next section presents key areas of our research and engagement, the programming we are developing around the new Urban Room to be located at the university’s new campus on the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park (UCL East), and our Artists’ residencies and Visiting Researchers. The report also summarises our teaching activities, through the MSc Urban Studies, PhD affiliation scheme, and Urban Lab Exchange short course programme, as well as presenting our updated survey of urban expertise at UCL. Finally, we present snapshots of all the people who constitute the UCL Urban Laboratory, through our Co-Director, Steering Committee, International Advisory Board network, and core office team, as well as the partners we have been privileged to work with in the last three years. Thank you for your commitment, creativity, and contribution, without which none of this could have been achieved. We look forward to taking forward with you new projects, initiatives and ambitions in the coming years. 4 CONTENT 5 DIRECTOR Haidy Geismar Department of Anthropology Clare Melhuish FORE WORD 7 Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou UCL Urban Laboratory Department of Social Science / IOE URBA N LAB TIMELINE 9 Susanne Kuechler CO-DIRECTORS Department of Anthropology H IGHLIGHTS 10 Barbara Lipietz Pushpa Arabindoo The Bartlett Development Department of Geography Planning Unit E VENTS AND AcTIVITIES 20 Matthew Beaumont Susan Moore Department of English The Bartlett School of Planning R ESEARCH AND ENGAGEMENT 32 Camillo Boano Michał Murawski The Bartlett Development School of Slavonic and T EACHING 44 Planning Unit East European Studies Ben Campkin Florian Mussgnug P EOPLE AND PUBLICATIONS 50 The Bartlett School of School of European Languages, Architecture Culture and Society L INKS AND PARTNERS 60 Ellie Cosgrave James O’Leary Department of Science, The Bartlett School of Technology, Engineering FI NANCIAL SUMMARY 60 Architecture and Public Policy Kieren Reed Andrew Harris The Slade School of Fine Art Department of Geography Rafael Schacter Jennifer Robinson Department of Anthropology Department of Geography Ava Fatah gen Schieck The Bartlett School of STEERING COMMITTEE Architecture Helena Titheridge Yasminah Beebeejaun Department of Civil, The Bartlett School of Planning Environmental and Geomatic Sarah Bell Engineering The Bartlett Institute for Environmental Design and Engineering Claire Colomb The Bartlett School of Planning Alexandre Apsan Frediani The Bartlett Development Planning Unit Kalliopi Fouseki The Bartlett Institute for Sustainable Heritage List correct as of December 2018 6 FOREWOR D 7 It has been an exciting journey to be UCL Urban Laboratory has become one of involved with the Urban Laboratory UCL’s best known and longest-established since 2008, first as Co-Director, and from cross-disciplinary research centres, at the 2011—2018 as Director. I’m delighted that forefront of experimentation with methods Dr Clare Melhuish, whose outstanding of critical, creative, interdisciplinary, record of interdisciplinary research speaks and outward-facing urban research. for itself, was appointed to the role in May Bringing together expertise from across 2018, and I look forward to working with the arts, sciences, and humanities, it has her. The landscape of higher education made a major contribution to modelling has shifted massively since 2011, and the new modes of research, teaching and urgency to work towards more ethical and engagement across the urban field, which people-centred modes of urbanisation has been recognised nationally and intensifies and is widely recognised in internationally. international urban policy agendas. As the Urban Laboratory’s incoming The increasing energy around the director, I believe we can become still Urban Lab, as a cross-faculty initiative more visible, diverse and dynamic in the that works outside the comfort zones of theoretical and empirical contribution established disciplines, demonstrates the we make to the development and growing commitment of the university to dissemination of cutting-edge urban radical, transdisciplinary, public-facing knowledge. We are fortunate to be academic work. Over the last three years based in London, a laboratory in itself for we have worked hard to develop a model studying rapid urban change and rich for how things can be done differently cultural pluralism within international at UCL East when it opens its doors in networks of mobility and exchange. a few years. At this new site, the Urban Yet our capital is also a site of stark Lab will work with partners to set up a social and spatial inequalities, urban new Urban Room and Memory Workshop, deprivation, and ecological failure, which providing a physical space that represents are reproduced across cities around the commitment to publicly-engaged research globe. In the coming years we will seize and teaching on cities and urbanisation, the opportunities which London offers, as a local and global concern. The new particularly in the context of the new campus will offer a place to continue facilities at UCL East, to develop our the work of the Urban Lab in promoting profile as a leading authority in the urban knowledge that works across field of urban research, embracing an the qualitative and quantitative, anthropological and holistic vision of the articulates overlooked urban cultures and city as social and material habitat, not experiences, and in parallel with formal simply technical milieu. urban education, curates and widely circulates this knowledge in accessible Filippo Minelli, The only and impactful ways. Clare Melhuish emergency is the absence Director, 2018— of emergency. Smoke performance as part of the series Bold Statements, Ben Campkin Somerset House, London, Director, 2011—2018 March 2, 2016. Part of the exhibition Venturing Beyond: Graffiti and the Everyday Utopias of the Street, produced by Approved by Pablo and curated by Rafael Schacter. 8 UR BAN LAB TIMELINE 9 Urban Lab illustrates a key characteristic Urban Laboratory has been an important 2005 Inspired by discussions between 2013 Launch of the first Urban of UCL’s culture; its ability to invent platform for UCL’s cross-disciplinary geography and architecture, Pamphleteer, containing a range and support structures to overcome urban research, teaching and practice the UCL Urban Laboratory was of articles on Future & Smart conventional disciplinary boundaries. This for almost 15 years. During that time, it established by geographer Cities. The seventh issue was is something at which UCL excels and has grown its public profile significantly, Matthew Gandy, quickly drawing published in summer 2018. where it has on several occasions in the positioning UCL as a leading centre in this in colleagues from other First full-time researcher last two hundred years generated entirely area. The breadth and interconnections fields such as anthropology, appointed with funding from UCL new areas of study and knowledge. Urban of its activities embody the core principles engineering, film studies and Estates to work on university-led Lab may be the latest example in this of our research strategy, particularly urban sociology. urban regeneration case studies, history, recognising that the issues raised our commitment to fostering highly 2005 The Urban Laboratory continues published in 2015. by cities are completely transdisciplinary interdisciplinary research that engages —08 to grow, launching a dedicated in nature; that they require the whole directly with public discourse and creates We become a partner in the Urban website, and creating the range of physical, social and cultural the conditions necessary for positive Lab+ international network of Urban Salon seminar series in approaches provided by every department environmental change. urban laboratories, funded by partnership with several London in UCL if they are to be effectively I have been delighted that we the European Union’s Erasmus universities. addressed. have been able to draw on the expertise Mundus programme Cities are now the dominant form of Urban Lab to support the physical 2008 The Urban Laboratory is awarded 2015 The