The Future for Architects?

In this study Building Futures sets out to explore the future role of architects, asking: who will design our buildings in 2025; what roles will those trained in architecture be doing then and how will architectural practice have changed as a result? Through a series of one-to-one interviews and round table sessions the study aims to examine the breadth of those who shape the built environment: including traditional architects and those working in expanded fields of practice, as well as clients, consultants and contractors. The resulting speculations should be an opportunity for discussion and interrogation- an exploration of the imminent changes likely to affect the industry over the next 15 years

“WAKE UP AND DREAM FOR THE 80S”: Nigel Coates 1975-82

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in The Journal of Architecture on January 2015, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13602365.2015.1011194.Nigel Coates graduated from Bernard Tschumi's unit at the Architectural Association in 1974, before joining him in 1977 to develop a new unit together. These were formative years for Coates, a period that shaped his architectural preoccupations for the following decades – yet they remain relatively unexplored. Between 1974 and 1977, Coates produced a number of installation and performance works with the artist Antonio Lagarto and fellow AA graduate Jenny Lowe, influenced by Tschumi's own explorations with the curator RoseLee Goldberg, and their exhibition at the Royal College of Art, A Space: A Thousand Words (1975). The works considered the potential for space to be amplified by the introduction of markers, representations of other spaces and the movement of the body. This article exposes these works for the first time, tracing the changes in Coates's thinking during this period and how it was reflected in the Unit 10 briefs that he and Tschumi developed in the period 1977–80. It chronicles Coates's pivotal trips to New York during 1980–81 to teach at Bennington College, where his exposure to a dynamic club-scene and influential new art would mark a step change in the young architect's trajectory. Charting Coates's development through his own work and his teaching at the AA, the article constructs the background from which the radical architectural group NATØ emerged in 1983.Peer reviewe

Two Modes of Literary Architecture: Bernard Tschumi and Nigel Coates’

This document is the Accepted Manuscript version of the following article: Jamieson, C., & Roberts-Hughes, R. (2015). Two modes of a literary architecture: Bernard Tschumi and Nigel Coates. Architectural Research Quarterly, 19(2), 110-122. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1359135515000366. COPYRIGHT: © Cambridge University Press 2015. This version is free to view and download for private research and study only. Not for re-distribution, re-sale or use in derivative works.Tschumi’s experimental use of the literary text as part of design briefs for students at the Architectural Association in the late 1970s formed the basis for a preoccupation with what he termed the disjunction between space and the events that happen within it. For Coates, the literary briefs triggered a fixation with what was happening in space – but instead of focusing on its conceptual interaction with events, he moved towards the dramatisation of architecture. Grounded in the architects' shared teaching at the AA, the article discusses the early briefs and projects that shaped the directions they would each take.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

NATØ: Exploring architecture as a narrative medium in postmodern London

This thesis is concerned with the way that architecture, (that is space, buildings, cities and urban environments), has been and continues to be speculated upon through a rich palette of narrative methods. Taking NATØ, the group of young architects led by Nigel Coates that emerged from the Architectural Association in the early 1980s as its subject matter, the thesis questions how architectural production is able to narrate and the modes and methods it employs. The research reveals echoes and resemblances between NATØ projects and a wider artistic, filmic and literary culture that emerged from the specific political, social and physical conditions of 1980s London. Personal archives of original NATØ material – including drawings, photographs, magazines, ephemera and writings – are exposed for the first time. Combined with personal interviews with NATØ members and other significant individuals, the narrative traces the group’s evolution and development at the AA in Unit 10 in the late 1970s, to their active period between 1983-1987. The thesis also examines the key influences of Coates and his early work: exploring his relationship with Bernard Tschumi, the influence of a period spent in New York and his association with diverse artists and filmmakers in London. As such, the research presents the first detailed examination of NATØ and produces original insight into the territory of architectural narrativity. The thesis contextualises this moment of narrative architecture with the evolution of narratology over the same period – a discipline whose changing consideration of narrative in the 1980s expanded from a literary basis to take in a broad range of media. Engaging with contemporary narratology, the thesis employs concepts and terms from narrative studies to develop an interdisciplinary understanding of how narrative functions in architectural production. The thesis also constitutes a history of postmodernism that represents an alternative to the dominant architectural mode, considering NATØ’s output as a subcultural form of architectural production that drew on techniques of bricolage, montage, fragmentation, polyvocality and defamiliarisation. Framing NATØ’s work through an understanding of the way in which their use of medium evolved alongside their conceptual ideas, the thesis considers the material in relation to four distinct areas, each constituting a chapter: performance and video, the drawing, the magazine and the exhibition. Chapter 1 on performance and video exposes the influence of both Tschumi and a pivotal year spent in New York on Coates, and the development of his ideas from student to co-tutor at the AA in the late 1970s. The chapter proposes a move from the highly cerebral and literary approach of Tschumi, to one concerned with the presentness of direct experience via video. Chapter 2 takes the architectural drawing as its subject, showing how Coates evolved the drawing in his unit at the AA in the early 1980s, and how in turn NATØ employed the drawing as an 8 expressive narrative medium. Chapter 3 considers the group’s self-published magazine, NATØ, produced between 1983-85, drawing parallels with street style publications i-D and The Face, of the same era. The chapter proposes the graphic design of the magazine as a medium through which NATØ developed the explorations of the drawings into a more complex form – positing the idea of the mise-en-scène of the magazine. Finally, Chapter 4 examines the apotheosis of NATØ’s output: the exhibitions Gamma City at the Air Gallery (London, 1985), and Heathrow part of ‘The British Edge’ at the Institute of Contemporary Art, (Boston, 1987). Taking the ideas established in the previous chapter into three dimensions, the chapter proposes the installation as a microcosm of the narrative experience of the city that NATØ sought – evoked through an embodied drift through space, and the replacement of the architectural scale model with the auratic object or stimulator artefact. Concluding, the framework of narrative architecture set out in the thesis is proposed as both a period preoccupation and a way of thinking about spatial narrativity more broadly. It critical assesses the potential for such architectural narrativity to be designed and built, finding the truest form of narrative architecture emerging from the city condition itself. Finally, the conclusion proposes a lineage of projects and ideas that have evolved since the late 1980s whose concepts represent a continuation of NATØ’s preoccupations

Discriminating between Autism and Disinhibited Social Engagement Disorder in a clinical context

Clinicians are concerned about making accurate differential diagnoses between Autism and Disinhibited Social Engagement Disorder (DSED) because both groups of children may present with social relationship and communication difficulties, yet DSED is associated with maltreatment and Autism is not. The overall objective of the thesis was to identify any skills or behaviours which may help clinicians discriminate between these two diagnostically distinct groups. This thesis brings together the findings of an-depth case study investigation, discussed across four separate but related papers, each of which addresses a gap in our knowledge regarding DSED, and how it may be differentiated from Autism. Paper 1 is a systematic review assessing the social functioning of children with DSED. Paper 2 directly compares the profiles of children with Autism, children with DSED and children who are typically developing (TD) via current ‘gold standard’ autism assessment and an unstructured behavioural observation called the Live assessment. Papers 3 and 4 expand on the areas of possible differentiation which were highlighted in papers 1 and 2; language and social communication (paper 3) and sensory processing (paper 4). Specific differences in skills/behaviours of children with Autism in the case study, compared to the children with DSED, were most apparent within the domain of social communication, suggesting that future research focused on differentiating Autism from DSED should focus on this area. There was also a tentative suggestion that some sensory behaviours may be more ‘Autism-specific.’ For complex cases, a change in approach from standardised structured Autism assessment to a holistic neurodevelopmental approach using unstructured observation, which includes conversational elements, and increases the social challenge may more easily elucidate the differences between core Autism behaviours, DSED-specific behaviours and other co-occurring neurodevelopmental conditions like Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) which can complicate the picture. While awareness raising and training may be indicated, we do have tools, like the Live assessment and clinical expertise, such as Speech and Language Therapists (SLTs), available, which can be utilised to support differential diagnosis of the ‘hard to assess’ cases

Synthetic approaches to coronafacic acid, coronamic acid, and coronatine

The phytotoxin coronatine (COR) is a functional mimic of the active plant hormone (+)-7-iso-jasmonoyl-l-isoleucine (JA-IIe), which regulates stress responses. Structurally, COR is composed of a core unit, coronafacic acid (CFA), which is connected to coronamic acid (CMA), via an amide linkage. COR has been found to induce a range of biological activity in plants and based on its biological profile, COR, as well as CFA, and CMA are attractive starting points for agrochemical discovery, resulting in numerous total synthesis efforts. This review will discuss the synthetic approaches towards CFA, CMA and, ultimately COR, to date

Cation Ordering and Exsolution in Copper-Containing Forms of the Flexible Zeolite Rho (Cu,M-Rho; M=H, Na) and Their Consequences for CO₂ Adsorption

Funding: UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. Grant Numbers: EP/N024613/1, EP/N032942/1, EP/L017008/1.The flexibility of the zeolite Rho framework offers great potential for tunable molecular sieving. The fully copper-exchanged form of Rho and mixed Cu,H- and Cu,Na-forms have been prepared. EPR spectroscopy reveals that Cu2+ ions are present in the dehydrated forms and Rietveld refinement shows these prefer S6R sites, away from the d8r windows that control diffusion. Fully exchanged Cu-Rho remains in an open form upon dehydration, the d8r windows remain nearly circular and the occupancy of window sites is low, so that it adsorbs CO2 rapidly at room temperature. Breakthrough tests with 10 % CO2/40 % CH4 mixtures show that Cu4.9-Rho is able to produce pure methane, albeit with a relatively low capacity at this pCO2 due to the weak interaction of CO2 with Cu cations. This is in strong contrast to Na-Rho, where cations in narrow elliptical window sites enable CO2 to be adsorbed with high selectivity and uptake but too slowly to enable the production of pure methane in similar breakthrough experiments. A series of Cu,Na-Rho materials was prepared to improve uptake and selectivity compared to Cu-Rho, and kinetics compared to Na-Rho. Remarkably, Cu,Na-Rho with >2 Cu cations per unit cell exhibited exsolution, due to the preference of Na cations for narrow S8R sites in distorted Rho and of Cu cations for S6R sites in the centric, open form of Rho. The exsolved Cu,Na-Rho showed improved performance in CO2/CH4 breakthrough tests, producing pure CH4 with improved uptake and CO2/CH4 selectivity compared to that of Cu4.9-Rho.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Features Constituting Actionable COVID-19 Dashboards:Descriptive Assessment and Expert Appraisal of 158 Public Web-Based COVID-19 Dashboards

Background: Since the outbreak of COVID-19, the development of dashboards as dynamic, visual tools for communicating COVID-19 data has surged worldwide. Dashboards can inform decision-making and support behavior change. To do so, they must be actionable. The features that constitute an actionable dashboard in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic have not been rigorously assessed. Objective: The aim of this study is to explore the characteristics of public web-based COVID-19 dashboards by assessing their purpose and users (“why”), content and data (“what”), and analyses and displays (“how” they communicate COVID-19 data), and ultimately to appraise the common features of highly actionable dashboards. Methods: We conducted a descriptive assessment and scoring using nominal group technique with an international panel of experts (n=17) on a global sample of COVID-19 dashboards in July 2020. The sequence of steps included multimethod sampling of dashboards; development and piloting of an assessment tool; data extraction and an initial round of actionability scoring; a workshop based on a preliminary analysis of the results; and reconsideration of actionability scores followed by joint determination of common features of highly actionable dashboards. We used descriptive statistics and thematic analysis to explore the findings by research question. Results: A total of 158 dashboards from 53 countries were assessed. Dashboards were predominately developed by government authorities (100/158, 63.0%) and were national (93/158, 58.9%) in scope. We found that only 20 of the 158 dashboards (12.7%) stated both their primary purpose and intended audience. Nearly all dashboards reported epidemiological indicators (155/158, 98.1%), followed by health system management indicators (85/158, 53.8%), whereas indicators on social and economic impact and behavioral insights were the least reported (7/158, 4.4% and 2/158, 1.3%, respectively). Approximately a quarter of the dashboards (39/158, 24.7%) did not report their data sources. The dashboards predominately reported time trends and disaggregated data by two geographic levels and by age and sex. The dashboards used an average of 2.2 types of displays (SD 0.86); these were mostly graphs and maps, followed by tables. To support data interpretation, color-coding was common (93/158, 89.4%), although only one-fifth of the dashboards (31/158, 19.6%) included text explaining the quality and meaning of the data. In total, 20/158 dashboards (12.7%) were appraised as highly actionable, and seven common features were identified between them. Actionable COVID-19 dashboards (1) know their audience and information needs; (2) manage the type, volume, and flow of displayed information; (3) report data sources and methods clearly; (4) link time trends to policy decisions; (5) provide data that are “close to home”; (6) break down the population into relevant subgroups; and (7) use storytelling and visual cues. Conclusions: COVID-19 dashboards are diverse in the why, what, and how by which they communicate insights on the pandemic and support data-driven decision-making. To leverage their full potential, dashboard developers should consider adopting the seven actionability features identified