Simon Warren (BAHArch, DipArch, ARB)

 

I am interested in the role of the Architect. How do Architects practice with ethical grace and respond to climate change and energy depletion imperatives? How do Architects use their skills to make a difference to the lives of more people?

CITYzen Agency is the post-graduate design studio I share with Maria Theodorou. By thinking about the strategic urban design of the city and understanding the resources within communities the city can become more adaptive, resilient, egalitarian and coherent. The studio situates its explorations in post-industrial cities. It considers global imperatives and local issues together. It explores their interconnection. This becomes the genesis of the CITYzen Agency student’s personal interest or manifesto. In Bruno Latour's term, ‘critical attention is shifted from architecture as a matter of fact to architecture as a matter of concern.’ 

I was a director of Bauman Lyons Architects until joining The Leeds School of Architecture in 2009.
 
I am a Co-Founder of the Project Office an enterprise at the University for student involvement in ‘live projects’.

PhD Candidiate: My research explores the ‘live project’ – a real life architectural design project which involves meaningful collaboration between students and a constituency outside the academic institution – as an essential pedagogical instrument in architecture, and proposes its essential role in a pluralist architectural education. Climate change and energy depletion, computer advances in design and making, and more volatile economic conditions all contribute to the architect facing increasingly dilemmas of how to practice. Live projects give students the possibility to encounter these realities in a direct way. Rather than being educated solely within the confines of the institution and the orthodoxy of pedagogy that might prevail there, the live project has been identified by many educators as an influential experience in raising and confronting these issues. This practice led research explores the potential of live projects as a vehicle to enquire into alternative models of architectural education and practice.  

I am Course Leader PostGraduate Diploma in Architectural Professional Practice (RIBA/ARB Part 3) and teach Level 7 Post Graduate Master of Architecture Design Studio.

 

http://simonwarrenarchitect.tumblr.com/

 

http://cagd.leedsmet.ac.uk/projectoffice/

 

s.p.warren@leedsbeckett.ac.uk