Architecture Research Staff

• Mr Graeme Hutton
• Dr Lorens Holm

Dundee School of Architecture Fee Waive

Year 1 Architectural Design Tutor

• RSA New Contemporaries Exhibition (2010)
• DIA Award for Best Student in Year 5 (2009)
• DCC Prize for Best Project in a Civic Context (2009
• RIAS Urban Design Award Exhibition (2009)
• RIBA Silver Medal Nomination (2009)
• RIAS Drawing Award Commendation (2006)
• John T McLaren Prize for Highest Aggregated Marks in Design (2006)
• HOS Merit Award (2005)
• Parr Prize for Best First Year Student (2004)

Cities, urban design, analogy, montage

• Conference Paper; accepted (May 2010) 'The Architecture of Analogy: Architecture and urban form' for Urban Design International Peer reviewed architecture and urban design journal
• Exhibition; published (April 2010) 'The Architecture of Analogy: Blackness, Dundee' for RSA New Contemporaries 2010 Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh
• Conference Paper; under review (April 2010) 'The Architecture of Analogy: a conceit to critique the city as artefact' for Once Upon a Place - Haunted Houses & Imaginary Cities Lisbon Faculty of Architecture
• Conference Paper; under review (April 2010) 'The Architecture of Analogy: the transposition of scale' for Questions of Scale Architectural Humanities Research Association, Kent School of Architecture
• Conference Paper; accepted (December 2009) 'The Architecture of Analogy: analogy, typology, form & place in architecture & urbanism' for Urban Design Research: Method & Application Birmingham Institute of Art & Design, School of Architecture.
• Exhibition; published (November 2009) 'The Architecture of Analogy: Blackness, Dundee' for SIX Student Awards for Architecture The Lighthouse, Glasgow.

'...the city is like some large house, and the house is in turn like some small city.' (Alberti, 1486)

Analogy is for some thing to be like some other thing, in some ways but not in others. The renaissance architect Leon Battista Alberti uses this 'city is like a house' analogy to compare the fabric of the city to the features of a house: buildings as rooms, streets as halls, piazzas as courts. Analogy liberates the mind, providing a critical and creative framework to establish measurable connections between unlike things. This practice-led PhD develops the use of analogy as an urban design methodology.

Cities, the foundation of the social, political and cultural realm, will be the primary study area. Urban design is the relation in cities of built form and in-between space. The analogical framework references and extends the research of practitioners and theorists like Beigel/Christou, Koolhaas, Rossi, Rowe, Tschumi and others.

The aim of this Doctoral study is to further advance analogy as a critical urban design and research method in order to contribute an approach that has hitherto not been fully elaborated.

The methodology is cross-media and multi-method, using a multiple-case study strategy for exploratory research. Analogy is the critical design and research method and visualised by montage. This research explores the historic, social, physical and tacit structure of cities; and through theoretical reflection and graphic production, evaluates analogy as a critical design methodology.

The dissemination of results will be through peer-reviewed publications, exhibitions and teaching. This research has the potential to be relevant for policy, research and practice; and benefit planners, architects, councillors, developers, geographers and sociologists.

I intend to continuously refine this design methodology beyond the Doctoral programme through teaching and engaging in architectural practice; aspiring toward its application in live projects.