History and Theory
The epicentre of humanities research at the Welsh School of Architecture.
With architectural history and theory as our point of departure, our work engages cultural and visual studies, urban history, aesthetics, cognitive linguistics, and social and political theory.
The group’s strength is its scholarly research, broad expertise, critical perspective and urban focus. Our key research topics include:
- the history of Chicago
- the use of visual images in urban development
- the urban spectacle
- the symbolic
- contracting
- architectural agency
- the relation of spatial to social form.
We are all involved in international networks and contribute to sustaining our field through reviews of papers for journals and manuscripts for publishers.
Aims
We aim to:
- develop leading research in the field and disseminate it through high-end books and journal articles
- organise disciplinary events
- provide a School-based context for discussions of current history and theory research
- support postgraduate research students and early career researchers.
We conduct research on:
- the history of Chicago
- 1968 Berlin and architecture
- the use of visual images in urban development
- ruins and decay
- the urban spectacle
- architecture and the symbolic
- contracting
- architectural agency
- architecture and Marxism.
Selected publications
- Lupton, S. 2017. Guide to JCT Design and Build Contract 2016. Newcastle upon Tyne: RIBA Publishing.
- Bowie, L. 2016. Protest and marginalised urban space: 1968 in West Berlin. Studies in History and Theory of Architecture: Marginalia; Architectures of Uncertain Margins 4 , pp.225-240.
- Kaminer, T. 2016. The efficacy of architecture: Political contestation and agency. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. (10.4324/9781315693750)
- Aelbrecht, W. 2015. Decline and renaissance: Photographing Detroit in the 1940s and 1980s. Journal of Urban History 41 (2), pp.307-325. (10.1177/0096144214563500)
- Ntzani, D. 2015. Under the spell of metaphors: Investigating the effects of conduit and container metaphors on museum experience. Curator: The Museum Journal 58 (1), pp.59-76. (10.1111/cura.12098)
- Iyer, A. G. and Roberts, A. S. 2014. A phenomenographic study in understanding architecture students’ approaches to learning the coursework of architectural design. Journal for Education in the Built Environment 9 , pp.89-109. (10.11120/jebe.2014.00010)
Lead researcher
Academic staff
Dr Wesley Aelbrecht
Lecturer in the History and Theory of Architecture
- aelbrechtw@cardiff.ac.uk
- +44 (0)29 2087 5962
Professor Andrew Roberts
College Dean for Education and Students.
- robertsas@cardiff.ac.uk
- +44 (0)29 2087 4602
Postgraduate students
Precision in Architecture, 15 December 2020
Dr Mhairi McVicar presented on a chapter of her book, Precision in Architecture: Certainty, Ambiguity and Deviation (Routledge, 2019) which examines the pursuit of construction quality in the architectural profession from the point of view of a ceiling joint in OMA's McCormick Tribune Campus Centre, IIT. Chicago.
'The picturesque is now wrested from the homogenized, the singular liberated from the standardised’, Rem Koolhaas wrote in 2001, as a seven-page specification for a greenboard ceiling at OMA’s IIT McCormick Tribune Campus Centre was in development. OMA’s application of a prefabricated product eschewed the standard finish layer of paint, instead exposing the unfinished greenboard and spackled joints and screws. ‘The installation’, a Request for Information stated, ‘is contrary to the manufacturer’s recommendations. Please advise.’
In response, the team specified the spacing, dimensions, tools and hand movements for the application of each spackled joint and screw, changing installers’ roles from ‘rough’ to ‘finish’ craftspeople.
Scrutinising precise documentations accompanying one OMA ceiling detail over a 15-month period, this research examines the extraordinary care employed between a team as they sought to ‘wrest the picturesque from the homogenized’ in deviating from a standard.
H&T Research Seminar, 25 June 2020
We had two speakers sharing their current work:
Prof. Isabelle Doucet - Chalmers: who presented a paper in progress, and our own Dr. Juliet Davis, who presented a chapter for her forthcoming book, also work in progress.
WSA Research Lecture: Edward Denison (UCL)
‘Planetary Modernisms in the Age of the Anthropocene’, 27 February 2020.