MPhil/PhD by Architectural Design Graduating students: Ersi Ioannidou; Current students: Adam Adamis, Nadia Amoroso, Ana Paola Araújo, Katherine Bash, Nick Callicott, Chadi Chamoun, Marjan Colletti, Marcos Cruz, Catja De Haas, Teresa Hoskyns, Popi Iacovou, Christiana Ioannou, Jan Kattein, Rosalie Kim, Tae Young Kim, Kristin Kreider, Constance Lau, Kwang Guan Lee, Tea Lim, Lesley Lokko, Ana Luz, Igor Marjanovic, Matteo Melioli, Malca Mizrahi, Christos Papastergiou, Kathleen O’ Donnell, Juliet Sprake, Theo Spyropoulos, Bradley Starkey, Ben Sweeting, Karen Richmond, William Tozer, Neil Wenman, Stefan White.
Leading to a PhD in Architecture, the MPhil/PhD Architectural Design allows especially able and reflective designers to undertake research within the Bartlett School of Architecture’s speculative and experimental ethos. The first to be established in the UK, the Bartlett MPhil/ PhD Architectural Design is one of few such doctoral programmes world-wide. The programme draws on the strengths of design teaching and doctoral research at the Bartlett, encouraging the development of architectural research through the interaction of designing and writing. A research by architectural design thesis has two inter-related elements of equal importance: a project and a text. The project may be drawn, filmed, modelled, built, or use whatever media is appropriate. UCL’s multi-disciplinary environment offers a stimulating and varied research culture that connects research by architectural design to developments in other disciplines, such as medicine, art, anthropology and digital media. The programme is intended for graduates of architecture and other disciplines, such as art, who wish to pursue research by architectural design. Currently enrolled on the programme are over 30 students from over 15 countries. The Bartlett School of Architecture’s two PhD programmes organize three annual events for doctoral students. In Term 1, the Bartlett and the Slade School of Fine host ‘Research Spaces’, a conference and exhibition with speakers from the UK and
overseas. This is followed by ‘Research Projects’ in Term 2, an exhibition and conference with presentations by current PhD students. Invited critics in 2007 were Professor Anthony Dunne (Royal College of Art), Dr Penny Florence (Slade School of Fine Art) and Professor Leon van Schaik (RMIT, Melbourne). Throughout the year, ‘Research Conversations’ seminars are an opportunity for PhD candidates to present work in progress.
a critical analysis of texts, buildings, architectural projects and works of art. On the other hand by the development of a series of projects. These two investigations are parallel and overlapping. In this thesis, they are organised in a linear way. This structure assists the progress of the argument and reveals the gradual development of this thesis from an interest to develop a truly individual minimum house to the realisation that the minimum dwelling is a personal project.
Ersi Ioannidou, PhD 2007, ‘The (Existenz-) Minimum Dwelling’ This thesis is an exploration into the modern meaning of the minimum dwelling. It discusses how this meaning gradually became disengaged from the minimum house. It proposes a new definition of the minimum dwelling based on the minimum social unit, that is, the individual. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the term Existenzminimum dwelling proposed a new way of living. This modernist definition of the minimum dwelling was based on a reproducible expendable minimum house. This thesis argues that this definition is no longer valid; yet, any present definition of the minimum dwelling is still informed by it. The reconfiguration of the minimum house as an expendable object disempowered the house as a tool for the experience of the home. This dissociation of the house and the home is a condition that has gradually diminished the role of the house in everyday life and redefined the experience of the home. The meaning of the home is now invested in a multiplicity of locations, experiences and objects. This thesis defines the minimum home as a core of personally meaningful possessions, the spatial configurations they create and recreate and the information they carry. This thesis’s definition of the minimum dwelling is based on this minimum home.
This page: Ersi Ioannidou, 2007
This argument is pursued through two modes of inquiry. On the one hand with
Director of MPhil/PhD Programmes: Prof Jonathan Hill. Supervisors: Prof Iain Borden, Prof Peter Cook, Dr Penny Florence, Prof Stephen Gage, Prof Ranulph Glanville, Dr Penelope Haralambidou, Prof Christine Hawley,