MPhil/PhD Architectural History & Theory Graduating Students: Rebecca Litchfield, Yat Ming Loo, Victoria Perry Current Students: Ricardo Agarez, Tilo Amhoff, Nicholas Beech, Eva Branscome, Willem de Bruijn, Edward Denison, Yi-Chih Huang, Anne Hultzsch, Thomas-Bernard Kenniff, Shih-Yao Lai, Tat Lam, Torsten Lange, Abigail Lockey, Suzanne Macleod, Ivan Margolius, Jacob Paskins, Brent Pilkey, Sue Robertson, Maria del Pilar Sanchez Beltran, Pinai Sirikiatikul, Sarah Stanley, Léa-Catherine Szacka, Sotirios Varsamis, Nina Vollenbroker
The MPhil/PhD Architectural History & Theory programme allows candidates to conduct an extensive piece of research into an area of their own selection and definition. Great importance is placed on the originality of information uncovered, the creativity of the interpretations made, and the rigour of the methodological procedures adopted. The range of research topics undertaken in the programme is broad, but generally look at the history and theory of architecture and cities from c. 1800 to the present day, with an emphasis on the critical reading of these subjects from cultural, political and experiential viewpoints. Approximately 20-30 students are enrolled at any one time in this programme. The Bartlett School of Architecture runs an active series of events for students from both the MPhil/ PhD Architectural Design programme and the Architectural History and Theory programme to provide a platform for advanced discussions of research methodology. These include a series of departmental seminars (PhD Architecture Research Conversations), and an annual graduate conference at which students present work to invited respondents (PhD Architecture Research Projects). With the Slade since 2005, we also run a special PhD workshop, The Creative Thesis: Thesis Writing in the Practice Related Arts/ Humanities PhD Admission.
constructions of race, culture, identity and space. Focusing on the multicultural and multiracial history of Kuala Lumpur and the legacy of British colonialism as manifest in significant public buildings, public spaces, and in the urban fabric itself, the research proposes a recuperative urban and architectural history, seeking to revalidate the marginalized spaces of Chinese settlement in Kuala Lumpur, and re-script them into the narrative of the post-colonial nation-state. In doing this, the thesis makes transparent the existence of multiple forms of post-colonial voices, imaginations and desires within the subdivision of groups in a nation.
This PhD thesis challenges the existing understandings of post-colonial architecture and urban space in multicultural cities. Rejecting the binary construction of colonised/coloniser which tends to present the once colonised nation as homogeneous while keeping the ethnic and cultural minority in the shadow of the nation, the thesis aims at including the voices and contribution of the ethnic minority in the nation building process.
The research has two major lines of inquiry. First, it examines how racialisation and indigenisation has taken shape in the colonial and postcolonial state architectural and urban projects in Kuala Lumpur. It traces the perpetuation of colonial influences from the early colonial time to the 1990s new architectural and urban projects - in particular the Petronas Twin Tower project and new administrative capital Putrajaya - which signify cultural dominance of the privileged majority Malay subjects while marginalising other ethnic groups. In doing this, the thesis shows how the post-colonial state’s architectural and urban projects naturalise Malay Islamcentricism in constructing the nationality and urban form, which in turn naturalise the internal cultural submission of the non-Malays as cultural others by creating cultural, political and spatial containment for them.
Taking Kuala Lumpur, the capital city of Malaysia, as its primary site of investigation, the study relates the city and its spaces to the wider project of decolonisation. The main research question asks how multiracial space and urbanity were shaped by both the state’s postcolonial nationbuilding project, and the contestation of the large Malaysian Chinese minority. By including the voices of Malaysian Chinese in the analysis of nation-building, this study questions the dominant conception of national identity and decolonisation in Malaysia, and therefore comprises a political project of resistance to hegemonic
Second, it traces the spatial negotiations and contestations of the Chinese community, examining in detail how the Chinese use their marginal urban spaces – such as the Kuala Lumpur Chinese Cemetery and Chinatown – in order to construct their cultural identity and contest contemporary nationalism and multiculturalism. The thesis argues that Chinese urban spaces in Kuala Lumpur can provide a perspective that intercepts the nationalist narrative in such a way as to accommodate the fears, anxieties, ambitions and visions of ethnic minority cultures and societies, as well as the alternative dreams and yearnings. The
Dr. Yat Ming Loo City of the Non-Descript: Post-Colonial Architecture and Urban Space in Kuala Lumpur Primary supervisor: Prof. Iain Borden; Secondary supervisor: Dr. Barbara Penner Short-listed for the RIBA President’s Award for Outstanding PhD Thesis 2010
Programme Director: Dr Barbara Penner Supervisors: Dr Jan Birksted, Prof Iain Borden, Dr Ben Campkin, Prof Adrian Forty, Prof Jonathan Hill, Dr Yeoryia Manolopoulou, Dr Barbara Penner, Dr Peg Rawes, Prof Jane Rendell, Prof Neil Spiller, Prof Philip Steadman, Prof Philip Tabor.