Architecture
Our architectural research is carried out within the Manchester Architecture Research Centre (MARC) and looks beyond technical design to the complex processes and practices that run through the development, adaptation and use of built environments.
At MARC we set ourselves the mission of critically traversing the disciplinary boundaries of architecture and the social sciences so as to open up new areas of architectural research, create new standards of architectural pedagogy, and craft a new conceptual language to inform and influence urban policy. Research focuses on social studies of architecture, architectural history and theory, the politics of urban infrastructures and networks of architectural expertise.
What affords this mission is MARC’s unique institutional setting: it is hosted both by The University of Manchester at the School of Environment, Education and Development and by the Manchester School of Architecture. This allows MARC to benefit from synergies with Planning and Environmental Management, Geography, and a number of humanities disciplines, and at the same time from engagements with the production of architectural knowledge in the context of an architectural school.
Making connections between these disciplines and practices, MARC has developed a distinctive expertise based on theoretical experimentation, methodological rigor, empirical attention, and hands-on studies of architectural practice, building technology, and techniques of architectural representation and mapping.
We welcome PhD applications in the following areas:
- Pragmatist turn in architecture
- Anthropology of architectural production
- Transdisciplinarity in architecture
- Mobility of architectural discourse
- Zero-carbon architectures
- The politics of construction