Research projects and funding

The Centre for Urban and Built Ecologies (CUBE) hosts a range of active interdisciplinary researchers who are engaging in research projects focusing on environmental, social and cultural ecologies of cities.

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Research projects

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Transforming Architecture in Development

Unequal power dynamics in international development have sparked discussions about decolonising development, aid, and peacebuilding to dismantle discriminatory structures.

Aural Histories: Coventry 1451–1642

The interdisciplinary and collaborative project aims to recreate the experiences of musicians and audiences in this period.

Spaces of Birth and Death

Spaces of Birth and Death aims to expand philosophical attention to the beginning and end of life by investigating the spaces in which we encounter these transitional moments.

Afropolitan Architecture

The event series "Afropolitan Architecture: Imagining the African Urban Future by Design" emerged as a collaboration between Mokena Makeka and Matthew Barac.

After the Arrival City

The project seeks to understand how a city without an existing model for rented social housing can adapt to find new ways to support and accommodate people in displacement.

Crossing Cultures

Developing an innovative pedagogical model that facilitates intercultural relationships and group learning.

System of Localised Common Good Objects: Cultural Commons in Neighbourhoods

This research aims to explore the potential of a commons sphere (citizen agency/community) to strengthen socially engaged art, design, and citizenship.

Housing Space Use in the Pandemic and After: The Case for New Design Guidance

Covid-19 shone a spotlight on UK housing injustice.

Mapping Social Infrastructure

Bringing together scholars in the fields of architecture, urbanism, sociology and public policy, to generate place-based tools and methods for mapping civil society networks.

Urban Commons research workshop

The urban commons transform cities around the globe through projects and practices that challenge capitalist accumulation, extraction and enclosure.

An illustration of a fox and a squirrel on top of a fence and two bees flying

Wild Ways

Wild Ways aims to understand and influence urban-rewilding behaviour with a focus on adaptations to private residential gardens in London.

Designing Inclusion

The project is set within the European context and centres on migration as a key component of urbanisation.

The Living Memory of Cities

Through a series of seminars organised running from Nov. 2020 to April 2023, the project facilitates knowledge exchange between practitioners, planners, academic, students and public.

Freetown School of Architecture by Joe Davis

Lines through the City

This project draws from the combined networks, expertise and track-record of the applicants to consolidate the work that ARCSR has done to date in Freetown.

Urban Depth and Autonomy

Global cities are becoming bigger and more diverse, and it is key to elaborate a greater understanding of how we can build better, more inclusive cities.

Architecture, Nature and Experience in the New Climate Regime

The research brings together an interdisciplinary team of experts in architectural history, architectural practice, environmental philosophy, cultural geography and sustainability.

Research projects and funding, 2020–21, 2021-22

Architecture of Rapid Change and Scarce Resources – School of Art, Architecture and Design

Transformation Fund 2021–22, London Metropolitan University: £24,150, to develop a partnership between Architecture of Rapid Change and Scarce Resources and UN-Habitat, to develop interpretive mapping as an aid to urban practice and investigation in Northern Kenya.

Partners: UN-Habitat

Principal Investigator: Dr Bo Tang

Rescaling Fund 2021–22, London Metropolitan University: £7,550 to host a two-day research event bringing together scholars and practitioners working on the urban commons across the arts, humanities and social sciences.

Partners: Urban Commons Research Collective; University of Sheffield.
Principal Investigators: Dr Beatrice De Carli, Dr Torange Khonsari
Transformation Fund 2020-21, London Metropolitan University: £19,800 to connect, extend and amplify the place-based research conducted over the last 12 years by Prof Maurice Mitchell, Dr Bo Tang and Architecture of Rapid Change and Scarce Resources (ARCSR), and by Dr Beatrice De Carli and Architecture Sans Frontières–UK (ASF-UK), in transitional settlements in Freetown, Sierra Leone.
Partners: University of Sierra Leone; The Water Trust; Sierra Leone Urban Research Centre, Njala University; ASF-UK (Architecture Sans Frontières-UK); Community Empowerment Support Organisation.
Principal Investigators: Prof Maurice Mitchell, Dr Bo Tang, Dr Beatrice De Carli
Strategic Priorities Fund 2020-21, London Metropolitan University: £4,500 to develop a partnership between Architecture Sans Frontières–UK and the Royal Institute of British Architects to support and newly accredit ASF-UK’s Challenging Practice course.
Principal Investigator: Dr Beatrice De Carli
Rescaling Fund 2020-21, London Metropolitan University: £1,869 to support Crossing Cultures, an international collaboration with the Mediterranean University of Reggio Calabria.
Partners: City University; University of Warwick.
Principal Investigators: Sandra Denicke-Polcher, Prof Maurice Mitchell

Cities – School of Art, Architecture and Design

Rescaling Fund 2021–22, London Metropolitan University: £8,878 to complete Phase 1 of the Wild Ways study: a scoping review of the existing literature on urban rewilding behaviour, coded using the COM-B behaviour model.Principal Investigators: Sian Moxon, Dr Justin Webb
Transformation Fund, London Metropolitan University: £9,945 to transform and expand AAD Cities into a centre for knowledge exchange, adding entrepreneurial and impactful capacity to its existing research production through robust online infrastructure.
Principal Investigators: The Cities Research Group – Dr Jane Clossick (lead), Prof Mark Brearley
Strategic Priorities Fund, London Metropolitan University: £4,950 to support final dissemination, policy-engagement and impact step in the Southwark Audit on industrial land, undertaken by AAD Cities in Summer 2019.
Principal Investigators: The Cities Research Group – Dr Jane Clossick (lead), Prof Mark Brearley; Nicolas Palominos (Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, UCL)
Kusuma Trust £58,232 to complete Stages 2-4 of the Wild Ways study.

Ecological, Architectural and Civic Humanities in Design – School of Art, Architecture and Design

Transformation Fund, London Metropolitan University: £5,815, to support the first phase of a multi-stage project, ‘The Living Memory of the City’, conceived by the Ecological, Architectural and Civic Humanities in Design (EACHiD) research group.
Partners: Architecture Foundation; Eric Parry Architects; Academy of Urbanism, London; Gulbenkian Foundation; Stiftung Bibliothek Werner Oechslin Einsiedeln.
Principal Investigator: Prof Nicholas Temple
Transformation Fund, London Metropolitan University: £13,886, to enhance the competitive capabilities and impact of our CUBE – The Centre for Urban and Built Ecologies and CREATURE – Research Centre for Creative Arts, Cultures and Engagement research centres, enabling a meaningful contribution to the public good; to consolidate links to University partners; and to extend existing networks in Tower Hamlets in line with the Empowering London agenda.
Principal Investigator: Dr Matthew Barac
Strategic Priorities Fund, London Metropolitan University: £4,983, for the project, Housing Space Use in the Pandemic and After: The Case for New Design Guidance.
Principal Investigators: Dr Matthew Barac and Dr Frances Holliss