The AA School’s PhD programme combines advanced research with a broader educational agenda, preparing graduates for practice in global academic and professional environments. Current doctoral research encompasses the topics of the school’s postgraduate programmes in architectural theory and history, architectural urbanism, emergent technologies and design, and sustainable environmental design. Within each of these strands candidates can engage in design-led research (PhD in Architectural Design) or follow the traditional route of the text-based dissertation. Across the programme’s streams, shared research issues are explored through specialist groups, seminars and other events in and outside of the school. This year, several of the programme’s PhD candidates contributed to conferences and publications in the UK and abroad. ‘A Day on the Grid’ was a public event organised by Alexandra Vougia, Costandis Kizis and Gabriela García de Cortázar Galleguillos, held in early May. The programme’s current PhD candidates and recent graduates participated, as well as teaching staff and students from across the school. The day tackled the issue of the grid from nine angles, each examined by two papers: ‘prologue’, Aldo Urbinati; ‘urban’, Alexandra Vougia and Ross Adams; ‘maps’, Gabriela García de Cortázar Galleguillos and Emmanouil Stavrakakis; ‘drawing’, Alison Moffett and Nerma Cridge; ‘plan’, Alejandra Celedon and Costandis Kizis; ‘intermission’, Merve Anil and Eleanor Dodman; ‘coordinates’, Ryan Dillon and Arturo Revilla; ‘graph’, Valeria Guzman and Jingming Wu; ‘epilogue’, Doreen Bernath; ‘discussion’, Pier Vittorio Aureli, Mark Campbell and Marina Lathouri.
Director
Simos Yannas
Supervisors
Pier Vittorio Aureli
Lawrence Barth
Paula Cadima
Mark Cousins
Jorge Fiori
Hugo Hinsley
George Jeronimidis
Marina Lathouri
Patrik Schumacher
Brett Steele
Thomas Weaver
Michael Weinstock
Simos Yannas
External Supervisors
Doreen Bernath
Vida Norouz Borazjani
David Cunningham
Socratis Georgiadis
Spyros Papapetros
Edward Soja
Serena Jarvis
Ecological Infrastructure: Examining Spatial Strategies for Integrated Urban Water Systems
Supervisors: Jorge Fiori, Douglas Spencer, Eduardo Rico
Current processes of urbanisation are being characterised by an intensified period of resource stress. This research seeks to examine why the current design of urban water infrastructure is a problem for resource security. It investigates the use of energy that is required to support current urban water infrastructure. The thesis uses the case of London and the Thames Gateway to understand and evaluate the energy intensity of water provision in London. It examines emerging design strategies and uses design as a way of testing and proposing alternative possibilities for the future of water sensitive infrastructure where ecology is linked to urban security.
Serena Lehua Jarvis is an urbanist with a particular interest in the future of resource security; she graduated with distinction from the Bartlett, Faculty of the Built Environment with a MSc in Building & Urban Design in Development (2011), where she received a special commendation on her dissertation. She earned a BA in International Relations from Bucknell University, during which she studied in Switzerland at the University of Geneva. In January 2012 she started her doctoral research at the Architectural Association. Along with her PhD research she currently collaborating on a Design Proposal for a UNESCO World Heritage Cultural Landscape in Bali.
e-mail: serena.jarvis@gmail.com