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Our Research

Our Architecture research centre addresses the issues of architectural and urban design in an increasingly globalised world, where factors such as sustainability and climate change, identity and heritage, and notions of craft and form create a complex context that architecture has to mediate.

The centre values both traditional and practice-based research, particularly research-by-design, which it uses to make new knowledge through not only the analysis of the existing, but also the documentation of new processes and situations created by new design thinking. Architecture is seen both as a lens and as a measure of the ‘city’ allowing action-based research to create new situations that can be analysed and compared with the existing, whilst traditional work creates more epistemic impact.

The Centre for Architecture research has three main strands:

Urbanism

A focus on work to do with urban sustainability, heritage and place-based analysis. 

Particular emphasis in sustainability is given to developing urban resilience by adaptation through new insertions that create new resilient futures based on differing energy scenarios:  Bio-port, Liverpool, created a new carbon neutral future for the city based on algae production at a very large scale.  Studies of Ireland’s architectural past has discovered a lost treasure of seminal buildings, many of which were in danger of demolition, which have been saved through a reading of their importance, nationally and internationally.  More modern architecture has also been documented, particularly arts centres, but also the understanding of spatial and economic context through the waterside development studies. Further afield, the city as narrative has been researched through extensive work combining the oral histories of historic neighbourhoods (in Cairo, Nicosia and Belfast) with spatial studies of streets, houses and squares.  Work on Film and the city, takes the narrative a step further into a real-time understanding of motion in the city.

Materiality

Under materiality, new technologies have been developed through the combination of art-based practice and building technology. 

The Tactility Factory  is a research/commercial spin-off that has developed new ways of producing composite fabric and concrete panels, for both internal and external use, which challenge the perception of concrete as masonry.  The tactility factory has produced products for a number of high profile buildings.

In addition, high quality research-based design is practiced. The award-winning House by the Lake by M.Arch tutors Andrew Clancy & Colm Moore) is an essay in the expression and finish of in-situ concrete.  Their houses at Slievebawnogue, play on a different technology, that of wood.  By utilising the timber cleared form the site, the houses play with space and technology to span complex ground, using innovative timber-framed construction. 

Working within more economic and social contexts, other research by design work brings studies of material and space together that connect social briefs with appropriate design.  The Centre has expertise in school design with the development design guides for schools for children with ASD (autism), which tie environment and materials in with education policy to develop a new framework for sympathetic and performative School design.

Construction Management

The Construction Management Group has built up a strong research track record in the past number of years, which numerous research publications, funded projects and measures of international esteem in the various fields of expertise illustrate. Research undertaken in this group ranges from construction law and finance to business strategy and risk/disaster management. Particular expertise has been developed in urban construction management, sustainable project management strategies, procurement methods, competence-based modeling, BIM and post-disaster reconstruction.

Work on the TSB funded project ‘Supply Chain Collaborative BIM System for Minimising Construction Waste in Design’, a 35 month project beginning in February 2013 with a total grant size of £650,736, has the potential to have a significant impact on the projects of Balfour Beatty in the immediate future and ramifications for industry as a whole. A business plan has been formulated with impressive projected cost savings through construction waste minimisation.