Bartlett School of Architecture UCL

03/10/2025

Cubeix looks at how we can make our buildings more sustainable by rethinking the spaces inside them.

Image: ‘Cubeix’
By Wenjie Wang, Yongchang Xu, Yiwen Jiang & Zilu Wang
Architectural Design MArch, Research Cluster 5, Year 1

Instead of knocking down walls or making big, expensive changes, Cubeix uses a modular system of parts — like frames, wall panels, lighting and storage — that can be slotted together and taken apart with ease. This means interiors can be adapted and reused again and again, cutting waste and carbon.

The smart system uses digital tools to analyse daylight, airflow, noise and views to suggest the best possible layouts. Furniture placement is refined with algorithms and adjusted based on user feedback. Prototypes have been developed using 3D printing, testing strength, speed and cost to make sure the system works in practice as well as theory.

With its mix of modular design, sustainable materials and digital customisation, Cubeix offers a practical way to transform underused interiors into flexible, low-carbon workspaces that can grow and change with the people who use them.

If you haven't visited the Bartlett Autumn Show yet, you still have this weekend - the exhibition closes on Sunday 05 October.

https://autumn2025.bartlettarchucl.com/ad-rc5-product-architecture/rc5-project-1-cubix

02/10/2025

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01/10/2025

In the next CRUNCH seminar, Barbara Imhof, Irene Gallou and Alan Smith explore the urgent architectural challenges of extraplanetary inhabitation and its implications for sustainable living on Earth.

This conversation between architects and a scientist explores how architecture and space interact with each other. Drawing from projects spanning architecture, urbanism, industrial design, social sciences, space technology and climate physics, the speakers examine terrestrial, lunar and cislunar programmes – asking how we create both survival capsules and places where humans can live.

CRUNCH: Extraplanetary Habitats: An Imminent Frontier?
🗓️ 18:30 – 20:00, Monday 06 October
📍 22 Gordon Street

Booking is essential. To avoid disruption, doors close at 18:40.

Book now: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/events/2025/oct/crunch-extraplanetary-habitats-imminent-frontier

01/10/2025

What if an abandoned railway could be transformed into a living greenway that connects communities, nature, and culture across East London?

Images: ‘The Eastbound Trail’
By Yu-Hsuan Kuo
Landscape Architecture MLA, Design Studio 2, Year 2

This project takes a disused post-industrial corridor running from Shoreditch to Bethnal Green and reimagines it as a vibrant elevated landscape. Instead of leaving the arches, edges, and neglected sites unused, they are adapted into public hubs for workshops, performances, and gathering spaces. Above, elevated paths weave through meadows, pollinator corridors, and trails, while below, under-bridge spaces come alive with gardens, play areas, and art.

The design builds on Shoreditch’s energy as a centre of creativity and reconnects it with Bethnal Green’s rich traditions of craft and diversity. By layering ecology with culture, the greenway restores public space and biodiversity, creating a continuous thread of life across the city. More than a local intervention, it asks how urban infrastructure can be reimagined to serve both people and the planet, making forgotten places bloom again.

Explore more postgraduate student projects at The - on at 22 Gordon Street until Sunday 05 October. And try out our Guided Tours if you haven't already: we've extended our tour series until Friday 03 October. Book a tour of the Autumn Show here: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/events/2025/sep/bartlett-autumn-show-2025-guided-tours

https://autumn2025.bartlettarchucl.com/landscape-studio2-retrofit-city/year2-yu-hsuan-kuo

29/09/2025

How does the way we move shape the spaces we share?

‘MotioGlyph’
By Sneha Nour Abdul Salam, Varssni Karthick & Vania Arlene
Urban Design MArch, Research Cluster 14, Year 1
from The Bartlett Autumn Show 2025 - live now at 22 Gordon Street and online at bartlettarchucl.com

MotioGlyph explores how everyday movements – walking, pausing, turning – can inform better public space design. Focusing on Mile End along London’s Regent’s Canal, the team used artificial intelligence to study how people move and interact in urban areas. By turning movement into data, they identified patterns that reveal how people use space, how they feel in it and how they connect with others.

These insights shaped new ideas for “third places” – social spaces beyond home and work where people gather and build community. The result is a design framework that makes public spaces more inclusive and responsive to real human rhythms. MotioGlyph turns the city into a living choreography, where the body becomes a tool for understanding and shaping urban life.

Explore more postgraduate student projects at The Bartlett Autumn Show 2025.

https://autumn2025.bartlettarchucl.com/ud-rc14-sensoria-urbanism/A25-RC14-project-1

26/09/2025

Congratulations to Professor Edward Denison, who was awarded the Civitas e Mari medal by the Mayor of Gdynia, Poland, for his contributions to the city’s modernist heritage and his role in supporting Gdynia’s nomination to the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Prof Denison’s work in Gdynia is part of a broader agenda to de-centre modernist histories, which has also included the successful UNESCO nomination of Asmara, Eritrea, as Africa’s first modernist World Heritage Site.

Read more: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/news/2025/sep/prof-edward-denison-awarded-city-medal-contributions-gdynias-modernist-heritage

Image: Magdalena Czernek

26/09/2025

What if your workspace could listen to you, understand your mood, and reshape itself in real time?

‘MOBAS’
by Zaid Khan, Zhijing Yan, Naman Dhiman, Asaf Guluzade, Xian Zhou
Architectural Design MArch, Research Cluster 2, Year 1
from The Bartlett Autumn Show 2025 - live now at 22 Gordon Street and online at bartlettarchucl.com

MOBAS is a responsive architectural system that reimagines how environments adapt to the changing needs of work, study, and wellbeing. Unlike traditional buildings that stay fixed, MOBAS moves, flexes, and evolves—combining robotics, artificial intelligence, and human input to create spaces that feel alive.

Developed within the Elastic Robotic Structures (ERS) framework, MOBAS uses a special bending structure (called BATH) that physically transforms its shape through robotic movement. But it’s not just about movement—MOBAS understands language. Through voice or text, users can express their needs, and the system responds by changing spatial layout, lighting, or atmosphere using natural language processing and emotion analysis.

Whether it's creating a quiet zone for focus, a collaborative layout for group work, or a softer space to unwind, MOBAS showcases a future of architecture that isn’t just built — it listens. A powerful concept for exhibitions, pop-ups, or learning hubs, it points toward a world where buildings are not static backdrops, but responsive partners in daily life.

Explore more postgraduate student projects at The Bartlett Autumn Show 2025.

https://autumn2025.bartlettarchucl.com/ad-rc2-soft-robotic-architecture/rc2-project-1-mobas

25/09/2025

Congratulations to Charlie Stone (Architecture BSc, UG21) and Finlay Aitken (Architecture MArch, PG16) on their nominations for this year’s AJ Student Prize.

The prize celebrates the work of students completing undergraduate and postgraduate ARB and RIBA-accredited programmes. Winners will be announced at the awards ceremony on 9 October.

Read more: https://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/practice/students/aj-student-prize-2025-university-college-london

Images:
(Left) ‘To the Lowest Stone on the Shore: Commoning Shetland fisheries’
By Finlay Aitken
This project proposes civic infrastructure for Shetland’s fishing communities, drawing on the Norse parliament tradition.

(Right) ‘Post Surveillance Narcissus’
By Charlie Stone
This project imagines a post-surveillance future where machine vision enables responsive spatial arrangement. Inspired by the archives left by the Stasi in Berlin, the building is designed as a choreography of moving mechanisms.

25/09/2025

Through the Looking Glass is an interactive VR architectural game that explores how digital platforms shape who we are — often turning identity into a form of constant labour.

‘Through the Looking Glass’
By Shuhan Wang & Xiyu Gao
Cinematic and Videogame Architecture MArch
from The Bartlett Autumn Show 2025 - live now at 22 Gordon Street and bartlettarchucl.com

Set on a surreal island, the game invites players to navigate spaces that respond to two changing variables: popularity and mood. As these shift, the environment around you changes too — walls move, mirrors glitch, rooms expand or collapse. It’s a world where architecture doesn’t just hold activity; it scripts it.

The project takes inspiration from philosophical ideas and design theory to bring each level to life — from Foucault’s ideas of hidden worlds (heterotopias) to the mirror stage of identity formation by Lacan. Players begin in a calm port, progress through emotional spaces, and ultimately reach the ruins of the island in “ghost mode,” where the environment starts to unravel entirely.

By blending architectural design, narrative, and game mechanics, Through the Looking Glass encourages us to reflect on how online platforms influence our emotions and behaviours — and whether design can help us pause, question, or push back against that control.

Explore more postgraduate student projects at The Bartlett Autumn Show 2025.

https://autumn2025.bartlettarchucl.com/cva-group1-unrealism-1/group-project-1-through-the-looking-glass

24/09/2025

The Landscapes in Dialogue Lecture Series returns this Friday.

🗓️ 16:00 – 17:00, Friday 26 September
📍 Archaeology G6 Lecture Theatre, UCL Institute of Archaeology

Particle capture in space; mapping ancient earthworks through lightning strikes; using electrical probing to discover lost structures underneath cathedral floors; and peering through buildings in 3D... In this first lecture of the series, freelance writer Geoff Manaugh previews a large new body of research that explores how traces of architecture exist all around us.

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/events/2025/sep/landscapes-dialogue-lecture-series-2025-26

24/09/2025

🚨 UCL staff and students: join us today at Here East for the Blue Biomass Lectures.

Our Bio-Integrated Design programme will host three speakers from the Building with Blue Biomass consortium to discuss how organisms from the sea, lakes, streams and aquaculture are generating innovative ways of designing decarbonised buildings for a net-zero future.

With speakers Tim Schork (Professor of Architecture, Queensland University of Technology), Ben Hankamer (Director, Centre for Solar Biotechnology, The University of Queensland) and Nadja Gaudillière-Jami (Assistant Professor, CITA and Co-Head, CITA | Centre for Information Technology and Architecture) – and chairs Brenda Parker and Marcos Cruz.

🗓️ 17:00 - 19:00, Wed 24 September
📍 Auditorium, UCL at Here East

Open to all UCL staff and students.

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/events/2025/sep/building-blue-biomass-lectures

24/09/2025

What happens when a place built for industry is left behind?

‘Circularity Hub: Porto Marghera Regeneration’
by Lan Mu
Landscape Architecture MA/MLA, Design Studio 10, Year 2
from The Bartlett Autumn Show 2025 - now live at 22 Gordon Street and bartletarchucl.com

Porto Marghera, once a booming hub of Italy’s chemical industry, now stands as a polluted industrial wasteland—its factories abandoned, its soil and water damaged, and its ecosystems fragmented. But instead of erasing this difficult history, this project asks: what if we could heal through remembering?

The design proposes a regenerative framework that embraces the site’s past while imagining a better future. Old industrial structures are reimagined as public spaces, gardens, and wetlands. Polluted zones are cleaned and transformed into areas for ecological recovery. Nature is not forced to fit into a city plan—instead, the city grows with and around it.

By blending ecological restoration, community spaces, and the power of memory, this project aims to turn Porto Marghera into a new kind of urban district—one where people and nature can thrive side by side, and where scars of the past become tools for resilience.

Explore more postgraduate student projects at The Bartlett Autumn Show 2025.

https://autumn2025.bartlettarchucl.com/landscape-studio10-a-tide-of-two-cities/year2-lan-mu