Ashley Mason is a Research Associate in the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape at Newcastle University, UK. Her research is engaged with both creative-critical and textual-spatial practices within architecture, though especially with matters of site. Her doctoral thesis in Architecture by Creative Practice, Towards a Paracontextual Practice* (*With Footnotes to 'Parallel of Life and Art') (Newcastle University, 2019), attended to the marginal and ephemeral phenomena of seemingly ‘empty’ sites — whether of extraction, demolition or impact — asking how such peripheral elements might be accounted for and how creative practice inquiry in architecture might be informed by matters usually cast aside, or erased from view. 

Prior experience includes practice in the Netherlands, engagement with a number of architectural community outreach projects in the North East, and as Editorial Assistant for the Cambridge University Press journal arq: Architectural Research Quarterly.

Qualifications

BA (Hons.), MArch (Dist.), PhD by Creative Practice

I am currently working towards the publication of an independently authored book drawing from the outcomes of my doctoral thesis, Towards A Paracontextual Practice* (forthcoming, prospective publication 2023).

Within this publication and additional endeavours, I continue to engage with ephemeral, marginal and threshold phenomena intimately entangled with sites tied to contemporary archival and reparative concerns in both architecture and landscape. My work weaves across disciplines from art to literature and draws from feminist philosophies.

I welcome interest in collaborative projects within, and beyond, these areas.

I am engaged with OpenHeritage, a Research and Innovation Action EU Horizon 2020 multi-partnered project in Organising, Promoting and Enabling Heritage Re-use through Inclusion, Technology, Access, Governance and Empowerment. Led by Loes Veldpaus, John Pendlebury and Martin Hulse (TWBPT). My role is to analyse the impacts of the Sunderland Cooperative Heritage Lab (the adaptive re-use of three buildings previously in a state of disrepair) and to support legacy planning and engagement projects.

Further research activities include the co-editing, with Adam Sharr, of Creative Practice Inquiry in Architecture (Routledge, forthcoming 2022), a volume exploring emerging forms of creative practice research within architecture, and an international edited book project concerning architectural replicas (co-edited with Zeynep Kezer and Adam Sharr).

Over the past ten years, I have contributed to teaching in a variety of roles (as studio tutor, lecturer, seminar leader, co-coordinator, critic) within design and history and theory modules across BA and MArch stages.

Mirroring the interdisciplinary nature of my research, my teaching draws from across disciplinary divides, engaging with activism, art, landscape and literature — with creative-critical and textual-spatial practices, and with matters of site. 

My educational philosophies and practices are feminist — promoting play and collaborative production, reorienting traditional models of critique through ethical and generous conversation i.e. reciprocal learning, confronting power, and attending to marginalised issues and all of the support structures of architecture with care. 

I welcome proposals from postgraduate/doctoral students wishing to undertake dissertations/theses within my areas of research.

• Mason A, Sharr A, ed. Creative Practice Inquiry in Architecture. London: Routledge, 2022. In Preparation.
• Mason A. Draught / Draft Papers. In: Mason A, Sharr A, ed. Creative Practice Inquiry in Architecture. London: Routledge, 2022. In Preparation.
• Mason A. Thin Sheets: Tracing openings within the archival matter of Alison + Peter Smithson. In: Goffi F, ed. The Routledge Companion to Architectural Models and Drawings: From Translating to Archiving, Collecting and Displaying. Routledge, 2022. In Preparation.
• Mason A. Craters: Between cleared and constructed, between absent and present. Interstices: Journal of Architecture and Related Arts 2016, 17, 54-66.