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Staff Profile

Dr Edward Wainwright

Lecturer in Architecture

Background

Ed is a lecturer in architecture, a researcher and designer exploring the intersections of architecture and culture, social and material change, and the politics of architectural and design production. His design interests are concerned with architecture's relationship to fine art, spatial experience and radical ecological thinking. He has collaborated with artists and architects on large-scale installation projects and spatial research for national and international organisations and institutions, as well as collaborated within and managed interdisciplinary and inter-institutional artistically-led research projects.

The shifting condition of the material and social world interests Ed, and his engagement with the politics of making, architecture and arts practice, and how we represent and shift our relation to the ecological and political realm drive his creative practice research.

Recent works include the collaborative installation Gathering (Hatton Gallery, 2018-2019, images), working alongside artist and researcher Dr. Julia Heslop, to explore spaces of support for underrepresented artists and ways of rethinking material use through radical ecological thought; and an immersive digital-media installation Ghosts of the NewBridge (NewBridge Project, 2017), which seeks to spatialise an archival scan of the arts studios of the NewBridge Project, asking questions of building use and reuse, the ecological ethics of demolition and modes of seeing through the digital lens.

Ed also supervises three creative practice Ph.D students, exploring the politics of architectures' production, its dissemination, and modes of modelling.

As an active member of the Architectural Research Collaborative at the school, Ed's work sits within the Processes Practices, and the Matter Ecologies groups.

He is a member of the arts studio the NewBridge Project Collective Studio steering committee, associate member of The NewBridge Project, and sits on the Newcastle Institute for Creative Arts Practice (NICAP) steering committee. He is also Reviews & Insight editor for the Cambridge University Press journal, Architectural Research Quarterly, and sits on the Learning & Teaching, Spaces subcommittee.

Research

The politics of architectures' production and its impact on human and non-human worlds informs all Ed's work and interests, from interdisciplinary and collaborative research projects with artists, engineers and architects, through to research-informed teaching. Questions of architectures' relationship and responsibility to ecological shifts is increasingly being centred in his work.

Ed's research is driven by active creative and artistic practice, across built and representational formats, and takes an experimental and non-linear approach to making work and exploring its impacts on social and political spaces.

His engagement with architecture and design is driven by an excitement at the potentials of collaboration across academic and professional disciplines, towards a greater understanding of architectures’ role in shaping social and political conditions. Ed pursues projects that draw on his expertise and experience as a designer, researcher, teacher, curator, project manager and editor, to link architecture, critical art practice, ecological thinking and cultural theory and design research.

Current research projects include Ghosts of the Newbridge Project, a collaborative research project between Fine Art and NU Business School, and The NewBridge Project, exploring the spaces of artists studios in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and the politics of building use, reuse and demolition; Reality Capture: Thinking Through the Hallucinatory Lens, an installation project that explores how LiDAR (light detection and ranging) technology sees the world, and how it informs our understanding of spaces, places and materials; and Gathering, a large-scale collaborative framework for hosting and holding artistic practices and rethinking architectural uses of materials through an ecological-material-collage and improvisational approach to design and building.


Teaching

Ed teaches across the undergraduate and postgraduate architecture design courses at APL, and leads a Master of Architecture design studio, Detoxicated Practices, with Sam Austin, with whom he also jointly leads an undergraduate module: About Architecture: Cities, Spaces, Culture, exploring the broad contexts and politics of architectures' production in a globalised environment.

He has been leading a linked-research studio on spaces of artistic production and digital representation in the Master of Architecture programme, with The NewBridge Project, an artist studios and programming group in Newcastle.

Ed tutors undergraduate dissertation students in history/theory and creative practice work, and has run a short Architecture and Urban Planning course in stage 1, exploring the relationship between architecture, arts practice and the city.

He is currently supervising three creative practice Ph.D students, and is open to collaborative and interdisciplinary Ph.D projects and supervision.

Publications