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Staff Profile

Dr Stephen Parnell

Senior Lecturer in Architecture

  • Email: stephen.parnell@ncl.ac.uk
  • Telephone: +44 (0) 191 20 86802
  • Address: School of Architecture Planning and Landscape
    2nd Floor, Building Science, The Quadrangle
    Newcastle University
    Newcastle upon Tyne
    NE1 7RU
Background

I'm an architect, architectural critic, historian of post-war architecture, and currently joint Editor-in-Chief of the ARENA Journal of Architectural Research.

I am interested in the sociology of the architectural profession and particularly the role that the media play in it. My research is on, teaching is through, and practice is in the architectural press: I have written over 130 articles for the professional architectural press over the past 15 years and was shortlisted for the IBP's Architecture Writer of the Year in 2011 and 2012.

My PhD, "Architectural Design 1954-1972: the contribution of the architectural magazine to the writing of architectural history", completed under Peter Blundell-Jones (Architecture) and Martin Conboy (Journalism) at Sheffield University, won the 2012 RIBA President's Award for Outstanding PhD Thesis. That year I also exhibited "Architecture Magazines: Playgrounds and Battlegrounds" in the Padiglione Centrale of the Venice Biennale. This featured AD, AR, Casabella, and Domus magazines from the 1940s to the 1970s and an 11 x 3m wallchart showing the network of relationships of key individuals and institutions related to these London and Milanese magazines.

Thanks to a RIBA Research Trust Award, I extended this PhD research to the Post-Modern years of Andreas Papadakis's Academy, and I have since also stretched it back to AD's origin in 1930. The Paul Mellon Centre has supported me with a Research Grant and Mid-Career Fellowship, enabling me to prepare a full critical history of AD magazine from 1930 to 1992 and its relationship to architectural culture, history, and practice which will be published by Harvard Design press in 2024..

I am also currently preparing a book on Theo Crosby with Juliana Kei and Alan Powers for Lund Humphries and writing a book on Concrete for Bloomsbury's Object Lessons series (both due 2023).

In a previous career, I designed and launched Navisworks.

Research

To date my research has mainly focused on architectural magazines and criticism. I am interested particularly in their role in the construction of architectural culture, history and practice since their emergence in the mid 19th century.

My current research interest is Brutalist architecture, but I am also interested in the production (as opposed to the reception) of architecture and the back-stories of how architecture is produced - in particular the life stories of architects and their personal/professional entanglements.

I am currently researching Theo Crosby, éminence grise extraordinaire: his architecture and his work behind the scenes promoting first the New Brutalists in the 1950s and then the Prince of Wales in the 1980s. I am currently working on a monograph of Theo Crosby (with Alan Powers and Juliana Kei) and a sole-authored history of AD magazine from 1930 to 1992.


PhD Supervision

My current PhD student are:

  • Ivan Márquez Muñoz, who is researching cultural conceptions of concrete and the work of Miguel Fisac;
  • Ray Verrall, who is researching the 1958 Oxford Conference.
  • Difei Shan, who is researching design knowledge as discursive practice in China (1995-2015)


Completed PhDs:

 

I'd be very interested in supervising PhD students in the following areas:

  • The architectural press, both printed and digital;
  • Brutalist architecture;
  • Posthuman architecture and architecture of the anthropocene.




Teaching

My current main teaching is in architectural history & theory and design.

My most recent MArch design studios were based on Brutalism and on Transhumanism, Science Fiction and the Idea of Progress.

I supervise BA and MArch dissertations, currently leading a BA elective on Architectural Media.

Linked Research, where MArch students work alongside research staff as associates, is unique to Newcastle. I have supervised projects on:

  • International Brutalisms (students went to USA, Brazil, Germany and India to understand the characteristics of Brutalism in those countries). Raphael Selby, in particular, has continued this research into his professional practice (http://pagepark.co.uk/article/brazilian-brutalism/);
  • Theo Crosby's house (students researched this house in Hammersmith and constructed 1:20 models of its iterations from its initial conversion in 1955 to its extensions in 1960, 1967 and 1987, through an understanding of the New Brutalist principles);
  • Architecture through Magazines.


In the past, I have taught:

  • CAD workshops (particularly SketchUp);
  • computer programming for architects;
  • concrete workshops;
  • technology studios;
  • architectural criticism and journalism;

I have taught at all levels through a variety of formats (studio, workshops, seminars, lectures, tutorials, live projects etc).

Publications