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This case study demonstrates how Timothy Brittain-Catlin's long-term research into a group of historic buildings sharing a common theme, and designed by underappreciated architects, has had wide-ranging impacts on various groups. These groups include general audiences; amenity societies; architectural historians; heritage and conservation enthusiasts; and, in turn, public bodies including planning authorities and government agencies. The impacts of this important research range from informing cultural understanding amongst general audiences to directly influencing policy decisions about the preservation of historic buildings.
In 2006 Professor David Walker and his team at the University of St Andrews launched a fully searchable, free, online database that has transformed the ways in which anyone interested in Scottish architecture from 1840 onwards engages with the subject. The Dictionary is widely used by archivists, family historians, house owners, estate agencies, independent conservation campaigners, architects, planners and heritage bodies, schoolchildren and teachers, students and scholars. Its worldwide impact is attested by the organisers of related Canadian and South African websites, as well as by feedback from international users and a current hit rate of more than 3.8 million per year.
Robert Lorimer and his work: the gatehouse at Earlshall, Fife, 1900
This impact relates to a body of practice-based research undertaken by Professor Graeme Hutton (since 2000) and centres on a single output, `The Shed' (2009), a 500m2 constructed residence and studio in rural Perthshire. The research has contributed to an advancement of thought and refinement of rural design practice internationally and locally. It has:
A. Informed a critical direction for professionals in architectural design relating to designing for predominantly landscape contexts
B. Informed wider society of the critical debate surrounding appropriate architectural designs for rural contexts
C. Established benchmark references for guiding planning and design judgements for sensitive rural locations
D. Transcribed this rural design research into the broader debate about architecture in the rural and urban built environment.
The Secret Lives of Buildings, a book by Edward Hollis about famous buildings that `went wrong', has achieved both literary acclaim and a readership in five languages worldwide. The chief insights of the book — that buildings, like stories, are ephemeral things, passed from generation to generation — have been used by an AHRC-funded research network, The Invisible College, to change attitudes towards, and policy about, the fate of one of Scotland's most controversial modern buildings: St Peter's Seminary in Cardross. Working with stakeholders from government to the local community, the College has set a new precedent for the incremental and sustainable reuse of abandoned sites in Scotland.
The Kunsthaus in Graz, Austria, which emerged from UCL research by Cook and Fournier, and opened in 2003, has had a substantial and sustained impact on the city. Indeed, it has become a key symbol in Graz and a major contributor to tourism and increased visitor figures due to its innovative and iconic design. It has led the regeneration of the once-depressed district it is located in — a fact the city then acknowledged in its successful application to become an UNESCO `City of Design' in 2011. The dramatic external form and spaces within the building have inspired groundbreaking new curatorial practices that have since been applied by its curators elsewhere.
Le Petit Bayle is a house in France that was designed by Jef Smith, a member of Kent School of Architecture's Centre for Architecture and Sustainable Environment, as co-designer with Victoria Thornton, completed in 2008, and which is Smith's output JS1. The range and significance of this impact is demonstrated through its dissemination to a broad and international audience of architects; architecture students in general; and architectural technicians / other building and design practitioners through a range of media. Wide coverage of the project already demonstrates impact on the primary dissemination media for architects. In addition, the house has been used as an exemplar project by L'Espace Info Énergie du Conseil d'Architecture d'Urbanisme et de l'Environnement de Midi-Pyrénées (EIE / CAUE) in France which has included study visits and public exhibitions, reaching a wide and international variety of readers and viewers from those with a general interest to specialists working in related fields. The continuing research project consists not only of the design of the house and its execution, but also of observation, post-occupancy assessment, and the formulation for new research and design principles.
Le Petit Bayle has been chosen as a case study by Dr Avi Friedman of the McGill School of Architecture to feature in his forthcoming book Sustainable Dwellings.
The artist John Piper, and his wife, the editor, anthologist and librettist Myfanywy Piper were key figures within the cultural field of mid-twentieth-century Britain. The research on which this case study is based brought to public attention their reclaiming for British art a sense of place, national identity and belonging. Through her books, essays, public lectures, journalism, appearances at literary and arts festivals and on radio and television Frances Spalding's research on the Pipers and their contribution to British culture has made a major impact on public life. The research has influenced cultural, heritage, and media organisations, directly altered policy on conservation of heritage, and shaped the cultural understanding of informed audiences, both in Britain and abroad.
Gage's research in interactive architecture since the 1990s has influenced the working methods of a sizeable community of SME architectural and environmental design practices, mainly in London, and in some cases significantly extended the scope of their services. The research has established and strengthened innovative exchange between academia, professions and creative industries and led to the creation of a number of new specialist and award-winning design companies with international profiles. One of these developed intellectual property sold in 2011 for over $15m, while another won a RIBA National Award for design excellence in collaboration with Bartlett staff.
A popular, influential and highly acclaimed public exhibition at the Wellcome Collection, London, and Wien Museum, `Madness and Modernity: Mental Illness and the Visual Arts in Vienna 1900' (2009), demonstrates the impacts of an interdisciplinary research cluster within Birkbeck's History of Art Department. Working with a number of academic and non-academic partners in Plymouth, London and Vienna, the AHRC-funded project contributed a new understanding of the development and role of the arts in turn-of-the-century Vienna. By engaging participants in new experiences and knowledge, it generated considerable media interest and public discourse that particularly benefited the non-academic partners.
By influencing the ideas underpinning (and the public dissemination programmes relating to) three key modern design historical exhibitions, i.e:
design historical research undertaken at Kingston University has impacted on the curatorial and dissemination strategies of London's Victoria & Albert Museum
The specific contribution of work undertaken at Kingston University has been the recognition, in the above, of the significance, within the broader picture of modern design history, of the interior as a mediator of identity, taste and style. This was made possible by Professor Penny Sparke's contributions to the advisory panels for the three exhibitions; her authorship of essays in two catalogues; and the contribution of Kingston University's Modern Interiors Research Centre (MIRC), to a public symposium linked to the third exhibition.