Vision, Perspectiva and Shifting Modalties of Representation

I direct a research group entitled DIGIS (Digital Studio for Research in Design, Visualisation and Communication), which over the course of the last two decades has been investigating the intersection of Architecture, Cinema, and Digitality, developing novel modes of investigation, in the belief that the moving image provides us with new perceptual equipment to grasp the complexity of architectural and urban phenomena.   DIGIS focuses on new techniques, methodologies and potentialities of digital media in design-related disciplines and has over the years, developed into a unique international centre for practice-led creative experiment, with a thriving PhD and advanced research programme.

Prof. Cecilia Panti, is the foremost expert on Grosseteste’s scientific works, including critical editions of the treatises On Light, On the Sphere, On the Super-Celestial Motions, and On Comets. She is also an expert on music in the Middle Ages, and the reception of Boethius and Augustine in this regard, has written widely on Roger Bacon and is co-investigator on a project with Professor Nicholas Temple, University of Huddersfield on ‘Lorenzo Ghiberti’s 3^rd Commentary: Translation and Commentary’, supported by a British Academy/Leverhulme small grant award. These among wide interests in medieval philosophy, and further afield. Cecilia is a core member of the Ordered Universe project, and her time in Oxford will be a wonderful opportunity for the project’s work. 

Willem studied architecture at Delft University of Technology and KTH Stockholm. He holds a PhD in History and Theory of Architecture from The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. His doctoral thesis, titled Book-Building: A Historical and Theoretical Investigation into Architecture and Alchemy, was nominated for the RIBA President’s Award for Research. Following the completion of his PhD in 2010, Willem has been a Guest Lecturer and a Visiting Lecturer at Chelsea College of Art and Design, Westminster University (School of Architecture) and University of East London (School of Architecture), where he has taught a variety of subjects including history and theory of architecture, critical theory and philosophy of art. Willem joined the Arts University Bournemouth in 2015 to teach Contextual Studies on the BA (Hons) Architecture and MArch course.

Professor Frost is the Oscar Naddermier Professor of Architecture, Director of History, Theory and Cultural Context and Director of Research. He qualified as an architect in 1990 following the completion of his studies at the University of Cambridge. He worked in practice, at home and abroad for over ten years before becoming a full time academic in 2001 when he began to research the history of the foundation of Salisbury, which has resulted in the publication of his book Time, Space and Order: The Making of Medieval Salisbury (Peter Lang, 2009). In 2013 he became the Oscar Naddermier Professor of Architecture at the Birmingham School of Architecture, taking responsibility for the delivery of history, theory and cultural context throughout the school whilst continuing to teach design on the MArch course.

Nicholas Temple is a qualified architect and is currently professor of architecture and Director of the Centre for Urban Design, Architecture and Sustainability (CUDAS) at the University of Huddersfield. He previously served as head of the School of Architecture at the University of Lincoln and was an assistant professor of architecture at the University of Pennsylvania. He was a Rome Scholar in Architecture at the British School at Rome, a Paul Mellon Rome Fellow and a Bogliasco Fellow and has collaborated on a number funded research projects on the history and theory of architecture and urbanism in Europe and China, most recently British Academy grants ('Lorenzo Ghiberti's 3rd Commentary' and 'The Temporality of Building: Architecture and Heritage in Europe and China'). He was shortlisted for the CICA Bruno Zevi Book Award in 2014 (Renovatio Urbis: Architecture, Urbanism and Ceremony in the Rome of Julius II, Routledge, 2011) and is chief editor of the Routledge Research in Architectural History series and co-editor of the Journal of Architecture.

Dr Renée Tobe is Reader in Architecture at the University of East London. Her main researchg interests concern the nature of the relationship of architecture and its representation in film. A current Research Project entitled the University and the City investigates the synergies between the two to produce a toolkit to guide University development with limited capital investment. Dr Tobe has published widely on architectural theory and history, including her recent book Film, Architecture and Spatial Imagination, (Routledge, 2017). She lectures in History and Theory to Year 1 students, introducing precedents, and poetic concepts and expressions of space and place.