Innovative Design Lab

Samira Awwal

PhD

Supervisors: Prof Patricia Tzortzopoulos and Dr Danilo Di Mascio

My research focuses on retrofitting Social housing to provide a better value for users. I am currently involved in the U-Vital project, which is a collaborative research project between research institutions in Brazil (BR), Germany (DE), the Netherlands (NL), and the United Kingdom (UK) (See: https://research.hud.ac.uk/institutes-centres/idl/currentresearchprojects/uvital/). My research focuses on the issues in retrofitting social housing and understanding boundary objects to create shared understanding and enable collaboration between stakeholders. I am exploring user-experience using BIM to improve Social Housing retrofit.

My. Undergraduate is completed in Architecture from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology in 2015. My final year thesis comprised of regenerating a riverport terminal to provide public space and infrastructure support for the locality. After three years of professional experience in design and research, I have completed my masters in “Sustainable Urban Design” from the University of Nottingham in 2019. During my masters, I explored user-experience to assess the social impact on designing public realms.

My career is focused on multidisciplinary and collaborative research. My research engagement is social housing, regeneration of public place, and user-valued innovative design.