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Staff Profile

Dr Nathaniel Coleman

Reader in History & Theory of Architecture

  • Address: School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape
    The Quadrangle
    University of Newcastle
    Newcastle upon Tyne
    NE1 7RU
Background

Introduction

While I remain interested in the oft neglected social dimension of architecture (aligned with the general suppression of its political dimensions), these are symptoms rather than causes. While identifying the sources of architecture's emptying presents nearly impossible problems, not least because the condition is profoundly overdetermined, the shift from disciplinary knowledge to technicity, or anti-theoretical commercial practice, could begin to seem something like causes. But even they are symptomatic of something preceding them.

In 1973, Manfredo Tafuri wondered, 'when the role of a discipline ceases to exist, to try to stop the course of things is only regressive Utopia, and of the worst kind. [. . .]. What is of interest here is the precise identification of those tasks which capitalist development has taken away from architecture. That is to say, what it has taken away in general from ideological prefiguration.’ What if divisions of labor are the cause of architecture's crises identified by its more critical observers. Left without its previous tasks, emptied of its political (ideological) dimensions, and a social project (Utopia), architecture struggles against consumption and dissolution.

Amongst all the divisions of labor architecture has been subject to in its schematisation, it seems to me that the split-off of engineering from architecture around 1750 was and remains decisive. Into the void, image-making and technicity threaten to overwhelm almost all other concerns. As a commercial enterprise, dominated by the building industry, myths of autonomy, dreams of escaping use, and disregard for building are false promises that only sharpen the divisions of labor that Tafuri believed left architecture without 'a corresponding institutionally defined role' that 'illusory hopes' in design couldn't furnish. Influenced by Lefebvre and other romantic anti-capitalists, often anarchist in name or spirit, in my estimation, reconstructing architecture entails imagining demythologised tasks for it. Preoccupied with rooms in one direction and cities and land in the other, with buildings somewhere between them, the multitude of problems that define architecture (its tasks), beyond image or technicity alone, suggest that intensifying tensions between desires for artistic autonomy and the burdens of use (for example) might well be the cross-axis from where promising work could emerge, just as Adorno observed.

Background

PhD, University of Pennsylvania; MSc in Architecture, University of Pennsylvania; Master of Urban Planning, City College of New York Program in Urban Design; Bachelor of Architecture, Rhode Island School of Design; Bachelor of Fine Arts, Rhode Island School of Design. Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies (IAUS); Architectural Practice in New York City and Rome Italy, including with Eisenman/Robertson and Hardy Holzman Pfieffer.

Qualifications

Doctor of Philosophy in Architecture

Master of Science in Architecture

Master of Urban Planning (Program in Urban Design)

Bachelor of Architecture

Bachelor of Fine Arts

New York State Licensed Architecture

Previous Positions

Washington State Univerrsity

Boston Architectural College

Northeastern University

Wentworth Institute of Technology

Philadelphia University

University of Pennsylvania

University of Washington Rome Center

Memberships

Utopian Studies Society (Europe)

SUS (Society for Utopian Studies, USA)

SAH (Society of Architectural Historian, USA)

SAHGB (Society of Architectural Historian, Great Britain)

Honours and Awards

Leverhulme Trust Scholar (International Research Network), 2014-2017

British Academy Scholar, 2003, 2004 and 2007

Graham Foundation Grant Recipient, 2004

Languages

Italian

  

Research

Research Roles

The MARCH vertical studio I lead is the nexus of my research activities. The studio provides me with opportunities to maintain a continuous feedback loop between research and teaching (and back again). The studio operates as something of a laboratory and testing ground for my research. Many developments in my thinking originate in the studio through my work with David Boyd (who I co-teach with) and the students, to be subsequently developed in my research and writing, most often returning to the studio for testing through application, in turn facilitating refinements in both my research and teaching, thereby opening up new directions for research (mine and the students).

Although experimental in nature, the studio (as is my research) are inflected by developing critical historical perspectives, intensifying tensions between architect desires for artistic autonomy and the burdens of use, between the instinct to make works often thwarted by the requirement to design products, recuperating lost disciplinary knowledge (architects' own ways of thinking and doing, informed by their own literature), as against the dominance of the building industry. But in a departure from the limitations of the architectural neo-avant-gardes, architecture is construed as existing as much in drawing as in building.

Postgraduate Supervision

I am most keen to supervise individuals interested in pursuing PhDs by creative practice research in architecture. Although not limited to reconstructing architecture by way of inventing anarchist spatial practices, I would like to work with individuals who approach their personal research projects dialectically, as open-ended experimentations in reimagining architecture and its teaching, and practice, within developing disciplinary knowledge. Interested candidates are encouraged to familiarise themselves with my published research to get a sense of the sort of creative practice in architecture PhD projects I would be interested in supervising. I am open to discussing project proposals at various stages of development.

Research Interests

Inventing Anarchist Spatial Practices (Reconstructing Architecture)

the Problematic of Architecture and Utopia (Something's Missing)                                                                                                      

Design Theory Research (Creative Practice)

Social Dimensions of Architecture (Use & Problems of Form)

(Operative) Architectural History, Theory and Criticism

Materials & Meaning in Architecture (Not the Material but what you do with it)

the Bodily Experience of Buildings (beyond image making)

Architecture as Discipline (Not Product)

Other Expertise

Urbanism (is Not Urban Design)

Fine Arts Practices (Architecture & Other Arts)

Architecture & Its Teaching (Pedagogy)

Ethics and Aesthetics (taking positions)

Psychoanalysis (architecture and the unconscious)

Romantic Anti-Capitalism (from Ruskin to Lefebvre, & Beyond)

Utopian Studies & Architecture (Something's Missing)

Current & Future Work

I am currently authoring a book for inclusion as a volume in a design pedagogy series that will contribute to the developing work of an international network of researchers and educators engaged in reimagining architecture and its teaching. Publication is anticipated early in 2025. I am also developing a co-authored book project that will introduce critical phenomenology to architecture’s encounters with phenomenology. In brief, conceptions of a recuperable golden age of unfallen being that dominates architecture’s encounters with phenomenology will be interrogated to open it up to stories of architectural significance beyond the dominant that dominates. Both writing project might lead to edited books and/or funded research facilitating the organisation of thematic symposia and/or conferences.

Funding

Leverhulme Trust

British Academy

Graham Foundation

Internal Funding, School, Faculty, University

Industrial Relevance

Areas of research and outputs are of direct relevance to cultivating architectural imaginaries preoccupied with projecting and realising a humane designed and constructed environment, at the scale of the room, building and city, conceptualising architects as facilitators engaged in contributing to the self-organisation of individuals and groups dialectically.

Keywords

Inventing Anarchist Spatial Practices

Utopias and Architecture                                                                                                                       

Works not Products

Operative History, Theory, and Criticism

Self-organisation

Reconstructing Architecture

Architecture & the City

Teaching

Undergraduate Teaching

During my long tenure at Newcastle, I'v taught across the BA curriculum, including previously delivering the defunct history sequence from prehistory to post modern; Stage 03 studio leadership and teaching. My current input into the BA includes one-off lectures in a variety of modules at each stage, and leading a BA Dissertation Seminar, including Architecture Mysticism and Myth; Writing is a Matter of Form; and Architecture and Its Teaching.

Postgraduate Teaching

Previous roles included programme leadership, amongst myriad other teaching inputs in the MARCH, including Module Leader of a technology seminar module, a MAUD module, MARCH Dissertation. And DPD of the non accredited MAAPL-D course for a time. For some years now I've lead a stage 05 & 06 vertical studio (following on from many years of tutoring in MARCH design studios at both stages), which informs and is informed by my research and writing.

In the past I've acted as Director of Architecture, DPD (even including for CAP), and as Admissions Tutor, in addition to my many other teaching roles over the years.

I have in the past and continue to supervise PhDs.                                 

Publications