About Us
Our leading scholars produce the latest knowledge across and beyond our professions. Our education engages students with the latest research and professional ideas.
Newcastle University is a member of the Russell Group and is one of the UK’s top research-intensive Universities. The pursuit and publication of the latest knowledge is central to what we do in the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape.
We promote research-led teaching, whereby our researchers teach so students at all levels get to engage with our team. Our academic staff are world-leading experts and specialists.
Our work is interdisciplinary and employs methods including:
- creative practice
- the humanities
- social sciences
- engineering
We pursue excellent research and teaching, generating relevant and significant insights. The discipline of Planning in Newcastle celebrates its 75th anniversary in 2021 and Architecture celebrates 100 years in 2022. As one of the oldest schools of its kind in the UK, we have graduates who are famous around the world, and our reputation is widely known and valued among professionals and employers.
Newcastle University began as Armstrong College in 1871. Its architecture school was founded out of the UK's Northern Architectural Association, first established in 1858, and celebrates long and distinguished history with its centenary in 2022. Among our famous graduates have been the globally-known architects Alison and Peter Smithson and Terry Farrell, alongside Jo Noero in South Africa and the Matrix feminist architects’ collective.
What we do
A decade ago, the world’s population reached a tipping point where more people now live in cities than in rural areas. As this trend accelerates, it's vital for societies to engage with all aspects of the production of designed environments. We need to further appreciate how they’re imagined, planned, modelled, drawn, constructed, inhabited, and conserved. We need to address how they allocate, consume, and generate resources. And we need to understand better how they produce communities, cultures, ideologies, and inequalities. Knowledge about designed environments can often be separated into disconnected professions with specialised languages and habits. In contrast, the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape at Newcastle University both addresses our professions and works across and beyond them. Our internationally renowned experts pursue methods ranging across the social sciences, humanities, creative practice, and engineering to achieve the latest insights. We work across Europe and the globe, inspired by our place in the North East of England.
As a member of the UK’s Russell Group of leading research intensive Universities, we engage in research-led education. We want to equip our students not just for their first day in work but to lead in the professions they will retire from. We believe knowledge to be a collective cultural endeavour which is best realised through a dynamic approach to research and education, developed through an ongoing process of research-driven inquiry in which staff and students are both participants. We aim to deeply engage students in their education as critical and creative thinkers, rigorously challenging and empowering them, supporting them to stay ahead of a changing world.