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Department of Architecture

 

Dean Hawkes and Nick Bullock

This talk is a prelude to the 50th anniversary of the Martin Centre that will occur in 2017.  It is in two parts.  To begin, Nick Bullock will describe the background in the Department of Architecture in the post-war years.  This will focus on the Annan Report to the university (1954), which reviewed the state and standing of the department and led to the establishment of the university’s first professorship of architecture.  In 1956 Leslie Martin came to Cambridge as the first incumbent of the chair and began to reshape the department. A key part of this was the development of organised research.  In 1958 Martin played a leading part at the RIBA Oxford Conference on Architectural Education and Dean Hawkes will explore the implications of this. In his report on the conference Martin wrote, “Theory … is the body of principles that explains and interrelates all the facts of a subject. 

Research is the tool by which theory is advanced.  Without it teaching can have no direction and thought no cutting edge.”  This was implicitly an agenda for Cambridge.

Dean Hawkes is emeritus professor of architectural design at the Welsh School of Architecture, Cardiff University and an emeritus fellow of Darwin College, University of Cambridge   He researched and taught at Cambridge between 1965 and 1995 and was Director of the Martin Centre from 1979-1987.  His research is in the field of environmental design in architecture.  His books include, The Environmental Tradition (1996), The Environmental Imagination (2008) and Architecture and Climate (2012).  His buildings, in partnership with Stephen Greenberg, have won four RIBA Architecture Awards.  In 2010 he received the RIBA Annie Spink Award in recognition of his contribution to architectural education.

 

Date: 
Wednesday, 2 March, 2016 - 13:15 to 14:15
Event location: 
Lecture Room 1, Department of Architecture