Professor Flora Samuel
- Professor of Architecture (1970)
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About
Known for her work on inclusive engagement in planning Flora is the Professor of Architecture and former Head of the Department of Architecture at the University of Cambridge and Sheffield University. She was formerly Vice President for Research at the Royal Institute of British Architects and has held positions at Bath, Cardiff and Reading Universities.
Over her career she has secured over £10million in research funding and she was awarded the RIBA President's Medal for Research in the category of Homes and Communities. Flora was also instrumental in setting up the Cambridge Room charity, an urban room for Cambridge where communities, universities, local authorities, industry and practice come together to talk about the future of their places. www.cambridgeroom.org
Research
In her early career Flora focused on a revisionist history of the French modernist Le Corbusier about whom she has written five books. This led her into a strand of work on research in architectural practice culminating in the book Why Architects Matter. During the process she realised how poor architects are at demonstrating their value, in particular their social value. This led her to the authorship of the RIBA Social Value Toolkit and Architecture Design Special on social value with Eli Hatleskog. It quickly became apparent to her that social value needs to be mapped spatially if it is to be useful. This led to a series of projects on map based community engagement in planning culminating in Public Map, a Green Transitions Ecosystems project focusing initially on including the voices of children and young people in the planning of rural places. Flora is a leader of the Community Design Research Lab currently funded by CRASSH
Publications
Selected publications
Teaching and supervision
Flora supervises topics that are closely related to her work with the Cambridge Room and Public Map - mapping with communities, inclusive engagement, housing, rural placemaking. Her students past and present are key members of the Community Design Research Lab.
Housing and Communities year 2/3 option.
