Chris French

MA(Hons), MArch, PhD Architecture by Design

 

 

C.A.French@ed.ac.uk

RESEARCH INTERESTS

 

Two interests guide Chris’ research. The first involves critical forms of representation and the production of the political, architectural imaginary and institutions (invoking Castoriadis). As part of Chris’ PhD, this fostered a discussion of William Hogarth’s A Rake’s Progress and Joseph Gandy’s renderings of Sir John Soane’s Bank of England, as well as a speculative design project drawing on John Hejduk's Lancaster/Hanover Masque. Hogarth and Gandy's depictions of financial ruin framed a discussion of the financial institutions of Edinburgh in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. The second pertains to the relationship between urbanity, the city, architecture, and agricultural and urban landscapes. This interest—explored through studio briefs for the River Tyne, Newtongrange in Midlothian, the lama (dry flood channels) of Bari, and the conca d’oro in Palermo—has framed investigations into urban/landscape thresholds, landscape patterns and temporalities, focusing on how projections of urban space into landscape impart or impose particular political or managerial regimes. Centred on Michel Serres' key ecological texts The Natural Contract (1995) and Times of Crisis (2013), and Donna Harraway's notion of the chthulucene (developed in Staying with the Trouble, 2016), this research explores our relationship with the 'natural' (a loaded term, David Macauley reminds us) world and how we, as architects, make (in) the world.

 

In addition to developing his own research and fostering work in design studios, Chris is a co-founder and editor of Drawing On, an e-journal concerned with the dissemination of design-research with an international review board expert in design-research.

 

PRENSENTATIONS, SYMPOSIA, EXHIBITIONS

 

‘Aloula and the Absurd’ with Dr Maria Mitsoula. Paper presented as part of the Prokalo Research Seminar Series, University of Edinburgh (13th November, 2018).

‘Plains, Valleys, Mountains: Map-Paradigms of Attica and an Open-Air Museum in Aloula’ with Dr Maria Mitsoula. Paper presented at Productive Mountains, Università IUAV di Venezia (21st – 23rd June, 2018).

 

‘Landscape as Tectonics, Tectonics as Landscape: Kahn, Eisenman, Miralles’ with Dr Maria Mitsoula. Lecture for the ESALA, AD4 Tectonics programme (5th February, 2018).

 

‘Magmatic Drawings and Architecture’s Design-Research Repertoire.’ Paper presented at Architectural Research through Design Symposium, organised by Victoria University, Wellington for the New Zealand pavilion at the Venice Biennale (21st November, 2014).

 

Designs for (the Failure of) Institution. Exhibition, Matthew Architecture Gallery, Edinburgh

(21st – 31st April, 2014).

 

Plenitude & Emptiness: Symposium on Architectural Research by Design. Co-organiser with Konstantinos Avramidis, Piotr Lesniak and Maria Mitsoula (4th – 6th November, 2013).

 

'‘Telling’ and ‘writing’, recounting and figuring: the ‘Imaginary’ and A Rake’s Progress'. Paper presented at Writing Place conference, TU Delft (25th – 27th November, 2013).

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