Dr Bo Tang
Bo Tang is Director of the Architecture of Rapid Change and Scarce Resources research group (ARCSR) and Reader in Architecture at London Metropolitan University. Her work brings together research, teaching and live civic practice, focusing on participatory and practice-based urban methodologies, collaborative city-making, and learning through long-term engagement with communities and civic partners.
She studied architecture at the The Bartlett School of Architecture, University of East London and London Metropolitan University, graduating with distinction in 2008 and receiving the prize for Best Integrated Design Study. She completed her PhD at London Metropolitan University in 2014 on a full scholarship. Her thesis, Negotiating Shared Spaces in Informal Peri-Urban Settlements in India, was shortlisted for the RIBA President’s Award for Outstanding PhD Research.
Since 2006, Bo has played a central role in the development of ARCSR, initially coordinating and managing live projects with students in informal settlements in India in collaboration with local NGOs and supported by The Water Trust (ARCSR). These projects included sanitation upgrading in Agra and quarry classroom projects in Navi Mumbai, one of which was shortlisted for the AJ Small Projects Award. Subsequent ARCSR research in Sierra Leone contributed to the construction of a new primary school in Freetown in 2011, while later research in Nepal (2014–2017) focused on peri-urban transformation in the Kathmandu Valley.
Her more recent work has focused on civic placemaking, participatory urban practice and festival-based pedagogies in Athens and other international contexts, exploring how long-term collaborative frameworks can support collective learning, neighbourhood engagement and socially engaged spatial practice. She has led and developed ARCSR’s ‘Vertical Studio’ and ‘Extended Studio’ approach, connecting students, alumni, researchers and community partners through live projects, residencies and public programmes.
Bo regularly curates exhibitions, workshops and public events in the UK and internationally, and was part of the RIBA Boyd Auger Scholarship research team exploring art, urbanism and architecture in Bosnia and Herzegovina (2008).
She is co-editor of Learning from Delhi (2010), which received an Urban Design Group Award, and The Architecture of Three Freetown Neighbourhoods (2013), produced in collaboration with the British Council in Sierra Leone. She is also co-author of Loose Fit City (2018), published by Routledge. Her work has been disseminated through books, exhibitions, public programmes and collaborative research publications focused on participatory urbanism, spatial practice and civic learning.
Alongside her academic work, Bo has contributed extensively to research leadership, REF impact development, and the growth of international research and civic partnerships across ARCSR and the wider School of Art, Architecture and Design (AAD). Her recent work focuses on the development of international collaborative research platforms exploring festivals, civic participation and neighbourhood-scale transformation as frameworks for participatory urban practice and collective learning.
Emeritus Professor Maurice Mitchell
Maurice Mitchell AA Dipl. Reg. Architect, is Professor, Architecture of Rapid Change and Scarce Resources (ARCSR) at London Metropolitan University and Director of The Water Trust (ARCSR) charity. Maurice teaches, researches and directs live projects in The School of Art, Architecture and Design (AAD) at London Metropolitan University where he runs an Architecture MArch Studio. He has also taught at the Architectural Association, Oxford Brookes University and the Development Planning Unit, University College London.
His area of interest lies in the narrative interplay between technical and everyday cultural factors in the production and sustainability of the built environment, particularly in situations of rapid change and scarce resources where new identities are forged in the process of remaking.
Educated at the Architectural Association, his early career included extended periods of work in the shanty towns of Ghana to establish the Tema Housing Cooperative with the Department of Housing and Planning Research at Kumasi University and as Regional Building Materials Advisor to the Southern Regional Government of Sudan. His first book Culture, Cash and Housing (1992) explores the lessons learned from the experience of Voluntary Service Overseas in the field of building for development. He has been involved with and published on typhoon resistant construction in Vietnam in cooperation with NGO Development Workshop - France, of which he is a board member.
Ideas relating the building process and appropriate building technologies to architectural education are explored in his second book The Lemonade Stand: Exploring the unfamiliar by building large scale models (1998) which highlights the importance of the culture of making within architectural education by drawing on the exploratory work produced during hands on courses which he has run for 33 years at the Centre for Alternative Technology, Wales. His Diploma studio undertakes an annual field trip in which students engage proactively with a local situation, usually in a transitional urban settlement, devising imaginative responses to specific cultural and technical issues.
Work in Kosovo is discussed in Rebuilding Community in Kosovo (2003). From 2002 to 2013 the studio’s focus centred on design within marginal settlements in India (Gujarat 2002, Meerut 2003, Delhi 2004-5 and 2007-9, Agra 2006/10-13). He is author of Learning from Delhi, Dispersed Initiatives in Changing Urban Landscapes (2010), about the work of the studio in India, which won the Urban Design Group prize 2012.
Research since 2008 around the construction of a small peri-urban primary school in Freetown, Sierra Leone has resulted in 2 exhibitions and publication with the British Council of: The Architecture of 3 Freetown Neighbourhoods. Documenting changing city topographies 2008-2013 (2013) which was short listed for the RIBA President’s Awards for outstanding university-located research 2014. A paper: The Forest and the City reviewing the role of memory in urban place making in the Freetown peninsular was published in 2018.
From 2014-16 work focused on the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal, post-earthquake and from 2017 to 2019 on the refugee crisis in Europe focusing on situations in Athens, Greece and Calabria, Italy. He is co-author with Dr Bo Tang of the book: Loose Fit City: The Contribution of Bottom Up Architecture to Urban Design and Planning (2018).
