Contact:	Room 129b The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL Wates House, 22 Gordon Street London WC1H 0QB
t:	+ 44 (0)20 7679 8848
f:	+ 44 (0)20 7679 4831
e:	b.campkin@ucl.ac.uk

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Research Interests

My interdisciplinary research investigates processes and representations of urban and architectural degradation and regeneration, with a particular focus on twentieth century and contemporary London. I am interested in the material conditions of urban dirt, blight and ruin, and the discourses associated with the decline and renewal of cities.

These interests have led me to examine a wide range of architectural and spatial forms – from slums, sink estates and ghettoes, to industrial ruins, wastelands and red-light-zones – as well as a variety of different social and physical urban improvement campaigns. My research studies have ranged from early twentieth century slum clearances, to the reconstruction efforts and public house building programmes that followed World War II, to the large-scale government and business-led regeneration campaigns of the 1990s.

In exploring blighted city spaces I adopt an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on my training in archaeology, art and architectural history and cultural geography, and focusing on architectural, artistic, literary, photographic, cinematic, and media representations. Through this broad emphasis on the urban imaginary in relation to contemporary development I critically examine the dominant historical and cultural narratives accompanying major regeneration projects. My work also develops from existing studies of modernist hygienist discourses and urban sanitary reform to look at more recent developments in the aesthetics of dirt and cleanliness in the context post-industrial architecture in the late modern metropolis

Two recent funded projects have also explored the identity of the architect in relation to contemporary architectural education, and the roles and interactions between different actors and agencies involved in urban development.

See publications list.

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Selected Key Outputs

Title	'Urban Image and Legibility in King's Cross'
Author	Campkin, B
Type	Book Chapter
Date	2004
Book Title	Interventions: Advances in Art and Urban Futures
Location	Bristol
Editors	Malcolm Miles and Tim Hall
Publisher	Intellect Books
ISBN	1841501182
Pagination	63–79
	[ Detail ]
Title	Dirt: New Geographies of Cleanliness and Contamination
Type	Edited Book
Date	2007
Location	London
Editors	Campkin, B, Cox, R.,
Publisher	IB Tauris
ISBN	1845116720
Pagination	240pp
	[ Detail ]
Title	'Degradation and Regeneration: Theories of Dirt and the Contemporary City'
Author	Campkin, B
Type	Book Chapter
Book Title	Dirt: New Geographies of Cleanliness and Contamination
Date	2007
Location	London
Editors	Campkin, B, Cox, R.,
Publisher	IB Tauris
	[ Detail ]
Title	'Down and Out in London? Photography and the Politics of Representing "Life in the Elephant", 1948 and 2005'
Author	Campkin, B
Type	Book Chapter
Book Title	The Politics of Making: Theory, Practice, Product
Date	2007
Location	Oxford
Editors	Swenarton,M., Troiani,T., Webster,H.
Publisher	Taylor and Francis
	[ Detail ]
Title	‘Ornament from grime: David Adjaye's Dirty House, the architectural “aesthetic of recycling” and the Gritty Brits’
Author	Campkin, B
Type	Refereed Article
Journal Title	The Journal of Architecture
Date	2007
Vol.	12
No.	4
Pagination	pp. 367–392
ISSN	1360-2365
	[ link ]
	[ Detail ]

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Curriculum Vitae

Teaching

Modules that I currently teach or contribute to:

MA Architectural History

BENVGAH1 Architecture in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Britain (2008/9)
ENVSGH04 The Representation of Cities (2006-)

MSc Urban Studies, UCL Urban Laboratory

URBNGO02: Urban Imaginations (2008-)

BSc Architecture, BSc Urban Studies/Urban Planning, Design and Management

ENVS2034 Architectural History & Theory, Architexts, Seminar Leader (2002-)
ENVS1000 The Cultural and Historical Development of Cities & Their Architecture, Course Tutor (2002-)
ENVS3021 Architectural History & Theory, ‘Ruins and Recyclings’, Seminar Leader (2002-)

Developing from the themes of my research this year 3 undergraduate dissertation course is now running for its sixth consecutive year. Through seminars, readings and visits students explore the spaces and aesthetics of abandonment, decay, ruin and recycling in recent and contemporary architecture and urbanism. The course is structured around different urban forms and physical states associated with blight – from crumbling modernist ruins, to anxious and toxic weed-strewn wastelands, neglected and deteriorating slums, abandoned derelict industrial buildings; used, weathered and contaminated materials. How have artists, architects, photographers and filmmakers engaged critically and creatively with these disorderly stigmatised architectures and their associated material and immaterial conditions? How and why have degraded ex-industrial buildings and blighted spaces been reconfigured, regenerated and re-valued, while others remain in decline, subject to natural reclamation? These are core questions which students are asked to consider. They then embark on their own individual research enquiry into a space or state of architectural ruin or renewal.

ENVS1347 Production of the Built Environment, Seminar Leader/Lecturer (2001-2007).

Recent academic supervision/student prizes and published essays

Petr Gibas (2008) ‘Industrial nostalgia: The case of Poldi Kladno’ http://prosynagogu.wz.cz/Industrial_nostalgia_Petr_Gibas_Lide_Mesta.pdf

Luke Jones (2008) ‘John Ruskin and I’. Highest mark and nominated for Undergraduate History & Theory prize. Currently being reviewed for publication.

Bethany Wells (2007) ‘Global Warming Causes the Frozen Music to Melt: An Exploration of Air’. Winner of the Bartlett School of Architecture Undergraduate History & Theory Prize.

Susana Holguin-Veras (2007) On the Under-bridge. MSc Architectural History dissertation.

Torsten Lange (2007) ‘Montrosity, Anxiety and the Real: Representations of the Victorian Metropolis in David Lynch’s The Elephant Man’. Essay submitted for Representation of Cities Module, subsequently published in Opticon 1826 2(1) Autumn 2007. http://www.ucl.ac.uk/opticon1826/archive/issue3/RfP_Art_BART_Lange_Monstrosity.pdf

RIBA Modern Architecture and Town Planning Trust Award
Pat Stone, BA MSc, Research Assistant, part-time, RA1B
Funding: RIBA Modern Architecture and Town Planning Trust Award
Start date: 7th January 2005
End date: October 2006

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Title	Entry to Architectural Education: Widening Access and Assessing the Potential for Success
Type	Quantitative study, research report and symposium
Investigator(s)	Ware, S. (PI), Campkin, B (CI), Stone, P. (RA)
Date	August 2004 - October 2006
Location	Bartlett School of Architecture, London and Kingston University School of Architecture and Landscape
Funding Body	RIBA Modern Architecture and Town Planning Trust Award
Value	£10,000 (£5,000, RIBA plus match-funding by Bartlett School of Architecture)
	[ Detail ]
Title	Exploring Roles and Relationships in the Production of the Built Environment
Type	Funded refereed Case Study
Investigator(s)	Campkin, B., Edwards, M
Date	December 2005 to October 2006
Location	UCL
Funding Body	Centre for Education in the Built Environment
Value	£300
	[ Detail ]

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Awards and affiliations

Member of AHRC Network on ‘Street life and street culture: Between Early Modern Europe and the present’ (PI Dr F. Nevola, Oxford Brookes University).

Member of the Society of Architectural Historians (2006-present).  Annual Meeting session co-chair, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, (April 2007).

Member of the Historical Geography Research Group, Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographers (2006-present)

Member of the UK Architectural Humanities Research Association (AHRA) (2005-present)

Member of the Centre for Education in the Built Environment (CEBE) Special Interest Group, 'Supporting Student Diversity in Architectural Education' (2004-present)

Member of the Association of Art Historians (2001-present)

Member of the Cultural and Historical Geographers Research Group, Department of Geography, UCL (2004-present)

Deputy Editor, City: Analysis of Urban Trends, Theory, Policy, Action (Routledge/Taylor and Francis) (2001-2005).

Peer Reviewer: journals, Architectural Theory Review (2007); Architectural Research Quarterly - ARQ (2007); CEBE Transactions (2006); CITY (2001–6). Books: Routledge (2006).

Top image reproduced by kind permission of Camden Local Studies Archive.

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