Directory

Following a degree in History of Art from Cambridge, Alan received his doctorate on Architectural Education in Britain 1880-1914. He is a prolific writer for magazines and author of numerous books. He is joint editor of the journal Twentieth Century Architecture and joint editor of the monograph  series, Twentieth Century Architects. He has curated popular exhibitions, including Modern Britain 1929-39 (Design Museum), 1999; Eric Ravilious (Imperial War Museum), 2003; and Eros to the Ritz: 100 Years of Street Architecture (Royal Academy), 2013.

As professor of architecture and cultural history at the University of Greenwich, Alan taught architectural history and theory for undergraduate and diploma courses from 1999-2012, and has been a frequent external examiner for PhD and other higher degrees. He is chairman of Pollock’s Toy Museum Trust in London, and formerly chair of the Twentieth Century Society (2007-12). An expert on 20th century architecture,  Alan was awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 2008.

Alan is the Leader of Historical Studies.

Alicia Pivaro will work with students to explore and encourage practice that cultivates and celebrates real and long-term engagement with communities, local authorities and civil society, connecting with like-minded partners who align design with new forms of political action and intervention.

Alicia is an urbanist, community activist and artist working across disciplines and using participation and radical thinking to inform methods of urban and social change. After training as an architect, she worked at several leading organisations including the Arts Council, RIBA and Architecture Foundation where she developed projects that supported alternative practices and diverse voices and community involvement in architectural discourse. Then, as an independent curator, teacher and activist she developed a position within the field of architecture that links bottom-up community action to Marxist academia via social architecture and urbanism. She is an advocate for neighbourhood planning and other examples of co-production of the city that work towards creating a more sustainable, equitable and lovely version of the world.

Dr David Knight is a designer, strategist and author, and a founding co-director of DK-CM, an architecture, planning and research practice which is focussed on making work in public, from buildings and public spaces to design guidance, spatial policy, urban strategy and research.

Eddie Blake is an architect and academic. He has ten years’ experience teaching architecture at several architecture schools, including the Bartlett, Central St. Martins and Royal College of Art.

He also director at Studio Weave – and architecture practice based on London. He has over fifteen years’ experience in practice including master-planning, architecture, public art, exhibition design and design products. Recent projects include the British Museum Visitor Welcome Pavilion, Vestry House Museum, London, and the acclaimed mixed-use Ivy St., London. He writes about architecture and contemporary culture for the Guardian, Architectural Review, Vice, Architects’ Journal, Icon, Metropolis and Real Review among other publications. Through the parallel activities of teaching, criticism and proposition Blake pursues a continuing interest in the way architecture embodies social and cultural ideas.

Eddie is a Second Year Design Tutor at the LSA.

Gill is Director at AOC, a practice of Architects and Designers based in London. The engage in collaborative processes to designs that are particular to place, and make designs that are useful, valuable and joyful. She has been responsible for designing and delivering a range of cultural institutions, exhibitions, and homes. Most recently the Young V&A in Bethnal Green which has been recently described as one of London’s great indoor public spaces.

She studied architecture at the Hull School of Architecture and the University of Westminster. For her final thesis project, she won the RIBA Silver Medal, the SOM Travel Award and the Sergeant Prize for Drawing. Gill taught an MArch design studio at University of Westminster for several years and is a member of the RIBA validation panel.

Gill is a Second Year Design Tutor at the LSA.

Dr Hugh Strange is Director of Hugh Strange Architects, an Associate Professor at the LSA and the Module leader for the Second Year Design Tectonics course.

Ingrid is an architect with experience across cultural, heritage and residential projects. She is currently Head of Capital Programme at the Victoria and Albert Museum, responsible for the strategic planning, design and delivery of its capital programme, including a masterplan for the Grade I-listed South Kensington site addressing net zero carbon by 2035.

Ingrid previously spent over ten years at Feilden Fowles as Senior Associate, leading major schemes including the Grade I-listed Fratry extension at Carlisle Cathedral and Central Hall for the National Railway Museum, as well as the masterplan for Green Templeton College, Oxford.

Outside of practice, Ingrid is a Trustee of the Brooking Collection and Create London, and a member of the Bromley Design Review Panel. She co-led a design studio at London Metropolitan University until 2025, focused first on spaces for learning and later on housing.

Ingrid is a Design Tectonics Tutor at the LSA.

Jo Preston is an architect and urban designer with a background in architectural history and planning. Alongside teaching on the Critical Practice course at the London School of Architecture, Jo works as Urban Design Processes Lead at the Ministry of Housing Communities and Local Government (MHCLG).

In previous roles, Jo focused on the design of public realm and social housing projects at Sarah Wigglesworth Architects, Peter Barber Architects, Publica and AR Urbanism. As an urban designer, she supported communities in London and Essex to develop design codes and oversaw the design of large-scale housing developments in her role at the Greater Cambridge Shared Planning Service.

Jo is a Critical Practice Tutor at the LSA.

Professor Lee Ivett is an architect, academic, and maker. He is also the founder of the participatory architecture, art, and design studio Baxendale.

He was most recently Deputy Associate Dean and Head of Architecture and Construction at the University of Lancashire in his home town of Preston. In this role, he led a wide portfolio of built environment disciplines, developed opportunities for cross-disciplinary learning, and championed an ethos of ‘learning through doing’ and ‘thinking through making’.

His practice-led research is rooted in the organic and generative, focusing on low-budget, socially-led projects developed with communities across the UK. These projects evolve from the tactical into longer-term, durational forms. This work has been brought together through ‘Other People’s Dreams’ – a collaborative live-action research office and educational framework that supports third-sector community organisations in the North West to use acts of making as a means of prototyping and creating new forms of amenity, activity, and public space. The work of ‘Other People’s Dreams’ has been shortlisted and commended in the RIBA Journal MacEwen Awards and showcased nationally and internationally.

Lee’s work has been recognised internationally for its innovation, impact, and quality. He has exhibited, produced, and presented in Poland, Hungary, Nuremberg, Los Angeles, the Venice Architecture Biennale, BIO Ljubljana, and throughout the UK, and was selected for inclusion in the publication ‘New Architects 3’.

He is also a regular contributor to architectural discourse, having written for ‘Architectural Review’, ‘Architects’ Journal’, ‘Architecture Today’, ‘RIBA Journal’, and ‘Metropolis’, as well as a range of academic journals.

In addition, he speaks widely at national and international academic conferences on his research, teaching, and practice. He also contributes regularly to radio, digital media, podcasts, exhibitions, articles, and public events on architecture, society, and the city.

Lee is Head of School at the London School of Architecture.

Maria-Chiara studied in Milan and has almost 20 years of professional experience, working for several well-known architectural practices including Kengo Kuma and Associates, OMA and Amanda Levete Architects, as well as founding her own studio. PiM.studio Architects, through research and design, try to re-articulate the relationship between architecture, humans, and all other living beings.

She joined David Chipperfield Architects in 2022 and led the successful competition for the LSE Firoz Lalji Global Hub in London, for which she is now the project architect. In addition to her architectural work, Maria-Chiara teaches at the London School of Architecture, has lectured in various schools and has been an Architecture Ambassador for the RIBA National Schools programme. She is devoted to supporting and encouraging women working in the built environment.

Maria-Chiara is a Second Year Design Tutor at the LSA.

Mat Barnes is the director of CAN, an Architecture and Ideas studio based in London. Since its formation in 2016, CAN has built a reputation for creating striking and idiosyncratic projects across public art, architecture and furniture design. CAN’s work is widely published and has won multiple awards, including two RIBA awards and a Wallpaper* furniture design award. CAN was included in the Observer’s Top 5 architecture of 2020 and Mat received the RIBA Rising Star award 2021. Mat has presented CAN’s work across Europe and previously taught at the University of Liverpool.

Matthew Lloyd Roberts is an architectural historian and critic. He is a PhD candidate in the History of Art Department at the University of Cambridge, funded by the Ax:son Johnson Centre for the Study of Classical Architecture. His research focuses on interactions between the built environment and print culture in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England, and in 2024 he was awarded the Dunscombe Colt Fellowship by the British Society for Eighteenth Century Studies and Georgian Group.

He has been teaching Design History at the London School of Architecture since 2024 and he writes and broadcasts about buildings for a variety of publications and organisations, including Open City, for whom he hosts ‘Deconstructed’, a podcast about London’s architecture.

Nana Biamah-Ofosu will engage with our students on how our economy, industry and practice will change as we meet the challenge of the climate crisis through challenging the ways we design, construct, and collaborate that establish truly sustainable and regenerative design practices, and which acknowledge and enable a built environment for all.

Nicola Antaki is a practising architect, educator and researcher. Her focus is on the potential for collective (co)design approaches to enable (young) people to develop urban agency. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at ENSAPLV in Paris and runs Collective Design Practice in London. She has a PhD Architectural Design from the Bartlett School of Architecture and Development Planning Unit in 2019.

Nicola is the Design Think Tank (DTT) module leader at the LSA.

Roy Coupland is a qualified architect having studied at the University of Kent, the Architectural Association and the University of Cambridge. He is currently working for Niall McLaughlin Architects having previously worked at Matheson Whiteley, David Chipperfield Architects and Herzog & de Meuron. Roy is a co-founder of S.o.U.P, a collaboration focused on exploring new methodologies of shaping the built environment through community engagement. He is also actively engaged in developing new environmentally-driven approaches to working with existing buildings.

Roy Coupland is Part 0 Coordinator at the LSA and runs the Part 0 National Saturday Club programme with Yang Yang Chen.

Dr Ruth Lang is an architect, curator, and writer, whose work explores how the processes of contemporary architectural practice can better respond to the Climate Emergency. This research led to the publication of “Building for Change: the Architecture of Creative Reuse” with gestalten. Her work has been exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Jerwood Gallery, and she was a research fellow for low carbon construction in the Future Observatory at the Design Museum.

Ruth is the Head of Part 2/MArch Programme.

Siraaj spent three years working predominantly on affordable housing for London architecture practice Allies and Morrison, where he qualified as an architect. He then spent six months living, working and educating in Nairobi, Kenya for an architectural NGO after which he returned to the UK and spent three years working for Stanton Williams as part of the team designing the new Museum of London.

Siraaj is passionate about educating and diversifying professions in the built industries, and directs Accelerate at Open City, a programme that encourages young people from under-represented backgrounds to explore careers in the built environment.

Siraaj is a First Year Design Tutor at The LSA.

Tom is Design Director at DK-CM, a London-based architecture practice that focuses on public work of all kinds. He has been at DK-CM since 2019, having previously worked at Ash Sakula Architects. Most recently he was project architect on the Camber Sands Welcome Centre project for Rother District Council. Other recent projects include Westway Community Street, North Paddington Canalside, and De Gulleboom Primary School. Outside of DK-CM Tom runs The Three Wheel Drive, a record label, festival, radio show and event series – and engages in the design and making of his own projects with an emphasis on working with timber.

Yang Yang studied at Mcgill University in Montreal, the Architectural Association and the University of Cambridge. She is a qualified architect currently working for Witherford Watson Mann and has previously worked for Niall Mclaughlin Architects and Bjarke Ingels Group in New York City. Yang Yang is a co-founder of S.o.U.P, a collaboration focused on exploring new methodologies of shaping the built environment through community engagement. Yang Yang is also actively engaged in developing new environmentally-driven approaches to working with existing buildings.

Yang Yang runs the Part 0 National Saturday Club programme at the LSA with Roy Coupland.