Mahbubul Aman, currently works as a Regeneration Project Manager leading on the GLA awarded funding to transform the Whitechapel High Street. This includes developing the street markets strategy, supporting business in the locality, promoting the area and ensuring Whitechapel becomes a world class centre for Life Sciences. Mahbub is also a resident of Whitechapel.
Stefano Faiella was born and raised in Rome to and Italian father and Scottish mother, Stefano moved to Glasgow where he studied Building Design Engineering and Integrated Building Design at Strathclyde University between 1998 and 2004. A qualified architect since 2005, he is a Director and founding member of Threesixty Architecture (http://360architecture.com/). His currently involved in a number of projects with a particular focus on city centre retail & leisure as well as Residential and Masterplanning projects.
Des Fitzgerald is a lecturer in sociology at Cardiff University, and have wide-ranging interests in the psychological and brain sciences. Among my active research projects, I am working on the history and present of the ‘restless city,’ and am currently co-investigator on an ESRC-funded project, ‘Mental Health, Migration and the Mega-City.’
Maria Herrera qualified and practiced as an architect in Mexico City. She obtained a scholarship to undertake the “City Design and Social Science” masters programme at LSE in 2010-2011. Since 2012, Maria has been working as a Project Officer in the Environmental Enhancement team within the City of London, and is responsible for delivering a range of public realm improvement initiatives of differing scales and scope.
James Knowles is Professor of Renaissance Literature and Culture. Member of curatorial team for Royalist Refugees (Rubenshuis, Antwerp, 2006), historical consultant to English Heritage on re-display of Bolsover Castle (2014). He has written on space, site-specific performances, and literary culture in London, the English Midlands, Scotland, and the Welsh borders, circa 1600-1660. Currently working on royal progresses 1603-49 and on mining and literary culture in Derbyshire in the 1620s and 1630s.
Raymond Lucas is Senior Lecturer in Architecture and Head of Architecture at the University of Manchester. He has a background in architecture and anthropology, having completed his PhD under the supervision of Tim Ingold at the University of Aberdeen. His thesis ‘Towards a theory of notation as a thinking tool’ established a longstanding research interest in drawing, notation, diagramming, mapping and other inscriptive practices. Lucas worked on several postdoctoral fellowships, including ‘Inflecting Space’ (with Richard Coyne, Peter Nelson & Martin Parker) & ‘Cultures of Legibility’ (with Stephen Cairns and William Mackaness) at the University of Edinburgh. Lucas also worked on ‘Multimodal Representation of Urban Space’ (with Ombretta Romice, Wolfgang Sonne & Gordon Mair) at the University of Strathclyde. These projects all involved mapping and sensory environments including the design of a Sensory Notation system and hosting of an international conference on Sensory Urbanism at the University of Strathclyde. Recent research projects include graphic anthropologies of Namdaemun Market in Seoul and Sanja Matsuri festival in Tokyo. In addition to a wide range of journal papers and book chapters, Lucas is working on two monographs: Drawing Parallels for Ashgate, about axonometric drawings; and Anthropology for Architects for Bloomsbury, discussing anthropological theory alongside building typologies. Lucas has also written a textbook for Laurence King due to be published in January 2016: Research Methods for Architecture.
Kate McLean is an artist, designer and collector of ‘smells’ who explores how the urban smellscape can be represented for individual and shared communication. Her practice-based research of ‘smellmapping’ focuses on human perception of smell information in urban smellscapes around the world investigating how this invisible and ephemeral olfactory information might be experienced. She is Senior Lecturer of Graphic Design at Canterbury Christ Church University and a PhD Candidate in Information Experience Design at the Royal College of Art, London @katemclean sensorymaps.com
Chris Miele is an architectural historian and chartered town planner, who works on large-scale regeneration projects, including tall buildings, that are transforming the way central London appears and functions. He is a senior and owning partner at Montagu Evans LLP, a development consultancy employing more 240 people and based in central London. Dr Miele is a recognised industry expert and his specialisms include advising architects and developers on the integration of new development in established areas, particularly historic ones. He was a principal author of the London View Management Framework, the planning guidance document which the Greater London Authority uses to assess 27 strategic views in the capital, and he is instructed regularly as an independent expert witness at planning inquiries dealing with heritage and visual impact. As a leader in his field, Chris has been instrumental in devising accepted best practice for ‘townscape and visual impact assessment’, a discipline within Environmental Impact Assessment. TVIA uses quantitative and qualitative analysis to assess the effects of new development of human perception of places. His working methods include research into popular image making, public consultations, interviews, sophisticated verified computer modelling and ambient noise profiling.
Euan Mills is a qualified Urban Designer with 15 years experience. He has been providing design advice to the Mayor of London for the last 4 years and has contributed to a number of policy documents including the Mayors Housing SPG, Town Centres SPG and a number of Opportunity Area Frameworks. He is currently leading the research the Mayor’s Design Advisory Group on how policy impacts on urban form.
Caroline Pembroke is an Urban Designer working with the Whitechapel Vision Delivery Team, Borough of Tower Hamlets. She is assisting with urban design matters as part of the Whitechapel Vision Delivery Team, including developing briefs and guiding design schemes for Whitechapel’s public realm and major developments. Caroline has experience working on regeneration projects in London and in Australia.
Philip Price is a Senior Business Analyst, development and Renewal, Borough of Tower Hamlets. Philip has an postgraduate academic background upon Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and over ten years of experience working as a consultant across numerous services within the Local Authority (LA) field. Previous core work incorporated aspects of project management operations combined with Business Analysis to re-engineer how each service process their deliverables from the back office to the front line, this work has been endorsed by International and National Awards. Recent work is focused around operational research concepts by abstracting actual real world actions through System Dynamic (SD) models to explore large scale policy options within future thinking and scenario generation through simulations.
Alex Rhys-Taylor is a sociologist and deputy director of the Centre for Urban and Community Research at Goldsmiths. His research looks at the relationship between sensory experiences in urban and social formations in the city. His recent publications include reflections of jellied eels and class disgust, mangoes and multiculture and the role of smell-scapes in the production of local senses of place. He has a book due out next year with Bloomsbury looking at the relationship between urban food cultures and processes of social formation. He lectures in the Sociology Department at Goldsmiths, University of London.
Ben Townsend is Head of Exhibitions at Squint/Opera. Squint/Opera is an international creative studio that produce experiences that bridge the digital and the physical. Recent projects include multiple exhibits for the Victoria & Albert Museum, London including: Hollywood Costume, Horst: Photographer of Style and The Glamour of Italian Fashion. We have completed an animated Discovery Wall for Weill Cornell Medical College, New York and our collaborated with artist Wolfgang Buttress to create a series of experiences in the UK Pavilion EXPO 2015, Milan.
Carolina Vasilikou, holds a PhD in Sustainable Architecture from the School of Architecture (KSA) at the University of Kent, Carolina works as an Associate Lecturer at KSA and collaborates as Research Fellow with the Architecture et Climat Research Laboratory at Université Catholique de Louvain on the project Sensory Comfort and Climate (UCL-WBI). From October 2015, she conducts research on Sensory Navigation in a Heritage City, funded by the Communities & Culture Network + (EPSRC). Carolina has developed the methodology of thermal walks, as a way to understand how microclimate and urban morphology influence pedestrians’ perception of comfort.