Who we are
We are a group of architects and urban designers interested in the relationships between the form of our cities and places, and what happens in them. We study and design cities and places at all scales, and we are interested in behavioural occurrences at any scale, from the small (the edge of a building) to the large (the image that we hold of our neighbourhoods for example).
To this network in IAPS, we also bring in many years of experience in teaching design. We welcome anybody who like us share an interest in the interface between what we build and how we use it.
Dr Fei Chen is a Reader in Architecture and Urban Design at the Liverpool School of Architecture. She is interested in urban form, and how spatial transformation affects people’s sense of identity, place value, quality of life, health and wellbeing. She is also interested in urban design governance in various planning cultures for new development, conservation and regeneration. She is the Director of the Urban Form and Social Space research group in LSA; the Executive Editor of the Journal of Urban Management (Elsevier); and the Director of the European Chapter of the International Association for China Planning (IACP).
Dr Ombretta Romice is Reader in Architecture and Urban Design at the University of Strathcyde in Glasgow. She is interested in cities – how they work, how they support life and activities and how to design them and deliver responsive, resilient and sustainable places. The past 10-12 years of work have been dedicated to measure, quantify and describe urban form precisely and extensively and to provide a completely new, accurate and unique approach to how we understand cities. Her aim is to help investigate the correlations between the form of our places and social, economic and environmental indicators, allowing comparison, tracing trajectories (past, current and future), making informed assessment and guiding new research, policy and implementation. An evidence-based approach of this kind is crucial to guide our cities towards social and environmentally sustainable principles in a concerted, targeted, collaborative way. The research published below has been conducted with many colleagues and PhD students, and applied in several international contexts, and has culminated in the proposition for urban design as an independent profession and a (partly) reformed evidence-based curriculum for education in urban design. Ombretta was part of the IAPS Board from 2004-12, and President from 2008-2012. Ombretta collaborates with a strong team so the work you will see mentioned below involves other researchers in Strathclyde (Porta, S.; Rigoni, C.), or in other Universities and companies (Fleischmann, M.; Venerandi, A).