Christina Malathouni

• Senior Lecturer at University of Liverpool

Integrating human needs and desires into the design process has long been a crucial aim of design research. Despite advancements, architectural design still often overlooks the diverse dimensions of human experiences. In this context, the recent development of affordable and mobile brain-imaging devices using electroencephalography (EEG) presents a...

This article examines the history of, and specialist design principles behind, two Admission Units that were added to two existing mental health hospitals in post-war England: Fair Mile Hospital, in Cholsey, near Wallingford, Berkshire (now Oxfordshire) and Fulbourn Hospital, near Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, completed in 1956 and 1964 respectively....

This article describes the use of glass-reinforced polyester (GRP) in Preston Bus Station in Lancashire, England, designed by Building Design Partnership (BDP) and completed in 1969. GRP was used both for concrete moulds that play a key role in enabling the construction of the building’s distinctive elevation, and for kiosks, signage and smaller fi...

This article discusses the Admission and Treatment Unit at Fair Mile Hospital, in Cholsey, near Wallingford, Berkshire (now Oxfordshire). This was the first new hospital to be completed in England following the launch of the National Health Service. The building was designed by Powell and Moya, one of the most important post-war English architectur...

This paper discusses the fifteen-year fight for the statutory heritage designation of the Central Bus Station and Car Park in Preston, Lancashire, England – a case that has become known internationally as a landmark of post-WWII heritage. It focuses on democratic politics within architectural heritage by examining the opposing roles played by democ...

This essay discusses the work of the American architect, mystic, and theorist Claude Fayette Bragdon (1866–1946). It focuses on his “Projective Ornament”, which, it is argued, puts forward a “higher” type of “organicism”, which adds a fourth “step”—that of the human—to earlier theories that presented minerals, vegetables, and animals as part of an...

‘Space’ has held a central position within the architectural discourse throughout the twentieth century and a number of twenty-first-century publications suggest interest in this notion is not to be diminished any time soon. Seen from our contemporary perspective, the association between architecture and space could therefore seem ordinary and self...