Professor Davide Deriu

I joined Westminster in 2007 and am currently Professor of Architectural Humanities at the School of Architecture and Cities. My roles include those of REF Lead (UoA13: Architecture, Built Environment and Planning) and Co-convenor for the Architectural Humanities Research Group. Previously I served as Director of Architectural Research and School’s Assistant Research Director, and was an editorial board member of the University of Westminster Press.

My studies were at Politecnico di Torino and University College London, where I took a Master in History of Modern Architecture (distinction) and a PhD in Architecture. Prior to joining Westminster, I taught at The Bartlett (UCL), Brighton and Canterbury, and was a full-time Visiting Assistant Professor at METU, Ankara. I have been a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy since 2017, when I completed a PG Cert in Higher Education at the Westminster Business School (distinction).

Research awards include fellowships from the British Academy, the UK's Arts and Humanities Research Council, Yale University’s Paul Mellon Centre, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Canadian Centre for Architecture, as well as a small grant from the Wellcome Trust. My writing appears in a number of publications in five languages and I was invited to talk at numerous academic and cultural institutions, including Tate Britain, Kunsthaus Graz, Nottingham Contemporary Art Centre, and the RIBA (Colin Rowe Lecture 2017). I have acted as PhD external examiner at UCL and Kingston University, as well as M.Res thesis assessor at the University of Brighton. 

Besides regular peer-review activities, I have acted as a referee for major international funding bodies (e.g., Swiss National Science Foundation) and was a panel member for the Italian National Research Agency (VQR 2015–2019). In addition, I have sat on the steering committee of the Architectural Humanities Research Association (AHRA) and the European Architectural History Network (EAHN), wherein I contributed to found the open access journal Architectural Histories. I was also a Visiting Professor to the Iuav University of Venice and the University of Cagliari.

My research explores critical intersections between spatial and visual cultures. I have done extensive work on 20C architectural and urban representations with a focus on photography. In recent years, my attention has shifted to the perception and experience of space, ranging from high-rise built environments to the underground. 

PhD supervisions include various aspects of design research and I am also involved in co-supervising practice-based projects at the Westminster School of Arts (CREAM). I welcome doctoral proposals, particularly in the following areas: 20C architectural history and theory; modernity/modernism; visual culture and representation; the experience of space; travel cultures; contemporary urbanism and landscapes.

Ongoing supervisions:

- John Aitken, Visualising Creative Destruction: A Photographic Study of Urban Change in Salford (CREAM)

- Hui Ken (Dmitri) Chong, Refuge: Home-making in the context of refugeeness

- Akma Nazar, Reimagining the gendered Mappila home

- Danying Yu, Spatial Expressions of Everyday ‘Making Do’ in Chinese Urban Villages (CREAM)

Completions:

- Amy Butt, ‘Doors that could take you elsewhere’: The Architectural Practice of Reading Science Fiction (PhD by Published Work)

- Lida-Evangelia Driva, The operation of the 'hidden': towards an understanding of architectural and urban space, the case of Omonia square

- Samra Khan, The Sethi merchants’ havelis in Peshawar, 1800-1910: form, identity and status

- Emilia Siandou, A value-based approach to modern architectural heritage in Cyprus: Schools in Larnaka, 1945-1963

- Timothy Waterman, Taste, Democracy, and Everyday Life in Landscape Imaginaries (PhD by Published Work)

PROJECTS & GRANTS

Experience of Space

Vertigo in the City is a cross-disciplinary project that explores issues of balance in relation to the perception and experience of built environments. Since 2014, it has involved a network of scholars and practitioners including a collaboration with the University of Applied Arts, Vienna. Its exploratory phase, funded by a Wellcome Trust grant in the Medical Humanities, led to a special issue of the journal Emotion, Space and Society. More recently, a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship enabled the publication of the monograph On Balance: Architecture and Vertigo (Lund Humphries, 2023).

As part of this project, I conceived and co-curated (with Michael Mazière) an exhibition of architectural film installations by Catherine Yass in Ambika P3, Falling Away (2021) partly funded by Arts Council England. A public symposium was held at the School of Architecture and Cities in conjunction with it.

Details and materials are available on the project website

I am currently developing new research into architecture as shelter, with a particular focus on the history, myths and representations of underground spaces.

Photography and Architecture

My extensive research on photography and the built environment deals primarily with issues of scale, perception and politics of representation. It stemmed from my PhD, which examined the relationship between aerial photography and urban visions in the early 20th century. Post-doctoral research funded by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art led to a themed issue of The London Journal on ‘Aerial Views of Metropolitan London’.

My focus then shifted to the relationship between photography and the architectural model, which opened up new questions of scalar perception. Following a Visiting Scholarship at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, in Montreal, I curated the exhibition Modernism in Miniature: Points of View (CCA, 2011). Subsequently, I was invited to the CCA as a Mellon Fellow on the multidisciplinary programme Architecture and/for Photography (2016/17).

A further research strand concerns the socio-spatial aspects of urban landscape photography. In 2012 I co-organised a major cross-disciplinary conference that fed into the edited book Emerging Landscapes: Between Production and Representation (Ashgate, 2014; republished by Routledge, 2016). This prompted me to explore the photographic work of Gabriele Basilico, whose influential practice was the subject of a seminar we held at Westminster in 2016 and of further publications.

My latest output in this area is the open access book Picturing Cities: The Photobook as Urban Narrative (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2024), co-edited with Angelo Maggi.

Travel Cultures and Representations

A broader area of interest concerns the role of travel practices within architectural culture. My project, ‘Picturing Modern Ankara: “New Turkey” in Western Imagination’, explored the cross-cultural perceptions of modern Ankara during the early period of the Turkish Republic. Funded through an AHRC Early-Career Fellowship (2011/12), the research led to several publications and to an international symposium organised in collaboration with SOAS. In addition to this, in 2016 I co-edited a special collection of Architectural Histories on Travel.

For details of all my research outputs, visit my WestminsterResearch profile.