Website

Design research tools

Sheffield DesignLAB, 2025

Welcome to DesignLAB!An interdisciplinary platform for researchers, educators, and practitioners who use design as a way of thinking, making, and collaborating. Based at the School of Architecture and Landscape at the University of Sheffield, DesignLAB brings together those exploring design as a methodology in research and teaching. It’s a space to share ideas, challenge perspectives, and build connections across the built environment disciplines. Join us in shaping new ways of seeing, questioning, and creating through design! Feel free to explore the design tools in our library, add one of yours or engage with our media content.Website, Design, Participation, Design, Carolyn Butterworth, Dan Jary, Emre Akbil and Leo Care

Castlegate

Co-production Index, September 2023 - January 2024

This digital index brings together for the first time all the work that students and academics at the School of Architecture have produced for Castlegate over the last decade.Castlegate is the historic birthplace of Sheffield, located at the confluence of the Rivers Don and Sheaf. This now dilapidated area of the city centre was once a bustling home to 800 years of market trading, theatres, industry and one of the largest mediaeval castles in England, demolished in 1650.Since 2014, students, graduates and academics from the School of Architecture at the University of Sheffield have been co-producing design work and participatory research with community groups, local independent businesses, public-sector institutions, Sheffield City Council and colleagues from the Departments of Archaeology and Computer Science, to develop an ambitious shared vision for the future development of the area.This co-production process is envisioning, campaigning for and supporting the development of a new neighbourhood, accessible to all, that celebrates the rich heritage and social history of Castlegate while creating a viable sustainable future.The School of Architecture, through its project office Live Works, is acting as an effective mediator between grassroots and the local authority, helping to build capacity towards meaningful co-production at all scales. Our students’ creative engagement activities, research and design ideas have been instrumental in building a vision, shared by all partners, to deliver an ambitious, community-driven, socially, economically and environmentally sustainable new city quarter.Website, Climate Emergency, EDI, Participation, Placemaking, History and Representation, Design, Participatory, Carolyn Butterworth and Emre Akbil

Live projects

Liveness Charter and Web Resource, 2023 - 2024

The Liveness Charter has been created as an advocacy tool, to celebrate, connect and support all members of staff involved in live community engaged learning in the School of Architecture.The Charter seeks to share the ethos of Liveness with everyone in the School of Architecture, as well as our external partners, so that they have an understanding of the activities, values and aims of the Liveness approach. It is our aim that this will galvanise our work and articulate the benefits of Liveness to all stakeholders. The Liveness Charter and Web resource has been included in the Elevate Directory of Good Practice at the University of Sheffield.Website, EDI, Participation, Pedagogy, Placemaking, Participatory, Leo Care and Carolyn Butterworth

Teaching resource

Feedback, Assessment and Reflection Guide, 2023 - 2024

This guide has been developed to help anyone involved in: receiving and giving feedback, assessment activities and reflection processes. It is a resource for students, staff and guests. The aim is to give people a better understanding of these fundamental areas of learning and teaching, to ensure that everyone can make the most of their education at the Sheffield School of Architecture. Website, Pedagogy, Leo Care, Ian Hicklin and Stuart McKenzie

Urban rooms network

Urban Rooms Toolkit, January - September 2022

The Urban Rooms Toolkit is a public resource to be used, downloaded and shared by anyone interested in situated creative community engagement in placemaking. Here you will find all you need to know about setting up an Urban Room. In this Toolkit you can read the STORIES, get the KNOWHOW and discover the METHODS that have been tried and tested by the Urban Rooms Network. The Toolkit consists of a website with links to download the whole Toolkit, or individual sections:

Urban Rooms? introducing the Urban Room as a tool for place-based community engagement - its ethos, the forms it can take and who might benefit from setting one up.
Stories: case studies of Urban Rooms across the UK - how they were set up, their aims, challenges, activities and the impact they had on their place.
Knowhow: how to make the case, set up, resource and operate an Urban Room - based on real experience from the Urban Rooms Network.
Methods: the activities, techniques and tools that have been tried and tested in Urban Rooms to foster inclusive and creative engagement.

The project was funded via HEIF Knowledge Exchange funding by The University of Sheffield. The Toolkit was produced by Live Works, co-created with the Urban Rooms Network, in partnership with The Place Alliance, UR Folkestone and the Greater London Authority. The project also included the redesign of the Urban Rooms Network website."The Place Alliance set up the Urban Rooms Network as one of its working groups in 2015 because urban rooms can play a vital part in working with communities in helping them to appreciate and improve the quality of their places. The Toolkit will play a valuable and integral role in continuing the Place Alliance’s campaign for improving place quality nationally by encouraging the establishment of more urban rooms." Prof. Matthew Carmona, Chair of Place Alliance, UCL Bartlett School of Planning"We are pleased to have partnered the University of Sheffield on the UR Toolkit project which holds immense value to individuals and groups in helping them to develop civic participation in planning and architecture, and the built environment more generally." Diane Dever, Chair of Urban Rooms NetworkWebsite, Book, Toolkit, EDI, Participation, Placemaking, Carolyn Butterworth

Student resource

ASCA Climate Resources Hub, 2022 - 2024

Within the School of Architecture we place significant emphasis on supporting and facilitating student led learning. As a Department we have embraced the emergence of ASCA and valued the role they have played as a critical friend. I secured an Education Grant in 2022 in partnership with the group that has helped to invigorate and enhance their activities over the course of the year and beyond.Recognised the long-standing challenge in universities of sharing and disseminating the exceptional work, often laden with specialised knowledge, particularly in light of the climate crisis both with and beyond the school I supported ASCA facilitated by the Education Fund to established a virtual platform called the "Climate Resource Hub." Using the widely accessible Miro platform, commonly used in the school of architecture, this hub initially became a centralised repository for all things climate-related. It featured an extensive, organised reading list, showcases master's level works on critical material appraisals for a deeper understanding of climate-conscious materials, provides an active events calendar, links to talks we hosted, climate-related articles, and fosters collaboration and suggestions from fellow students. Over the summer, the platform continued to evolve into a Climate resource website.Event, Website, Toolkit, Climate Emergency, Building Performance, Pedagogy, Participation, Material Cultures, History and Representation, John Sampson

"The response to the Climate Emergency has developed into a real strength of the programme. I was amazed how the school had stepped forward in response to the Climate Emergency over the past 2 years."

Prof. Sussanne Hoffman, MArch External Examiner 2023

Student project archive

Studio Just Transitions, 2021 - Ongoing

Studio Just Transitions is an MArch Design Studio at Sheffield School of Architecture.The world is embarking on an unprecedented transition. To deliver on the global commitments enshrined in the Paris Agreement, the UK must achieve zero carbon emissions by the mid-2030s. Such a change will require the radical adaptation of both our energy system and the way we engage with energy as a society. Energy transitions have always been shaped by social, political and economic structures, and the transition ahead of us is as much a cultural transition as a physical one.This site was created to form an archive of the studio's work both within and outside of the School of Architecture.Website, Climate Emergency, Placemaking, Material Cultures, John Sampson

Feminist pedagogy

SSoA Feminist Library, May 2020 - Present

In March 2020 SSoA staff and students organised a Feminist Teach Out to explore feminist foundations, fields and futures and celebrate 20 years of feminist activity at SSoA. Many participants at the event expressed interest in having access to the work produced in the school over the years under this banner.During the last decades, numerous students have produced design and theoretical projects addressing feminist topics and methodologies which remained invisible to the wider School community. Much of the feminist work in the School took more intangible forms such as conferences, events and discussions which remained fully or partially unrecorded.The Feminist Library at SSoA will include an archive, in which previous outputs (dissertations, publications, theses, design projects, event recordings and testimonials) will be documented and stored, and a live part in which new events, activities, and debates will be posted in real time. The Feminist Library will be launched during a special event in November and disseminated across UK and international HE institutions. This will be a key resource for students and staff and will ensure that SSoA continues to set the agenda in feminist pedagogy and research.Website, EDI, History and Representation, Pedagogy, Participation, Carolyn Butterworth and Catherine Skelcher

MArch project archive

Studio Learning Culture archive, 2020

The Studio Learning Culture web resource disseminates a collated and collective body of student work from 2015-2019. Organised into 8 thematic areas, each is a lense through which learning has been explored; revealing a series of crucial contemporary societal, spatial and environmental challenges. Projects exhibited here have formulated innovative approaches and critical design responses to these challenges; raising many questions as well as solutions.Since 2015 Studio Learning Culture has explored what it means to learn; to acquire skills or gain knowledge, to study or be taught, to educate or engage in a pedagogical process.Studio Learning Culture comprises a group of Masters Architecture students based in Sheffield School of Architecture at the University of Sheffield. Led by Leo Care the studio has collaborated with a range of stakeholders from academia, local authorities, charities, interest groups and schools.Based in South Yorkshire and the Sheffield City Region, this body of work forms a collective set of ideas and visions to transform learning in the region and transform the region through learning.Website, Digital Learning, Climate Emergency, Pedagogy, Placemaking, Leo Care

Project archive

SYHAxSSoA Project Stack, 2019 - 2024

Welcome to the SSOAxSHYA Project Stack Archive!The School of Architecture at the University of Sheffield and South Yorkshire Housing Association have been working together on a number of collaborative projects since 2019. We call this the SYHAxSSoA Project Stack. This archive collects and celebrates all the fantastic work created so far from across the School, including the Y2 Housing Project, PG Live Projects, MArch Dissertations and SAS Case Studies.The archive is organised in 3 themes:

New Homes: To meet the housing crisis and to meet demand, SYHA have to build new social housing. Through the project stack, SSOA and SYHA are exploring how Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) and other sustainable techniques can be used to deliver fantastic new homes with excellent environmental credentials.
Futureproof Homes: Making our homes ready for the future is a multi-faceted problem, with the two main issues being the climate crisis and an ageing population.
Living Together: Living Together healthily and happily at all scales, from neighborhood level down to communal facilities, is an increasingly important area of study and development.

The work that SYHA and SSOA have done together to asses and design new ways of living together is already having an impact within SYHA, who are now "thinking, more and more about how we can create a sustainable public realm." and are using the tools created by students and researchers to, "influence our our policy and what we do in development going forward"Website, Climate Emergency, EDI, Building Performance , Participation, Placemaking, Carolyn Butterworth and Sam Brown

"At SYHA, we've got over 6,000 homes and we need to make sure that they're going to be fit for the future" [working with SSOA] "challenges us to think in different ways about them and builds on our knowledge...to influence our policy and what we do in development going forward."

-South Yorkshire Housing Association

A cross-disciplinary, arts-based research project funded by the AHRC Connected Communities programmearoundthetoilet.wordpress.com/

Student resource

Around the Toilet: Design Toolkit, 2018

The Design toolkit was one strand of the Around The Toilet research project, that aimed to create an online resource to help students to understand the importance of toilet design and engage them in the challenges of creating better toilets. The work incorporated gender and disability studies with architectural design and research. The work and outputs from the project were presented at the Disordinary Architecture conference at UCL in March 2018.The project was AHRC funded.Journal Article, Toolkit, Website, EDI, History and Representation, Pedagogy, Participation, Building Performance, Leo Care

Housing development

Space to Park - 2014

Home Improvements, an AHRC-funded Knowledge Exchange programme, aims to improve the quality and value of new housing by enhancing communication and knowledge exchange between volume housing builders and architectural practices. The project is a collaboration between the Universities of Sheffield (lead partner), Edinburgh and Kingston, in partnership with the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA),housing industry stakeholders, including Taylor Wimpey, Design for Homes and Radian as well as 3 practice partners.As one of the practice partners on the project URBED in collaboration with the University of Edinburgh and Design for Homes prepared the Space to Park study. This tests assumptions about parking provision in residential developments using data collected on more than 400 new house schemes in Kent, six case studies, residents’ survey and focus groups.Space to Park has resulted in a web-based, user-generated resource of best practice for those seeking parking solutions in new build residential developments.Its final report and findings were presented at a parliamentary launch in Westminster on 12th February 2014 by the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government.The project was also nominated for an RIBA President's Award for Outstanding University-located Research.A copy of the full report along with the executive summary and good practice case studies can be found at the Space to Park WebsiteEvent, Journal Article, Website, Placemaking, John Sampson

Ash, C., Birkbeck, D., Brown, S., Cerulli, C. and Stevenson, F. (2013) - Motivating Collective Custom Build_full report.pdf

Cohousing development

Motivating Collective Custom Build, 2013 - 2014

Sam was seconded to Ash Sakula Architects as part of a project that tested methods by which academic institutions could collaborate with industry partners. The project focused on in-depth research into the delivery of custom build housing in the UK. Sam collaborated with Ash Sakula Architects and housing industry social enterprise, Design For Homes, on the production of a short film and website that collected, curated and introduced information about collective forms of self-provided housing and argued the case for greater support for this type of development.The project attracted significant media interest and was launched in the UK Parliament in 2014. The project was set within the Home Improvements research project funded by the Arts & Humanities Research (AHRC) and led by Prof. Flora Samuel. Motivating Collective Custom Build was led by Prof. Fionn Stevenson as Primary Investigator and Dr Cristina Cerulli as Co-Investigator.Event, Film, Website, Participation, Sam Brown

CollectiveCustomBuild_inWeb (trimmed).wmv

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