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I joined Sheffield School of Architecture in 2014 at the same time as founding Group Ginger architects. The practice focuses on place, identity, and distinction; the studio, (re)-Activist architecture, explores equivalent themes, foregrounding activity to amplify the significance of the user.
Since graduating from the Architectural Association in 1995 I have worked as a director of national practices, gaining extensive architectural and urban design experience, and an interest in temporary activity to stimulate place.
I contribute to the Design Council CABE as a Built Environment Expert; I am a design review panellist for Yorkshire and Humber, a trustee of the Architecture Centre for the Leeds City Region, and was the previous Chair of RIBA Yorkshire.
Sam Brown - Certificate of Attendance Masterclass Net Zero.pdfKnowledge sharing
Getting to Net Zero: Masterclass, 14th July 2021
Getting to Net Zero: Masterclass, 14th July 2021
The increased focus on the Climate Emergency has led to a stream of declarations to achieve Net Zero. But what does that actually mean to the built environment? Do we really know how to design and deliver a true net-zero building? This masterclass was undertaken collectively by design studio teaching staff, module leaders and programme leaders in the undergraduate and MArch programmes at the University of Sheffield School of Architecture as a way to enhance our teaching practice.The event explored the issues around net zero, providing practical illustrations of what it takes to achieve both net-zero operational energy and net-zero embodied energy and highlighting what can be done at design stage to achieve the biggest impact.Event, Climate Emergency, Pedagogy, Building Performance, Sam Brown, Simon Baker
Keynote presentation
CoHoHui Collective Housing Conference, Wellington, New Zealand, 22nd June 2021
CoHoHui Collective Housing Conference, Wellington, New Zealand, 22nd June 2021
Sam Brown from the University of Sheffield School of Architecture and Cany Ash from Ash Sakula Architects were international guests and Keynote Speakers for CoHoHui 2021 - the Collective Housing Conference organised by the Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. The keynote presentation focused on sharing experience of working in community-led housing in the UK and developing the web-based resource "Motivating Collective Custom Build", itself a research project developed collaboratively between the University of Sheffield School of Architecture, Ash Sakula Architects and Design For Homes, funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council.The presentations were subsequently discussed in a recorded, reflective format with Mark Southcombe, Associate Professor at the Victoria University Wellington School of Architecture.Presentation, Participation, Sam Brown, Simon Baker
Urban leisure spaces
Urban subversion and mobile cinema: Leisure, architecture and the “kino-cine-bomber”, April 2018
Urban subversion and mobile cinema: Leisure, architecture and the “kino-cine-bomber”, April 2018
This paper introduces our bicycle-based cinema device—the “kino-cine- bomber”—as a vehicle to reimagine disused buildings and obsolete urban infrastructure for re-activated public leisure spaces. It is also a vehicle to conceptualize theoretical relations between leisure, architecture, cinematic geographies and urban spaces. Through these lenses, we focus on a series of Situationist-inspired methods using the kino-cine-bomber to identify buildings that could be removed—as architecture by subtraction—in Coventry (UK). There, the River Sherbourne flows hidden beneath the city, culverted and capped, a relic of postwar urban planning no longer fit for purpose.We explore river “daylighting” plans by postgraduate architecture students using the kino-cine-bomber, first to trace the hidden river beneath the city streets, then to project architectural designs where buildings may be repurposed and the river revealed. We discuss the possibilities of these designs and, befitting a paper celebrating Situationism, we close with a manifesto for urban leisure spaces.Urban subversion and mobile cinema: Leisure, architecture and the “kino-cine-bomber”Journal Article, Climate Emergency, History and Representation, Placemaking, Building Performance, Simon Baker
Urban design and planning
New Neighbourhood Planning: The Future of the Food Axis, January 2018
New Neighbourhood Planning: The Future of the Food Axis, January 2018
This paper considers the evolving relationship between our two most basic human needs; to eat and to dwell. The phenomena of cooking released us from the constant need to feed and thus allowed us the time to develop culture, agriculture and ultimately civilization. The Food axis, a term coined by Elizabeth Collins Cromley, is the principal structure about which food related spaces are arranged from acquisition to disposal. Throughout the history of the home, the food axis has undertaken periodic redefinition in response to the social, economic and political context of the time. This study projects the future of the food axis. At the beginning of the 21st century the supermarket reigned supreme and the rise of convenience resulted in a deepening disconnection between people and their food sources. This detachment has contributed to the deterioration of health with the rise of obesity and sedentary lifestyle while allowing the individual to disregard their impact on the environment through participation in unsustainable food practices and waste. Can collective action transform waste and waste space into a valuable resource, adding to the quality of life for the neighbourhood, establishing a sense of community/ shared activity and contributing to health benefits, food knowledge and general well-being? It is estimated that 7.3 million tonnes of food waste is generated every year by households in the UK. Our evolving relationship with food and a renewed environmental awareness and responsibility to waste will inform the new public health paradigm.This paper will trace a history of the home, looking specifically at back to back housing in Leeds and Public Health Initiatives to propose a new neighbourhood utility. The proposition re-appropriates the obsolete sites of previous communal wash and latrine facilities to address current needs including waste disposal, energy and food production. The new model can be utilised as a strategy to reuse leftover urban space through the setting up of an enabling infrastructure that is taken over by local residents.HEALTH: THE DESIGN, PLANNING AND POLITICS OF HOW AND WHERE WE LIVEConference AMPS, Architecture_MPS; University of the West of England25—26 January, 2018Page 282Journal Article, Book, Climate Emergency, Placemaking, Material Cultures, Simon Baker
Urban leisure spaces
Cinema Under the stars; Heritage from below, 2013
Cinema Under the stars; Heritage from below, 2013
This chapter takes as its focus an open-air, ‘pop-up’, site-specific cinema in the car park at Marshall’s Mill, Leeds, a Grade II* listed former flax spinning mill. In the shadow of the official heritage of the mill, this was a Do-It-Yourself event. Counter-mapping heritage, cinema and place. Schofield and Szymanski (2011: 7) suggested that heritage might come alive when “artistic practice connects people to place in imaginative and often unforeseen ways.” This chapter celebrates the sometimes surprising possibilities for counter-mapping cultural heritage involving cinema under the stars and heritage from below. In many respects we had created a, ‘Derive’, simply defined in 1958 as a ‘mode of experimental behaviour linked to the conditions of urban society: a technique of transient passage through varied ambiences.’ ‘’Debord, Guy, ‘’ theory of derive’’ in Andrettotti and Costa, theory of the derive, 1996."Neither of us has much experience in cinema or heritage projects. We started out, for different reasons, simply hoping to enjoy an open air screening of our own making. Brett had grown up during the 1970s with drive-in theatres in the USA; he lectures on youth arts and urban leisure. Simon was planning on showing films in his garden and, as an architect, his practice centres on urban design; he is based in offices at Marshall’s Mill. After weather postponed another small scale back garden attempt we sketched out our initial ideas in the most hallowed traditions on cocktail napkins over pints in pubs. Fuelled in this way our ideas escalated and Simon’s back ground as a practicing architect prompted, ‘Direct action’ not to talk and dream but to act! As our plans for the site-specific cinema grew, we had a series of fortunate windfalls, including a partnership with the UK Green Film Festival. After nine months of planning (and pints), in May 2012 we hosted a screening of the film Happy (2011 Dir. Roko Belic) in the Marshall’s Mill car park. In sum, the event became something far more interesting than we had initially envisioned."Who Needs Experts? Countermapping Cultural Heritage, 2014Chapter 9 p133-146Edited John Schofield, University of YorkIsbn 978-1-4094-3934-9Book, EDI, History and Representation, Placemaking, Simon Baker
Temporal uses
Legacy and Placemaking through Temporal use, Conference 2012, Published 2016
Legacy and Placemaking through Temporal use, Conference 2012, Published 2016
This paper will examine three realized projects in Leeds and York, England, to question the legacy and ‘value’ of temporal use within the city and the connections between affect and place.The three case studies are; an established annual light-based festival, a single night pop up cinema, and an art installation sited on a disused viaduct. Each project questions the future use of our heritage buildings, their sites and context. The case studies form destinations which are not part of an established cultural heritage ‘trail’ or route. The action of ‘making and doing’ reverses our analysis of art and film from a tool we were using to help understand a place, to a medium that helped to define a place as a meanwhile use. Simon Baker is a protagonist who worked to re-appropriate the underutilized spaces and Sarah Mills is a lecturer of Architecture and uses film and Situationist techniques to analyse the subversion of the everyday. Challenging the normative modes of architectural practice engenders collaboration and questions existing policies, guidelines, buildings and the current purpose of place.Book, Presentation, Climate Emergency, History and Representation, Placemaking, Simon Baker
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