Bremner, Dr Lindsay
| Department: | Architecture |
| Job Title: | Professor, Director of Architectural Research |
| Phone: | +44 (0) 20 7911 5000 ext 66848 |
| E-mail: | L.Bremner@westminster.ac.uk |
| Address: | Room M416c School of Architecture and the Built Environment University of Westminster 35 Marylebone Rd London NW1 5LS |
Biography
Dr Lindsay Bremner is Professor and Director of Architectural Research at the University of Westminster. She was previously Professor of Architecture in the Tyler School of Art at Temple University in Philadelphia and, before that, Chair of Architecture at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. She is an award-winning architect and writer and published, lectured and exhibited widely on the transformation of Johannesburg after the end of apartheid. Her work on the city include Writing the City into Being: Essays on Johannesburg 1998 – 2008 (2010), Johannesburg: One City Colliding Worlds (2004), and chapters in Johannesburg - the Elusive Metropolis (2008), The Endless City (2008), Desire Lines: Space, Memory and Identity in the Post-Apartheid City (2007), Future City (2005), Under Siege: Four African Cities. Freetown, Johannesburg, Kinshasa, Lagos (2002), blank___architecture apartheid and after (1998) and contributions to Domus, Public Culture, Social Identities and Cities. In her design work, Bremner takes on projects having a socially or culturally transformative agenda, such as her third placed entry for a Cyclone Shelter in Bangladesh (with Jeremy Voorhees, 2011), award winning Sans Souci Cinema project in Kliptown, Soweto (with 26’10 South Architects, 2004 - 2007) and second placed entry to the Freedom Square Competition (with Mashabane Rose Architects, 2002). Bremner’s current research, Folded Ocean is investigating the impact of global mobility, trans-nationalism and environmental change on the Indian Ocean world. Bremner holds a B. Arch degree from the University of Cape Town and M. Arch and DSc. Arch degrees from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.
Teaching Contribution
Lindsay Bremner currently teaches Contemporary Issues (Undergraduate),History and Theory and Dissertation (Diploma).
Research Supervision
Lindsay Bremner welcomes proposals from doctoral candidates wishing to pursue research degrees in cross-disciplinary, trans-national spatial and architectural research. Her main areas of expertise are in spatial practice and urban change, architectural design, critical social theory, geopolitics and in the overlaps between architecture, design, infrastructure, geography and landscape.
Research
Lindsay Bremner’s current research project, Folded Ocean: Mutant Territory in the Indian Ocean World
is investigating the logics of organizational, spatial and environmental change in the Indian Ocean world. It approaches this world from the Ocean, a fluid, anti-geographical space where many trans-national systems, practices and imaginaries intersect, overlap and compete. It identifies and maps these, following their itineraries as they fold into spatial and architectural products on land, figuring both sea and land based logics. Folded Ocean uses sampling techniques, constructing a Bioptic Chart of the Indian Ocean - Bioptic because it privileges the sample for diagnostic purposes and Chart because serves as an instrument for the navigation of fluid territory. To date four sites have been examined - the Ganges / Brahmaputra / Meghna delta in India and Bangladesh, the ship breaking yards of Bangladesh, the island of Diego Garcia and the Lamu Archipelago in Kenya.
As a secondary research area, she is beginning to work on the impact of Chinese infrastructural investment on African cities and urban life.
External Activities (since 2005)
Lindsay Bremner was a Visiting Professor in the Department of Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA in 2005 and held a secondary appointment as Graduate Faculty in the Department of Geography and Urban Studies, College of Liberal Arts at Temple University. She has served as external examiner at a doctoral level at the Bartlett School UCL, TU Delft and the Universities of Cape Town and the Witwatersrand and has been on graduate design reviews at numerous universities and colleges around the United States.
She is a registered architect with the South African Council for the Architectural Profession and an Associate Member of the American Institute for Architects.
She was a member of the Advisory Board for the Philadelphia 2035 Comprehensive Plan for the
Philadelphia City Planning Commission in 2010.
She was on the jury for ARCHIVE (Architecture for Health In Vulnerable Environments)"Kay e Sante nan Ayiti" International Design Competition in 2010, the American Institute of Architects Columbus Ohio Awards Jury in 2008 and the Philadelphia Emerging Architecture Prize in 2008.
She served on the Association of Collegial Schools of Architecture (ACSA) Ad Hoc Task Force on International Issues in 2008 and was on the Advisory Committee to the Ed Bacon Competition Board, also in 2008.
She served as referee for Building Research & Information in 2010 and was a member of the Scientific Committee for ‘African Perspectives 2009 – The African City Centre (Re)sourced’, a conference jointly organized by the ArchiAfrika Foundation, the University of Pretoria and the Delft University of Technology and was a London School of Economics and Political Science Urban Age Programme Advisor from 2006 to 2009. She has served as a South African Research Foundation (NRF) Research Rating Referee since 2006.
Grants and Awards (since 2005)
Joint winner of the 2011 Urban Communication Foundation’s Jane Jacobs Book Award for Writing the City into Being: Essays on Johannesburg 1998 – 2008 (http://www.fourthwallbooks.com/, http://urbancomm.org/awards.php)
First round winner and 3rd place overall, International Competition for the Design of a Cyclone Shelter in Bangladesh (with Jeremy Voorhees) (<http://comp.atelier-pax.jp/en/?page_id=221>)
Special Prize for the Sans Souci Project, Bauwelt Magazine ‘First Work’ Competition, 2011 (with 26’10 south Architects). Published as: Bremner, L. and 26’10 South Architects. “The Sans Souci Cinema Project, Soweto, Johannesburg.” Bauwelt 1-2, 2011, pp 58-61.
2006 South African Institute of Architects Award for The Sans Souci Cinema (with 26’10 south Architects). Published in Architecture South Africa March/April 2006, pp 42.
Since 2005, she has received research grants from Temple University, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, the Oppenheimer Memorial Trust, the South African Arts and Culture Trust, AngloGold Ashanti Chairman’s Fund and the South African National Research Foundation.
Selected Publications (since 2005)
Book
Bremner, L. Writing the City Into Being: Essays on Johannesburg 1998 – 2008. Johannesburg: FourthWall Books, 2010.
Edited Books
Bremner, L. and Voorhees, J. Theoretical Misappropriations. <http://www.lulu.com>, 2010.
Bremner, L. and Subiros, P. Johannesburg Emerging / Diverging Metropolis. Mendrisio: Mendrisio Academy Press, 2007.
Chapters in Books
Bremner, L. “Filter.” In the Terrain of Water. Edited by A. Mathur and D. Da Cunha. Invited chapter on Lamu, Kenya, submission date July 2012, forthcoming.
Bremner, L. “Muddy Logics.” Writing post national narratives: other geographies, other times. Edited by Dilip Menon. Delhi: OUP Delhi, forthcoming in 2013.
Bremner, L. “Mobile Johannesburg.” In the Life of Cities … Parallel Narratives of the Urban. Edited by M. Mostavi. Harvard University: Graduate School of Design, submitted September 2011, forthcoming in Spring 2012.
Bremner, L. “6 Ways of Being a Stranger.” Via DIRT. Edited by Megan Born, Helene Furjan, and Lily Jencks. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2012, pp 40-47.
Bremner, L . and 26’10 south Architects. “The Sans Souci Project.” Contemporary Architecture | South Africa. Edited by I. Tolic. Milan: 24 ORE Cultura srl, 2010, pp 90-93.
Bremner, L. “Reframing Township Space.” Johannesburg – The Elusive Metropolis. Edited by Sarah Nuttall and Achille Mbembe. Durham: Duke University Press, 2008, pp 337-347.
Bremner, L. “Recovering from Apartheid.” The Endless City. Edited by Ricky Burdett and Dejan Sudjic. London: Phaidon, 2008, pp 202-213.
Bremner, L . and 26’10 south Architects. “The Sans Souci Project.” Contemporary South African Architecture in a Landscape of Transition. Edited by Thorsten Deckler, Anna Graupner and Henning Rassmus. Cape Town: Double Story, 2008, pp 50-53.
Bremner, L. “Memory, Identity and the Post apartheid City : The Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg.” Desire Lines; Space, Memory and Identity in the Post-Apartheid City. Edited by Noeleen
Murray, Nick Shepherd and Martin Hall. London : Routledge, 2007, pp 85-103.
Bremner, L. “Making Life Public in Contemporary Johannesburg.” Johannesburg Emerging / Diverging Metropolis. Mendrisio: Mendrisio Academy Press, 2007, pp 18-25.
Bremner, L. and Subiros, P. “Johannesburg Emerging / Diverging Metropolis.” Johannesburg Emerging / Diverging Metropolis. Mendrisio: Mendrisio Academy Press, 2007, pp 12-17.
Bremner, L. “Johannesburg City Portrait”. Cities Architecture and Society. Venice: Exhibition Catalogue of the 10th International Venice Architecture Biennale, 2006, pp168-177.
Bremner, L. “Border / Skin.” Against the Wall. Edited by Michael Sorkin. New York: The New Press, 2005, pp 122-137.
Bremner, L. “Remaking Johannesburg.” Future City. Edited by Stephen Read, Jurgen Rosemann and Job van Eldijk. London: Spon, 2005, pp32-47.
Journal Article
Bremner, L. “Folded Ocean: Mutating Territories in the Indian Ocean World.” 2A Architecture and Art Magazine 14, Summer 2010, pp 18-23.
Bremner, L. and Kadey, I. “Ivan Kadey Dialogic Manifesto.” Architecture South Africa, Sept/October, 2010, pp32-40.
Bremner, L. “Where is Africa? Dov’e L’Africa?” Domus 927, 07/08, 2009, pp34-37.
Bremner, L. and 26’10 south Architects. “What’s the use of architecture?” Domus 912, 03, 2008, pp 15-19.
Bremner, L. “Living in the Ruins of Apartheid.” Architectural Review 6, 2007, pp76-79.
Bremner, L. “Imaging Humankind: transformations of landscape and their meaning in two new buildings at the Cradle of Humankind, Gauteng.” Architecture South Africa, May/June 2006, pp12-15.
Bremner, L. “Invisible Architecture.” Architecture South Africa May/June 2006, pp32-35.
Internet Publications
Bremner, L. and 26’10 South Architects. “The Sans Souci cinema.” Spatial Agency. <http://www.spatialagency.net/database/sans.souci.cinema>, 2010.
Bremner, L. “Parking Garages in Philadelphia.” Polar Inertia Journal of Nomadic and Popular Culture 34, <http://www.polarinertia.com> , Summer 2009.
Exhibitions
Curator of Tyler School of Art_Architecture’s contribution to Green Urban Glocal: Architecture + Design by Philadelphia’s design schools, Center for Architecture, Philadelphia, Feb 7 – March 3 2011.
Co-curator (with Pep Subiros) of Johannesburg Emerging / Diverging Metropolis, Accadamia di Architettura, Universita della Svizzera Italiana, Mendrisio, Switzerland, April 3 – May 10 2007.
Collaborator with Ricky Burdett on the Johannesburg exhibit for Cities, Architecture, Society, 10th International Architecture Biennale, Venice, Sept 10 – Nov 19 2006.
Curator of Joburg Fictions, component of Interpreting Joburg, collaborative student exhibition with the Wits School of Art, Braamfontein, June 2 – 9 2006.
Curator of Liquid Durban, South African contribution to Mare Nostrum, Rotterdam Architecture Biennale, May 26 – June 26 2005.
