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- Associate Professor
- The Bartlett School of Architecture
- Faculty of the Built Environment
Dr Luke Pearson is Associate Professor and Co-Director of the BSc Architecture (RIBA Part 1) programme at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. He also coordinates the Videogame Urbanism studio on the MArch Urban Design programme, where he promotes research into the use of videogame technologies as tools for both speculative and participatory urban design. Luke is a founding partner of the design research practice You+Pea, which he runs with Sandra Youkhana.
Luke’s research operates between architecture and game design, with complementary interests in media and new forms of architectural representation. Luke’s design work has been exhibited internationally, including Playing the Picturesque, a recent solo exhibition by You+Pea exhibited at the Royal Institute of British Architects’ Architecture Gallery and Edge Arts Centre Bath in 2019. You+Pea have also exhibited work at international games industry events, including EGX 2019 at ExCel London, and Now Play This.
Luke has lectured on his research at institutions including In The City (Strelka Institute), New York University Games Lab, The Victoria and Albert Museum, MuseumsQuartier Vienna, Kosovo Architecture Festival, Shibaura House and Asakusa Gallery Tokyo.
He has also organised several conferences and symposia on related topics including Re-Imagining the Avant-Garde at Sir John Soane’s Museum (2019), Drawing Futures (2016), REALMS for London Games Festival (2017) and Up-Pop for London Festival of Architecture (2016).
As well as publishing works on the relationship between games and architecture in numerous academic journals and books, Luke also regularly writes for general readership publications including eflux Architecture, FRAME magazine and Disegno.
- A Machine for Playing In: Exploring the videogame as a medium for architectural design. Design Studies. (Elsevier, 2020)
- Videogame Urbanism. The Architectonics of Game Spaces. (Transcript Berlin, 2019)
- Architectural Design: Re-Imagining the Avant-Garde (Wiley, 2019) co-edited with Matthew Butcher.
- From Superstudio to Super Mario. e-flux Architecture (e-flux, 2019)
- Videogame Urbanism, A Visual Manifesto. Volume Magazine (Archis, 2019) with Sandra Youkhana.
- Worlds That Are Given: How Architecture Speaks Through Video Games. Thresholds Journal, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (MIT Press, 2018)
- Drawing Futures: Speculations in contemporary drawing for art and architecture (UCL Press / Riverside Architectural Press, 2016) co-edited with Laura Allen
He is Co-Director of BSc Architecture (RIBA Part 1) programme, and Chair of the undergraduate Board of Examiners, a role which he has held since 2018. As part of this role he also acts as Module Coordinator for all second and third year design modules. During this time, he has worked to expand the scope of design studios within the programme, to address the need for participatory, ecologically conscious and technologically progressive studio cultures.
Luke has coordinated the Videogame Urbanism studio with Sandra Youkhana since 2016, operating on the MArch Urban Design programme at the Bartlett. The studio is at the global forefront in the integration of game technologies into architectural design, involving the development of a new curriculum that integrates game engine software and game design thinking into urbanism. The studio’s innovative pedagogic practices have been featured in architectural press platforms such as Archdaily and OneZero, academic books such as Architectonics of Game Spaces: The Spatial Logic of the Virtual and Its Meaning for the Real (Transcript Verlag, 2019) and in games industry publications such as the influential EDGE Magazine.
Previously Luke was a design tutor for BSc Architecture Unit 4 (2009-2018), where the unit explored the relationship between new media and architecture through radical forms of representation. He was also a tutor on the MArch Graduate Architectural Design from 2010-13 where students explored the relationship between computational simulation and critical drawing practice.
Luke has also supervised several MArch Architecture dissertations focussing on the relationship between architectural design and videogame space. He is a registered PhD supervisor and is accepting applications for proposals on related subjects.
Since 2015, Luke has also been an invited professor at the yearly Busan International Architectural Design Workshop held by Pusan National University in South Korea. He has also led invited workshops at the Kosovo Architecture Festival and public workshops at Somerset House in London.
01-OCT-2021 | Associate Professor | Bartlett School of Architecture | UCL, United Kingdom |
01-SEP-2018 | Co-Director of BSc Architecture | Bartlett School of Architecture | UCL, United Kingdom |
11-NOV-2016 | Lecturer in Architecture | Bartlett School of Architecture | UCL, United Kingdom |
24-SEP-2016 | Design Tutor: MArch Urban Design Research Cluster 12 | Bartlett School of Architecture | UCL, United Kingdom |
23-SEP-2010 – 23-SEP-2013 | Teaching Fellow: MArch Graduate Architectural Design | Bartlett School of Architecture | University College London, United Kingdom |
23-SEP-2009 – 01-SEP-2018 | Teaching Fellow: BSc Architecture Unit 4 | Bartlett School of Architecture | University College London, United Kingdom |
PhD | PhD in Architectural Design |