Prof Stephen Cairns
BA (Otago University), BArch (University of Auckland) , PhD (University of Melbourne)
Professor of Architecture and Urbanism

Room: 2.53
Tel: 0131 650 2313
Email: s.cairns@ed.ac.uk

ESALA, School of Arts, Culture and Environment
The University of Edinburgh
20 Chambers Street
EH1 1JZ, Scotland

Profile

Globalization is an inescapable condition for thinking about architecture and cities today. Where once information, ideas, capital, technology and people were localizable in particular places or predictable and defined circuits, they now appear mobile and fluid. This mobility has deterritorialized the settled and stable conditions that architects once took for granted and traded upon.

The phenomenon of globalization gives rise to a complex and ambiguous topography for architectural design practice: localities are shot through with the effects of global uniformity, yet new and hybrid forms of place are produced within global flows; stable identities threaten to collapse into global equivalence, yet repetitious conditions throw up alternative forms of difference.

These conditions demand a reconsideration of what it is to be an architect. They call, in turn, for the reconfiguration of the theoretical frameworks, vocabularies, techniques and practices that have defined the discipline of architecture.

This set of interests is focussed empirically on the city of Jakarta (one of the world’s largest conurbanations), and also draws on wider contemporary debates on cities such as Lagos, Brazzaville, Kinshasa, Sao Paolo, and Mumbai. Being focussed on the sprawling mega-cities of the South my work is, more specifically, about the limits of cities and of city theory. My work also speculates on the new styles of description and thinking that these unbounded cities solicit. It does so through the figure of the archipelago. A philosophical metaphor, an urban pattern, and the geographical context for many cities, the archipelago is posed as an intricate figure and grounds for reflection on cities and settlements in the 21st century. This is to propose what Michel Serres has called a kind of thinking that ‘establishes a ground for local inventions to come’.

Archipelago Urbanism

I have lead a number of research projects in and around these themes:

'Cultures of Legibility: Emergent Urban Landscapes in Southeast Asia' (ARHC) (2008-10); project P-I, building on an ARHC Innovation Grant, Representing Urban Landscapes in Southeast Asia: Negotiating Cartographic Blindness (AHRB £49,441) (2003-05). Fieldwork conducted in collaboration of colleagues (Tjahjono and Herlily) and 10-strong research team at the University of Indonesia, Jakarta. Aspects of the project have been published in book chapters and journals, and was exhibited at the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam on the ‘Open City’ (www.iabr.nl) in 2009.

'Difference and Repetition: An Investigation of the Residential Highrise as a Global Form' (AHRC) (2004-07); P-I (Jacobs, Geography UoE) and Co-I (Cairns) lead a 4-person team that examined highrise housing internationally. Project workshops brought scholars and policy communities together, and reached a range of user groups. The project conference, Density Inside Out (2007), featured papers by scholars from the UK, Europe, and Australasia, and six keynote speakers, including Maas (MVRDV Architects, Rotterdam) and Mars (Dynamic City Foundation, Beijing), Tonkiss (Urban Planning, LSE) and Lévy (Geography, École Polytechniqe Fédérale de Lausanne).

I have been Co-I, (with P-I Coyne, Architecture UoE) on an ARHC/EPSRC project in the ‘Designing for the 21st Century’ programme, / Orienting the Future: Design Strategies for Non-Place (2005-06), involving site-specific investigations of communication and way-finding technologies at such places as Stanstead Airport, Lunar House UK Border Agency, and a B&Q Retail Warehouse. The project seeded further research in the area of branding and urban space (Coyne), and a range of infrastructures that support investigations into digitally mediated urban spaces.

 

Teaching

The research work I do is linked in productive ways to many of the courses I teach and PhD supervision I undertake. I am Programme Director for the MSc in Architectural and Urban Design, and am involved in the MSc in The City and the MArch (Part 1). I teach two main theory courses:

Studies in Contemporary Architecural Theory

The City and its Others

I also run architectural design and urban design studio courses related to some of the themes under the 'Archipelago Urbanism' heading.

PhD supervision is an important part of what I do. I currently supervise a range of PhD candidates working on urban-related themes, in text and design modes.

Recent Publications

1. Edited Books

Cairns, Stephen (ed.) (2004). Drifting: Architecture and migrancy. London: Routledge: 299 pp.

Crysler, Greig, Stephen Cairns and Hilde Heynen (eds) (In Press). The Sage Handbook of Architectural Theory. London: Sage.

2. Refereed Articles

Cairns, Stephen (2009). ‘Migration and the dislocation of architecture’. Open city: Designing coexistence, Tim Rieniets, Jennifer Sigler, Kees Christiaanse (eds). Amsterdam: Sun Publishers: 73-80.

——— (2008). ‘Jakarta and the limits of urban legibility’, in Global cities, local sites: Multi-media essays on contemporary cities, Will Straw and Douglas Tallack (eds). Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.

——— (2007). ‘Quilting Jakarta’. Critical architecture (Critiques: Critical Studies in Architectural Humanities). Jane Rendell, Jonathan Hill, Murray Fraser and Mark Dorrian (eds). London Routledge: 215-20.

——— (2007). ‘The stone books of Orientalism’, Colonial modernities: Building, dwelling and architecture in British India and Ceylon, Peter Scriver and Vikram Prakash (eds). London: Routledge: 51-66.

——— (2006). ‘Cognitive mapping the dispersed city’, Urban space and cityscapes: Perspectives from modern and contemporary culture, Christoph Lindner (ed.). London: Routledge: 192-205.

——— (2006). ‘Notes for an alternative history of the primitive hut’, Primitive: Original matters in architecture, Jo Odgers, Flora Samuel and Adam Sharr (eds.). London: Routledge: 86-95.

——— (2005). 'Design mediums: Architecture and the grounds for invention'. Journal of Architecture 10 (3): 307-15.

——— (2004). ‘Shadows’. Patterned ground: Entanglements of nature and culture, Stephan Harrison, Steve Pile and Nigel Thrift (eds). London: Reaktion Books: 260-62.

Cairns, Stephen and Daliana Suryawinata (2009). ‘Reciprocity: Transactions for a city in flux’. Open city: Designing coexistence, Tim Rieniets, Jenifer Sigler, Kees Christiaanse (eds). Amsterdam: Sun Publishers: 377-416.

Jane M. Jacobs and Stephen Cairns (2008). ‘Doing building work: The un-making of Red Road’, Docomomo: International Committee for Documentation and Conservation of Buildings and Sites and Neighborhoods of the Modern Movement 39 p.48-52.

——— (2008). ‘Windows: Re-viewing Red Road’, Scottish Geographical Journal, 124 (2/3): 165-84.

——— (2008). ‘The modern touch: Interior design and modernisation in post-independence Singapore’, Environment & Planning A 40 (3) 572 – 595.

Jane M. Jacobs, Stephen Cairns and Ignaz Strebel (2010). ‘Materialising vision: Performing a high-rise view’, in D. Richardson, S. Daniels and D. DeLyser (eds) Geography and the Humanities. London: Routledge.

——— (2007). ‘“A tall storey ... but a fact, just the same”: The Red Road highrise as a black box’, Urban Studies 44 (3): 609-29.

3. Exhibitions

Cairns, Stephen and Daliana Suryawinata (2009). ‘Reciprocity: Transactions for a city in flux’, sub-curators for Open City: Designing Coexistence, 4th International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR), Kees Christiaanse and Tim Rieniets (Curators). September 2009 – January 2010, Netherlands Architecture Institute, Rotterdam.

Jacobs, Jane M., Stephen Cairns, and Ignaz Strebel (2008). The Highrise Project website URL: http://www.ace.ed.ac.uk/highrise

4. Forthcoming

Cairns, Stephen and Jane M. Jacobs (2011). Wasting architecture: On the deterioration, destruction and death of buildings. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.

Jacobs, Jane M., Stephen Cairns and Ignaz Strebel (2012). Building events: The many lives and deaths of the modernist residential high-rise. London: Ashgate.