About

This student-led journal was founded by Maria Salaru and draws on the work produced during the Anthropology of the Built Environment course at University College London, which was taught between 2020 and 2025 explored anthropological approaches to the study of architectural forms. 

The 2025 papers pose important questions about what an anthropology of architecture might look like. Challenging the boundaries of traditional studies of architectural forms and settings, they explore a wide array of topics including the multifaceted role of infrastructure. They examine how nature itself can function as infrastructure and explore its far-reaching impacts, such as gentrification and loss of green space. Some papers alternatively explore how the home can extend beyond its physical and traditional boundaries impacting external environments and non-humans. 

Beyond examining how spaces influence behavior, these papers venture into the more elusive aspects of architecture — what spaces evoke or mobilise and their effects on our bodies. They offer insight into the complex interplay between people, place, and time, particularly through reflections on left behind and ruined spaces and the use of memory in preserving culture. These observations reveal the legacies of important endangered urban spaces, including skateparks and nightclubs, telling the story of community resistance to the dominant infrastructural forms threatening to erase them. 

Collectively, the insights from these works provide a framework for studying the anthropology of architecture, offering a deeper understanding of the interactions between people and spaces.

Editors [2023-2024]: Hannah Williams, Hollie Douglas, and Zoë Bax

Editors [2021-2022]: Ruman Kallar and Shreetoma Biswas

Editors [2020-2021]: Scott Campbell and Caragh Murphy-Collinson

Editors [2019-2020]: Karwai Ng, Abigail Pipkin and Lily Rodel