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Staff Profile

Professor Ben Bridgens

Professor of Regenerative Architecture

  • Email: ben.bridgens@ncl.ac.uk
  • Address: School of Architecture, Planning & Landscape
    Architecture Building
    The Quadrangle
    Newcastle University
    Newcastle upon Tyne
    NE1 7RU
    UK
Background

Background

Ben Bridgens is Professor of Regenerative Architecture in the School of Architecture, Planning & Landscape at Newcastle University, and he is Co-Director of the Hub for Biotechnology in the Built Environment (HBBE, www.bbe.ac.uk). Ben’s research and teaching is driven by the question: “Can we move beyond ‘sustainability’ and create a built environment which has positive impacts: that is beneficial and enriching to the natural environment, that does not degrade but performs better as it ages, that is a pleasure to construct, and is delightful to inhabit?”

Ben works at the interface of engineering, architecture and design, critically examining ‘sustainable’ technologies and exploring the potential for combining traditional construction practices with biotechnology and natural systems to go beyond sustainability and create a regenerative built environment.

Recent projects include The Living Room, a large-scale freestanding structure made from mycelium, waste materials and wool which is on display in the Farrell Centre in Newcastle-upon-Tyne (http://bbe.ac.uk/the-living-room/) and RESPIRE, a research project funded by the Leverhulme Trust which aims to develop passive, responsive breathable building skins (http://bbe.ac.uk/respire-project/). Ben led the design and construction of an experimental house on the Newcastle University campus called 'The OME’, creating a unique space for interdisciplinary collaboration and large-scale prototyping.


Qualifications

PhD Structural Engineering (Newcastle University, 2005): “Architectural fabric properties: determination, representation & prediction” 

MEng Civil Engineering (Durham University, 2000)




Research

Research Interests

Ben Bridgens is Professor of Regenerative Architecture in the School of Architecture, Planning & Landscape at Newcastle University, and Co-Director of the Hub for Biotechnology in the Built Environment (HBBE, www.bbe.ac.uk). Ben’s work is driven by the question: “Can we move beyond ‘sustainability’ and create a built environment which has positive impacts: that is beneficial and enriching to the natural environment, that does not degrade but performs better as it ages, that is a pleasure to construct, and is delightful to inhabit?”

Ben works at the interface of engineering, architecture and design, critically examining ‘sustainable’ technologies and exploring the potential for combining traditional construction practices with biotechnology and natural systems to go beyond sustainability and create a regenerative built environment.

Google Scholar profile: http://tinyurl.com/bridgens-google 

Researchgate profile: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ben_Bridgens


Current projects include:

The Hub for Biotechnology in the Built Environment www.bbe.ac.uk The Hub for Biotechnology in the Built Environment (HBBE) is a joint £8 million initiative between Newcastle University and Northumbria University. Our vision is to develop biotechnologies to create a new generation of Living Buildings which are responsible and responsive to their natural environment; grown using living engineered materials to reduce inefficient industrial construction processes; metabolise their own waste, reducing pollution, generate energy and high-value products and modulate their microbiome to benefit human and ecological health and wellbeing. Ben led the design and construction of an experimental house on the Newcastle University campus called 'The OME’, creating a unique space for interdisciplinary collaboration and large-scale prototyping.

The Living Room http://bbe.ac.uk/the-living-room/ is part of More with Less: Reimagining Architecture for a Changing World https://www.farrellcentre.org.uk/explore/more-with-less, the inaugural exhibition at the Farrell Centre, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, which offers new visions for architecture in the face of the climate emergency. The Living Room is a large-scale bio-fabricated architecture that is grown using locally available waste materials. It is composed of Herdwick wool, a breed of sheep native to the Lake District in north-west England, a mix of sawdust and wastepaper from local mills, and mycelium spores. The use of waste materials benefits regional industries and demonstrates a means to dramatically reduce the environmental impact of construction, whilst allowing us to reimagine the spaces that we inhabit. Our work is a reaction to rigid, hard, permanent buildings, instead we have created a soft, cosy, snug internal space with thick sculpted walls, which can be composted when no longer required.

Press coverage https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2023/apr/19/woollen-home-newcastle-terry-farrell-centre

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-65346052

RESPIRE: Passive, Responsive, Variable Porosity Building Skins is a Leverhulme Trust funded research project which seeks to create a new generation of low-cost, low-environmental impact, responsive building skins that moderate internal temperature and humidity by varying their porosity. The transformative approach of the Respire project would improve internal air quality and eliminate the need for energy-intensive, high-maintenance mechanical ventilation systems, enabling fully passive, zero-energy buildings.

http://bbe.ac.uk/respire-project/


Current PhD supervision

Natalia Pynirtzi (responsive materials for breathable facades)


Recently completed PhD students

Aileen Hoenerloh (bio-digital fabrication)

Emily Birch (microbial spore based hygrmorphic materials)

Romy Kaiser-Style (Textile Templating: transdisciplinary knit design strategies for complex large-scale mycofabrication)

Layla van Ellen (Alive: Rhythmic Buildings)

John Naylor (How can architects increase the use of full-culm bamboo to provide adequate urban housing in tropical developing economies?)

Assia Stefanova (Application of living metabolic processes within buildings)

Artem Holstov (Hygromorphic materials for sustainable responsive architecture)

Nicola Bartle (A probabilistic material framework for the analysis of fabric structures)

Alex Colman (A pragmatic approach to determining the mechanical behaviour of structural fabrics)

Chris Iliffe (A predictive model for the design of functional textiles)


Teaching

Ben Bridgens leads a stage 2 undergraduate architectural technology module (ARC2016: Construction in Detail) and, with Anna Czigler, co-leads an M.Arch design studio called "Regen".


Regen: M.Arch Design Studio.

Tutors: Anna Czigler & Ben Bridgens

"When the forest and the city are functionally indistinguishable, then we know we have reached sustainability." ~ Janine Benyus

If we take a step back from the incremental race to net-zero carbon and critically examine current practice and emerging trends in architecture and construction, do we see truly sustainable forms of construction emerging? Do we see materials, processes and assemblies which could continue to be used for hundreds or thousands of years, meeting future generations’ needs and restoring natural ecosystems?

Regen seeks a holistic, regenerative approach to architecture, through an emerging environmental, economic, architectural and social framework to create systems that are not just more efficient than what we have now, but aim to have positive social and environmental impacts. Could we live in what McDonough & Braungart describe as a world of ‘abundance and delight’ rather than a world of limits? Regen works across different scales of systems thinking; it simultaneously considers the large-scale and the tectonic. We explore regional material flows through systems mapping, with a focus on locally grown materials, while understanding that we as designers can influence these systems through material selection and application. We focus on the creative use of grown materials, understood through the analysis of the ecological, technological and social systems that make up the process from material sourcing to use and beyond. We look at strategies to use grown materials in many shapes and forms: historic, local, high-tech, vernacular, repurposed or not-yet-existing.

Publications