Dr Luis Hernan (he/him)
PhD, SFHEA
School of Architecture and Landscape
Lecturer in Spatial Narratives
Co-editor in Chief, field: journal
+44 114 222 0376
Full contact details
School of Architecture and Landscape
Arts Tower
Western Bank
Sheffield
S10 2TN
- Profile
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Luis Hernan is a Lecturer in Spatial Narratives at the School of Architecture, University of Sheffield. His research, which has moved from the digital to the critical and speculative humanities, is inspired by the Latin-American literary tradition and explores the political, social and spatial aspects of the future, examining how ideas of progress, modernity and utopia are articulated by architecture, and the way that buildings and infrastructures are mobilised to articulate visions of ideal worlds outside the discipline. His current research focuses on the imaginaries of ecological breakdown and space exploration in the Mexico-United States border. Luis is the co-editor in chief of Field Journal, an open-access, architectural humanities publication where he has co-edited the special numbers Across Borders, and Translating Creative Enquiry.
Through his research, Luis has explored critical issues of storytelling, architecture and colonialism. He has written on the role of speculative traditions of Latin America in creating collective futures (Time is Out of Joint: Digital Domesticity and Magical Realism, Journal of Architectural Education), the intersection of masculinity, Science Fiction and border control policies (Of Force Field and Men: Fiction and Race on the Mexican Border, Architecture and Culture) and the role of poetry and auto-theory in approaching trauma in post-colonial landscapes (Caring for the Future: Brightside in Design of Care, ed. Paul Rodgers, Routledge). Luis is currently working on the monograph Borderland Utopias, analysing the convergence of end-of-time narratives, masculinities and space colonisation in the border between Mexico and the United States.
- Qualifications
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PhD, MSc, BA
- Research interests
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Luis’ work questions the sources, methods and outputs of academic knowledge. He uses architectural drawing as a method to combine formal archival sources and the stories of resistance of under-represented communities in the present (Heavenly Bodies, Technoutopias and the Colonial Project, SAH 2025). His experiments in using photography as storytelling have been exhibited internationally in venues including the Wrong Biennale in the Netherlands, the Schiedam Fotofestival in Rotterdam, the Angewandte Kunst Museum in Frankfurt, the CLICK festival in Denmark and the Victoria and Albert museum.
Conceptually, his research revolves around stories as the fundamental mode through which we make sense of architecture and the urban environment. This interest initially evolved from an engagement with the digital cultures that shape contemporary spaces, to a wider exploration of the social and political dimensions of ideas of the future and the nostalgia for the past in late-stage capitalism. He has explored these connections in:
- Utopian Domesticities. His doctoral thesis looked at the spatiality of wireless technologies, which started a project to understand how “smart” technologies have reshaped our ideas, expectations and desire for the good life, while drawing on nostalgic models of domestic space as a gendered refuge against the world.
- The Mexico-United States Border. His interest in digital cultures, and especially in the narratives of Silicon Valley, has led to an exploration on the use of new technologies to produce an “invisible” border between Mexico and the United States. Crucial to this formation is the use of Science Fiction tropes and texts to inspire and justify the new technologies and shift the terms of racial forms of othering and the formation of an American utopia. I am currently working on a book monograph that brings together my interest in utopia and the Mexico-US border.
- Empire and post-colonial theory. As a colonised subject, his work has been motivated by an understanding of the way that Empire and colonisation shape our contemporary world.
PhD Supervision
I am interested in supervising doctoral research which engages with:
Domesticity, Futures, Utopia, Storying and Narrative, Science and other Speculative Fictions, New Materialism, Feminist Theory, Decoloniality, Digital Cultures, Borders, Autotheory, Ficto-Critical writing, Photography, Poetry
- Publications
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Journal articles
- Of force fields and men: fiction and race on the Mexican border. Architecture and Culture, 1-23. View this article in WRRO
- Down in Mexico, transmigration and storying at the border. field, 9(1). View this article in WRRO
- A home with a future. Digital domesticity and the vague fictions of Silicon Valley. Architecture and Culture, 11(1-2). View this article in WRRO
- A Luminous Abstraction: 5G Narratives and Futuring Otherwise. Mediapolis, 7(3).
- Embodying an Anti-Racist Architecture. field: A Free Journal of Architecture(8), 1-7.
- Time is out of joint : digital domesticity and magical realism. Journal of Architectural Education, 75(2), 184-191.
- Living Ashes : associated milieus and distributed agencies. Performance Research, 25(3), 25-31.
- Design and modelling of an engineered bacteria-based, pressure-sensitive soil.. Bioinspiration & Biomimetics, 13(4). View this article in WRRO
- Atmospheres of digital technology: wireless spectres and ghosts outside the machine. Digital Creativity, 27(3), 214-233. View this article in WRRO
Book chapters
- Urban design pedagogies for staying with a broken planet In Leite Viana D, da Cruz Brandão E, Morais F, Carvalho IC, Duarte JP & Brandão N (Ed.), Emerging Perspectives on Teaching Architecture and Urbanism Cambridge Scholars View this article in WRRO
- Wireless borders: illegal bodies and connected futures In Karunaratne G (Ed.), Informal Settlements of the Global South (pp. 47-62). London: Routledge.
- Neoliberal Spectres. On Creative Practice and Resisting Instrumentality In Mason A & Sharr A (Ed.), Creative Practice Inquiry in Architecture (pp. 194-204). London: Routledge.
- Reaching for the stars: Boca Chica and interstellar colonialism In Karunaratne G (Ed.), Displaced Urbanism
Conference proceedings
- Bio-revolutions : radical change, design cultures and non-humans. Design Culture(s). Cumulus Conference Proceedings Roma 2021, Volume #2, Vol. 2(7) (pp 1208-1221). Sapienza University of Rome, Italy, 8 June 2021 - 8 June 2021. View this article in WRRO
- Domesticity and digital eugenics : design cultures of Silicon Valley. Design Culture(s). Cumulus Conference Proceedings Roma 2021, Volume #2, Vol. 2(7) (pp 4542-4550). Sapienza University of Rome, Italy, 8 June 2021 - 8 June 2021. View this article in WRRO
- Climate health/care: a low carbon-points pedagogy. 2021 ACSA/EAAE Teachers Conference: Curriculum for Climate Agency: Design (in)Action. Virtual, 24 June 2021 - 24 June 2021. View this article in WRRO
- The technological invisible - image making as an exercise of power. Proceedings of the 5th Biennial Transdisciplinary Imaging Conference (pp 471-487). Edinburgh, UK, 18 April 2018 - 18 April 2018. View this article in WRRO
- The biological unseen. Producing and mediating imaginaries of protocells. Proceedings of the 5th Biennial Transdisciplinary Imaging Conference 2018 (pp 122-137). Edinburgh, UK, 18 April 2018 - 18 April 2018. View this article in WRRO
- Bio-materialism: Experiments in biological material computation. Proceedings of the 3rd Biennial Research Through Design Conference (pp 292-307). Edinburgh, UK, 22 March 2017 - 22 March 2017. View this article in WRRO
- Thinking soils: a synthetic biology approach to material-based design computation. Proceedings of the 36th Annual Conference of the Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture (ACADIA) (pp 460-469). Ann Arbor, MI, USA, 27 October 2016 - 27 October 2016. View this article in WRRO
- Bacterial hygromorphs: experiments into the integration of soft technologies into building skins. Proceedings of the 36th Annual Conference of the Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture (ACADIA) (pp 244-253). Ann Arbor, MI, USA, 27 October 2016 - 27 October 2016. View this article in WRRO
- Of wireless and bodies: affective atmospheres in the smart city. Proceedings of the MediaCity 5 Conference. Plymouth, UK, 1 May 2015 - 1 May 2015. View this article in WRRO
- Adaptive morphologies: Toward a morphogenesis of material construction. ACADIA 2013 Adaptive Architecture: Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Conference of the Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture (pp 51-60). Cambridge, Ontario, 24 October 2013 - 24 October 2013. View this article in WRRO
- Proto-materials: Material practices in architecture at molecular and cellular scales. Prototyping Architecture. The Conference Papers. London, 21 February 2013 - 21 February 2013. View this article in WRRO
Theses
- Wireless Spectres. Space and the re-enchantment of invisible technologies.
- Of force fields and men: fiction and race on the Mexican border. Architecture and Culture, 1-23. View this article in WRRO
- Research group
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Spaces, Culture and Politics Research Group
- Teaching activities
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Module convenor
ALA312 Architectural Research Methodologies
ALA412 Design Manifesto
Contributing lectures
ALA105 Humanities 1, Global Histories of Architecture
ALA306 Humanities 5