Dr Ashley Mason (she/her)

BA (Hons.) MArch (Dist.) PhD

School of Architecture

Research Associate: Culture and Climate Change

Ashley.Mason@sheffield.ac.uk

Arts Tower

Full contact details

Dr Ashley Mason
School of Architecture
Arts Tower
Western Bank
Sheffield
S10 2TN

Profile: I am a researcher engaged with marginalised matters of site within architecture through creative-critical + textual-spatial methods. This research supports my current role within the Culture + Climate Change initiative, exploring cultural framings of environmental change + interdisciplinary climate futures + their impacts.

Qualifications

BA (Hons.)
MArch (Dist.)
PhD in Architecture by Creative Practice

Research interests

Climate Heritage // Climate Narratives // Climate Futures

I hold a PhD in Architecture by Creative Practice, Towards a Paracontextual Practice* (*With Footnotes to 'Parallel of Life and Art') (Newcastle University, 2019). Through creative-critical + textual-spatial methods, this thesis attended to the marginal phenomena of seemingly ‘empty’ sites — craters of extraction, demolition, or impact — asking how such para- elements might be accounted for + thereby how architecture might be informed by matters usually cast aside, or erased from view. This paracontextual practice is feminist + interdisciplinary – committed to care, support + repair; indebted to activism, art, landscape + literature.

Most recently, I have been seeking to progress this research towards collaborative + collective action, alongside expanding the notion of 'empty' sites to address issues of meanwhile vacancy + the associated marginalised phenomena of adaptive heritage reuse.

Previous research projects include: - Making Space / Keeping Space / Extending Space: Building the Impacts of the Sunderland Cooperative Heritage Lab (PI, with Loes Veldpaus, Martin Hulse + John Pendlebury; Newcastle University, 2023) - OpenHeritage (led by Loes Veldpaus, Martin Hulse + John Pendlebury; Newcastle University, 2022) (https://openheritage.eu/high-street-sunderland-great-britain/) - Creative Practice Inquiry in Architecture (co-edited with Adam Sharr; Routledge, 2022).

Publications

Edited books

(Ed.) () Creative Practice Inquiry in Architecture. Routledge.

Journal articles

Mason A () Craters: Between cleared and constructed, between absent and present. Interstices: Journal of Architecture and Related Arts.

Chapters

Mason A (2024) [HIDDEN ARCHITECTURE]: The Paracontextual in Superstudio’s Project of Instrumentalizable Muteness, Architectures Of Hiding: Crafting Concealment|Omission|Deception|Erasure|Silence (pp. 165-175).
Mason A, Veldpaus L, Hulse M & Pendlebury J (2023) Gathering a Family Around the Coffee Machine: The People at the Heart of the Sunderland Cooperative Heritage Lab In Oevermann H, Polyák L, Szemzö H & Mieg HA (Ed.), Open Heritage: Community-Driven Adaptive Reuse in Europe: Best Practice (pp. 36-47). Birkhäuser
Mason A (2023) Drip Drip Drip Intercede, Water and Sea in Word and Image / L’Eau et la mer dans les textes et les images (pp. 246-260). BRILL
Mason A & Sharr A (2022) Introduction: creative practice inquiry in architecture, Creative Practice Inquiry in Architecture (pp. 2-13). Routledge
Mason A (2022) Draught/draft papers, Creative Practice Inquiry in Architecture (pp. 40-50). Routledge
Mason A (2022) Thin Sheets: Tracing Openings within the Archival Matter of Alison + Peter Smithson In Goffi F (Ed.), The Routledge Companion to Architectural Drawings and Models: : From Translating to Archiving, Collecting and Displaying Routledge

Theses / Dissertations

Mason A Towards a Paracontextual Practice* (*With Footnotes to 'Parallel of Life and Art').

Other

Mason A (2022) Ashley Mason asks ‘must we really build and create each time anew’? - ‘Postwar Modern: New Art in Britain 1945–1965’ Barbican Art Gallery, London 3 March – 26 June 2022. Architectural Research Quarterly, 26(4), 377-384.
Veldpaus L, Mason A & Iossifidis M () Policy Brief #04 A roadmap for the EU and Europe: Integrating adaptive heritage reuse in wider EU policies, programmes and practices.

Research group

Space, cultures and politics

Teaching interests

Interdisciplinary: engaging with creative-critical + textual-spatial practices; drawing from activism, art, landscape + literature.
Feminist: promoting collaborative production, reciprocal learning + the confronting of power; attending to marginalised issues + all of the support structures of architecture with care.

Professional activities and memberships

Editorial Board Member, field