Susan Robertson

Sue Robertson is a Principal Lecturer in architecture and urban design. She studied BSc(Hons) at the University of Bath (RIBA Part 1), a Diploma in Architecture from the Polytechnic of Central London (RIBA Part 2) and a research Masters in Cultural Geography from Royal Holloway University of London.

Practice work has included the role of architect in a number of prominent practices in London, Sydney, Australia and Monterey, California. Robertson worked with Denys Lasdun for several years as project architect on large projects in London and mainland Europe, including the extension to the European Investment Bank in Luxembourg. In 1994 Robertson set up her own practice, designing and completing residential and educational projects.

Currently Academic Programme Leader for Architecture and Planning, Sue has taught all levels of the undergraduate and postgraduate architecture courses in design and theory at Brighton and was Course Leader of the Architectural and Urban Design MA until 2020. Robertson is a member of the Experimental Design Practices and the Cities, Injustice and Resistance research and enterprise groups (REGs) and the Arts and Wellbeing and the Spatial, Environmental and Cultural Politics centres (COREs) at the University of Brighton. She works collaboratively across disciplines of spatial design, art, cultural geography and social science.

Robertson’s research interests and questioning of the modernist concerns with light, form, material and metaphor, from her time with Lasdun, continued in the development of her own practice. This area of research has been augmented by studying the archive of Joseph Emberton and the production of drawings for a book on Craig Ellwood.

An analysis of the multi-faceted experience of the elevated highway was the subject of Robertson’s Masters dissertation and this has led to further research into questions of urban mobility and kinaesthetics.  

My research continues and develops the focus on architectural and urban mobilities, developing new connections between mobilities and urban infrastructures such as elevated highways (Robertson 2007, 2011, 2014, 2016), more recent publications on the relationship between, and drawn representations of urban design and mobilities in street spaces in Brighton (Robertson 2016, Murray and Robertson 2016, 2017) and ongoing work on illumination and re-construction of territorial edges through photography (2019). 

My supervisory interests range across the disciplines of architecture, urban design and cultural geography, more specifically my interests include representations of architectural mobilities, histories, geographies and literatures of urban infrastructures, experiences of city spaces, urban cultural heritage.

Current supervision includes the following:

• Jonathan Moses 'The Politics of the British Public House - Architecture, Authenticity and Everyday Enchantment' (TECHNE AHRC funded, advisor with supervision by Prof Phillip Crang and Prof David Gilbert, RHUL)
• Alex Fitch 'Representations of Architectural Interactions in Sequential Art' (Design Star AHRC funded, lead supervisor with Dr Lesley Murray UoB and Dr David Brauner Reading University)
• Tess Pinto 'The Politics of Conservation: How the GLC shaped London, 1965-86' (TECHNE AHRC funded, advisor with supervision by Prof David Gilbert and Dr Oli Mould, RHUL
• Yue (Joy) Xin  'The role of the observer as intermediary between the planned city and the lived city' lead supervisor with Dr Tilo Amhoff
• Juan Carlos Garces de Vivo 'Waterfront Regeneration as Strategy: Barranquilla, Colombia' supervisor