Nature focused storytelling PhD completed

We are delighted that director Mike Tonkin has completed his PhD, The Nature of Place. The thesis has been based on the placemaking design methodology ‘Asking, Looking, Playing, Making,’ published in a book in 1999 by Black Dog, since honed over 25 years of creative practice. The design process asks questions to redefine the brief, looks for inspiration to broaden architecture's horizon, plays with design alternatives to define the appropriate form, and makes with innovative construction techniques that utilise the latest digital tools. Each project is seen through a time perspective of present, past, future, endeavouring to unearth and tell a new story particular to nature, people, place. 

Leeds Polytechnic graduation in 1983

Nature, Stories, Innovation

42 years after graduating from Bath Technical college’s building course, 39 years after receiving a First-Class Honours degree from Leeds Polytechnic, and 37 years after gaining a Master’s in architecture at the RCA, Mike Tonkin has finally completed his PhD at Bath University. Through design and teaching and a determined defiance of the limits of his dyslexia, Mike continues to assert his uncynical, whole-hearted love of nature, stories and innovation, and architecture's power to touch people’s hearts.