Written by Audrey Robeson, MSc Urban Studies student, UCL Geography

With a room full to bursting, the launch of Urban Geopolitics: Rethinking Planning in Contested Cities, edited by Jonathan Rokem (UCL Geography) and Camillo Boano (The Bartlett Development Planning Unit, UCL / Urban Lab), was clearly highly relevant to those studying, thinking, and researching contemporary urban studies. People lined up against the back wall, willing to put up with the lack of seating for a chance to hear some of the contributors give a brief presentation of their chapters. Afterwards, three guests were invited to give responses and their comments on the book.

Image credit: Evelyn Teh

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Written by Nathan Capstick, UCL Bartlett Faculty Communications Officer

Credit: Jack Hobhouse

With Christmas around the corner, it’s often easy for the celebrations to merge into one. The opening of 22 Gordon Street on Friday 16 December, however, was anything but your regular festive celebration.

In a day with talks, tours, a visit from royalty and an impressive cake, UCL Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment and its School of Architecture returned home.

The event itself had been a long time coming; everyone had for years acknowledged the irony that one of the best built environment faculties in the world was housed in, arguably, the worst building on campus.

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Written by Kate Oliver, Faculty Communications Manager for UCL Engineering

It’s a cold November afternoon and UCL’s President & Provost is standing in the Main Quad, waiting for the newest loo on campus to be free. He’s not the only one; a queue of students, staff and miscellaneous toilet fans snakes past the Portico, hinting at the fact that a further 2.6 million people are still waiting for their toilets.

The sudden enthusiasm for sanitation is not a campus crisis: the loo in question is a special environmental composting model, installed in the Quad as the centrepiece of UCLoo Festival. Kicking off on the first UN-recognised World Toilet Day (19 Nov, of course) these two weeks of activities, events and exhibitions invite London to UCL, hoping to start a discussion about the future of water-based sanitation in urban environments, as well as raising awareness of sanitation issues worldwide.

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Written by Tia Kansara, PhD student at the UCL Energy Institute

The projections were awe-inspiring: an unrivalled London event. Whoever would have thought ten years ago that education could be delivered in such an interactive, fun and intelligent manner?

The above image is of the UCL main building in all its architectural glory, below how it was transformed at night

The UCL quad was filled with people excited to see how the iconic Wilkins building was transformed, as EPSRC-funded research was projected on the building as if it were a screen. (more…)