Prof Arthur Barker

Staff Profile

NHDAT (cum laude) (Cape Tech) BAS(dist) BArch (dist) (Cape Town) MSc (dist) (Bartlett, University College London) PhD (Pretoria)

Coordinator: Research, Postgraduate Programmes in Architecture, Legacy, Identity and Memory Research field and Design stream

Contact no: +27 (0)12 420 5777

Email: [email protected]

Office: 2-16, Boukunde, Building, Hatfield Campus

Bio

Prof Barker joined the Department of Architecture in 2010 after coordinating the BTech Applied

Design programme at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology for 13 years. From 2010 - 2022 he

coordinated and taught in the Master’s programme. He coordinates design teaching and

heads the Legacy, Identity and Memory Research Field which links to the Departmental Archive.

Prof Barker is the chairperson of the Pretoria Institute of Architects’ Education Committee. He serves

as a panel member for the South African Council for the Architectural (SACAP) Profession

Validation Visiting Board and is an academic member of the international review team of the

Canberra accord (National Architectural Accreditation Board). He has validated architectural

programmes at UCT, Wits, UKZN, DUT, UP, UJ, NUST in Namibia and Taipei, Taiwan.

He also serves on the Editorial Board of the South African Journal of Art History.

Course involvement and teaching philosophy

Prof Barker currently teaches in the 2 nd year design studio and undergraduate history stream.

I have taught at the bookends of the architectural programme. At second-yeard year level my pedagogic

focus is foundational, while at the Masters's level, it was guided evolutionarily. Two simple principles guide my teaching philosophy. The first aligns with the ethos of our Department and my research directions, namely that architecture should inform the ‘construction.’ of place through a critical understanding of the continuum of architecture over time. The second principle recognises that teaching operates on a scale of instruction to facilitation and that this happens to varying degrees in each year of study, no matter how advanced.

Research profile

ORCID ID: 0000-0002-3892-2451

ResearchGate link: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Arthur_Barker

Academia link: https://up-za.academia.edu/ArthurBarker

Department Research Focus Areas: Legacy, Identity and Memory

Research interests: The architecture of the South African Fourth Modern Movement (post WWII), architectural regionalism, architectural conservation and the relationship between theory and design thinking.

Research Projects

Invited contributor and researcher for content in Dutch (Delft University) and South African book titled “Common Ground: Dutch-South African Architectural Exchanges 1902-1961”, funded by the Netherlands Embassy.

Invited contributor and researcher on the architecture of the Bauhaus-trained Pius Pahl for Secondary Modernities: Book publication (discontinued) on an unconventional geography of Bauhaus for the Università Degli Studi di Napoli Federico ii Diarc - Dipartimento di Architettura.

Invited contributor on the regionalist connections of a seminal South African house that is the focus of a book publication by Drs Edna Peres and Andrea Zamboni (Federico II University of Naples ) titled “Creating Coromandel: Marco Zanusso in South Africa”.

Initiator and researcher to establish the record and critical analysis of the legacy of South African (SA) architects and associated architectural artefacts (EBIT ethics approval: 66/2021).

Recent publications (past three years)

Barker, A. and Louw, M. 2022. Evolution of the boundary: Theories of threshold, poché and

stereotomic design, and their manifestation in the work of Henri Comrie. South African Journal of Art

History. Volume 37 Number 3: 1-26.

Barker, A. 2022. Stones that Sing. In Peres, E. and Zamboni, A. Creating Coromandel. Marco Zanuso in South Africa. Artifice, pp188-195.

Barker, A. 2021. Relational Authenticity: A critical review of approaches to authenticity in a selected range of the architectural conservation work of Gawie Fagan (1925-2020) and Gwen Fagan (1924-). South African Journal of Art History, Volume 36, Number 1, pp94-116.

Barker, A. 2021. Beyond Continuity and Contrast: new architecture in Historical contexts: Wilkinson Architects at St. Mary’s DSG, Pretoria. Architecture South Africa. Issue 99, pp42-48.

Barker, A. 2021. The Picturesque and the Practical. Evolution of the Pretoria Dwelling. In Clarke, N., Fisher, R. and Kupiers, M. (eds.). Common Ground: Dutch-South African Architectural Exchanges 1902-1961. LM Publishers, pp139-156.

Barker, A. and Swart, J. 2020. Platforms of knowledge: architectural heritage practice and the information age in South Africa. Virtual Archaeology Review, 11(22), pp56-73.

Barker, A. 2020. Limiting binary thinking: architectural design in historic urban contexts. South African Journal of Art History. Volume 35, Number 2, pp121-149.

Students currently supervising

PhD students (current):

Johan-Nel Prinsloo: The mytho-poetics of hills in gardens of the classical tradition.

Johan Swart: The latent intellectual context of architectural collections.

Cobus Bothma (2023): Practice making: A critical analysis of architectural design processes in the South African built environment that lead to the incorporation of emerging technologies.

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