Space in the Image

 An exciting new interdisciplinary and intercontinental volume that brings together scholars and practitioners working at the intersection of architecture, urbanism, and digital media.

Space in the Image focuses on cinematic and photographic portrayals of the built environment, from individual buildings to entire cities. It addresses a timely and relevant topic, reflecting the prominence of urbanization and the widespread use of digital audiovisual media in architecture, planning, and design. The work engages with both contemporary practice and current debates in the field.

In light of the growing ubiquity of media platforms and the immediacy of digital representation, the contributors critically examine the evolving relationship between spatial experience and its mediated forms. These inquiries are situated within the broader context of accelerating urbanization, making the book timely for architects, urban designers, planners, and media theorists alike. Rather than treating images as static records of the past, the volume interrogates their role as active participants in shaping contemporary urban life, identity, and memory.

Space in the Image offers a compelling reflection on the dynamic interplay between experience and representation at the close of the first quarter of the twenty-first century.

Nic Theo has an interdisciplinary educational background that centres on media and communication studies, and spans English literature, law, philosophy and feminist sociology, and applied communication in the discourses of psychology. Professional experience includes practice as an attorney, film production and commercial consulting, and two decades in Higher Education. As Associate Professor of Media and Communication Studies, he oversees postgraduate study programmes; teaches screenwriting, communications and research practices; and supervises Masters and Doctoral research in media, communication and design. Nic is a rated C3 by the National Research Foundation (NRF). His research revolves around communication broadly in media, design and applied communication in professional contexts, and his research niche is the exploration of the interfaces between medium and audience through the architectures of (visual) mass media. He has published journal articles, book chapters, a monograph, and has co-edited scholarly books; and currently serves on the DHET Creative Outputs panel and is an editorial board member of the Journal for Transdisciplinary Research in Southern Africa.

With work/life experience in Ireland, Netherlands, Turkey, UK and USA, Dr Gul Kacmaz Erk has been conducting research on architecture and cinema, new media, design education, and forced displacement. Before joining Queen’s University Belfast in 2011, she worked as a licenced architect in Istanbul and Amsterdam, researched at University of Pennsylvania, University College Dublin and Z/KU Berlin, and taught at Philadelphia (Thomas Jefferson) University, Delft University of Technology and Izmir University of Economics. She holds BArch/MArch (METU) and PhD (ITU) degrees in Architecture, leads CACity Research Group, organises Walled Cities film festivals, and conducts urban filmmaking workshops. Gul is a Senior Lecturer/Associate Professor, and the Lead for Architecture and Planning at Queen’s.

June Jordaan is a Professional Architect and Senior Lecturer in Architecture from Cape Town South Africa. She practiced Architecture in Amsterdam, Mauritius, and Cape Town before joining Academia full time in 2012 at Cape Peninsula University of Technology. Her PhD and subsequent research have focussed on the application of Phenomenology in Architecture. With particular focus on Architecture as a Psychological Phenomenon, Architectural Archetypes, and Architecture and the Everyday. She furthermore has done research on Cinematic Placemaking and its depiction of Atmospheres and Existential Lived Space, and also on Places of Witchcraft. She has presented her research in Japan, Hong Kong, Chandigarh, Oxford, Prague and across South Africa. This path has led her to the field of Neuroscience as a more scientific discipline for interpreting the human experience of architectural and aesthetic phenomena.