‘Architectural Echoes: Documenting the Unbuilt Future’ is a collaborative body of work by tutors and students from the Master of Architecture (MArch) programme at Northumbria University.
The project reframes the unbuilt: rather than focusing on what was never constructed, it examines what architecture becomes when it returns to an unbuilt state. Northeast England's ruins, from historic fragments and lime kilns to industrial infrastructure, represent architecture in reverse, slowly deconstructing back to landscape, challenging permanence as a foundational assumption of the discipline.
Drawing on the typological rigour of Bernd and Hilla Becher, tutors and students worked as equals to produce individual drypoint prints forming a cabinet of curiosities. This documentation treats ruins as active research subjects: the weathered slit of a 14th-century bastle, the corbelled vault of a lime kiln, the skeletal headframe of a pit shaft. Each print captures transformation rather than failure.
Drypoint's incised lines mirror the erosive processes shaping these structures. The slow act of mark-making offers an architectural intelligence distinct from digital representation.
Lesley McIntyre is an Associate Professor of Architecture at Northumbria University, whose practice-based research investigates disappearing architectures through printmaking and counter-archival methods. Will Campbell is an Architect and Assistant Professor at Northumbria University, whose work focuses on craft, materiality, and architectural design. Together they co-lead the MArch programme. Students from Year 1 and Year 2 contributed prints as equal partners: Lucy Barrett, Ellie Owen, Khai Chyi Loo, Chloe Ingle, Aidan Ledward, Finlay Greenwood, Rainbow Thein, Andy Green, Ed Oldridge, Adam Williams, Millie Woodford-Grogan, Alex Butler, and Tyler Liversidge.
This work is a collaboration by: Lesley McIntyre, Will Campbell, Lucy Barrett, Ellie Owen, Khai Chyi Loo, Chloe Ingle, Aidan Ledward, Finlay Greenwood, Rainbow Thein, Andy Green, Ed Oldridge, Adam Williams, Millie Woodford-Grogan, Alex Butler, and Tyler Liversidge.