Professor Flora Samuel
- Head of Department of Architecture, University of Cambridge
- Professor of Architecture (1970)
- Director of the forthcoming Cambridge Urban Room
- Director of Studies for Darwin College
- hod-architecture@aha.cam.ac.uk
“Professor Flora Samuel” can bridge concepts and individuals from diverse backgrounds and fields. Her scholarship encompasses integration and application, establishing links between different disciplines and sectors, placing specializations in their larger contexts, and explaining them to non-specialists.
Her most recent book, Housing for Hope and Wellbeing (2023), summarises her current work, which focuses on inclusion through planning policy and procedures demonstrated through the creation of digital maps with communities and others. For their project Mapping Eco-Social Assets, Flora and Eli Hatleskog were awarded a RIBA Presidents Award for Research in the Communities Category.
According to Professor Flora Samuel, Climate change is a social justice issue. She is the principal investigator (PI) for the Community Consultation for Quality of Life Project, which is sponsored by the AHRC and examines the components of inclusive community consultation for planning in each of the UK’s four countries. The community, university, local government, business community, and professional community gather in the urban room to discuss the future of their communities. Flora is now organizing an urban space for Cambridge.
The book of Professor Flora Samuel “Why Architects Matter (2019)” summarises her strong belief in the value of advancing research in architectural practice. She was twice elected to the Council by the RIBA membership and served as the organization’s first Vice President for Research. She oversaw the creation of other reports for trade associations, such as the RIBA Building Knowledge: Pathways to Post Occupancy Evaluation report and the Architects Council of Europe Value of Architecture Report.
Professor Flora Samuel has been working on techniques to record intangible well-being outcomes in a way that can be incorporated into planning procedures over the past few years. Flora is a social value expert in the field and was the primary author of the RIBA Social Value Toolkit. She has made contributions to numerous social value projects in the building sector and is frequently asked to lecture on social effects by international agencies.
An architect with degrees from Princeton and Cambridge Regarding the changing role of architects and the future of architectural education, Flora has strong opinions. She was a teacher at Cardiff University for ten years before becoming the March leader at Bath University. At that time, she was the first female head of the architecture school at the University of Sheffield. To assist in establishing a new School of Architecture that would provide an education for uncertainty, she moved from Sheffield to Reading University.
As a Le Corbusier scholar at first, Professor Flora Samuel has published five volumes on little-known facets of his practice and work, some of which have been translated into other languages. She feels history is essential for guiding practice going forward.
