Dr Piers Taylor

• Qualifications:B Design M Arch PhD
• Position:Professor of Knowledge Exchange in Architecture
• Department:School of Architecture and Environment
• Telephone:+441173282273

About me

Dr Piers Taylor is an architect, educator and thought leader in experimental architecture, known for advancing new models of practice, pedagogy and participation. He is Professor of Knowledge Exchange in Architecture at the University of the West of England (UWE), where he leads the Architecture Research Group and plays a central role in connecting research, education and practice across the School of Architecture and wider academic community.

 Taylor is the founder of Invisible Studio, an internationally acclaimed, award-winning architecture practice that operates at the intersection of design, making, research, and social change. The practice is celebrated for its radical material experimentation, hands-on approach, and commitment to low-impact, high-impact design. Projects such as East Quay in Somerset—acollaboration with Onion Collective CIC that catalysed cultural and economic regeneration—demonstrate Taylor’s belief in architecture as a transformative civic tool. His work at Westonbirt, The National Arboretum, involving marginalised communities in both design and construction, furthers his long-standing interest in inclusive processes and the social agency of making.

His PhD research, funded by a prestigious Anniversary Scholarship, examined empowerment through making in architecture, establishing a critical foundation for his ongoing work around participatory design, civic agency, and material engagement. Taylor has led numerous practice-based research projects, including the RIBA National Award-winning Wolfson Tree Management Centre, Room 13, and Ghost Barn, among others. His projects are regularly featured in international publications, journals, exhibitions, and film festivals, with his filmic research outputs screening in Venice, Berlin, New York, Zurich, Toronto, and beyond.

As an educator, Taylor has shaped some of the most innovative academic programmes in architectural education. He was the inaugural Studio Master of the Design + Make programme at the Architectural Association’s Hooke Park campus, where architecture is taught through full-scale making. He has also led two Master’s programmes, and has served as Design Fellow at the University of Cambridge, external examiner at the Arts University Bournemouth, and convenor of the influential annual workshop Studio in the Woods, where ideas are tested throughcollaborative, hands-on making.

Taylor’s current research explores the role of architecture in designing for transition, including how buildings can support and materialise actions that enable civil society and social transformation. He is committed to fostering inclusive and plural research cultures, and is widely recognised for his ability to bridge academic rigour with real-world application. His leadership at UWEinvolves developing research bids with external stakeholders, mentoring staff across disciplines, and shaping the university’s research strategy through an ethos of generosity, experimentation, and cross-pollination.

 Taylor has also made numerous architectural documentaries—including an immersive study of the work of Jørn Utzon—and regularly contributes to academic journals and popular media. His book, Learning from the Local (RIBA Publishing, 2025), synthesises decades of research and practice into a manifesto for grounded, socially engaged, and materially intelligent architecture.

At the heart of Taylor’s work—whether in teaching, practice, or research—is a belief that architecture is not a product but a process: one rooted in ethics, collaboration, and material consciousness. His self-built studio, located in a working woodlandmanaged by Invisible Studio, exemplifies this ethos. It is both a place of work and a living laboratory: a space for testing architectural ideas against the grain of convention and in tune with the rhythms of the land.

 Dr Piers Taylor continues to challenge the dominant paradigms of architectural production, championing approaches that are agile, experimental, and fearless. Through architecture, he seeks not only to reflect the world, but to be part of a process of remaking it, rooted in wider ecosystems of place, both material and social.

Area of expertise

Dr Piers Taylor’s research interrogates architecture as a social, material, and relational process, situated at the intersection of creative practice, participatory making, and civic agency. His work challenges conventional separations between design and construction, asking not only what we build, but how, with whom, and under what conditions.

Taylor’s research is grounded in two primary, interconnected strands: making, and social impact. At its core, it explores how participatory making can empower, particularly when design is approached not as a linear or conclusive act but as a dynamic process shaped by uncertainty, contingency, and collective negotiation. His PhD, funded by an Anniversary Scholarship, critically examined empowerment through making, and has since evolved into a sustained enquiry into how material practices, construction methods, and design processes can be reconceived as tools for autonomy, self-reliance, and social transformation.

Taylor’s work shifts emphasis away from design as prefiguration, toward a model in which design emerges through making. In this context, contingent events—typically regarded as disruptive—are reframed as productive and enabling. His research explores how uncertainty, far from being a failure of control, can be harnessed as a catalyst for agency, particularly for less formally trained participants in collaborative build processes. The desire for certainty implicit in traditional contract drawings is challenged, and in its place, Taylor proposes alternative structures for design/make integration, where sensory awareness, material feedback, and co-authorship are central.

This has led to a series of practice-based research projects—including Wolfson Tree Management Centre, Room 13, Ghost Barn, and East Quay—which test these ideas in real-world settings. These projects are not just architectural artefacts, but platforms for inquiry: examining how to embed making within design processes; how co-design can unfold across disciplines, skills, and communities; and how the relational ecology of a project—from its timber sourcing to its collaborative labour—can produce both material and social transformation.

Taylor’s architectural practice, Invisible Studio, functions as a research laboratory in its own right, with a self-built woodland studio serving as a test site for alternative production models, material systems, and participatory methods. His work with marginalised groups at Westonbirt, The National Arboretum, and with community collectives such as Onion Collective CIC at East Quay, further exemplifies how architecture can act as a tool for civic agency, engaging directly with questions of inclusion, identity, and regeneration.

Taylor’s research also addresses how making sits within different models of architectural production, and what types of knowledge, information structures, and contractual relationships are required to support alternative design/make configurations. Rather than prescribing outcomes in advance, his work foregrounds open-endedness, improvisation, and responsiveness—qualities often suppressed by conventional procurement models but essential for socially embedded and materially intelligent practice.

As Professor of Knowledge Exchange in Architecture at the University of the West of England, Taylor leads the Architecture Research Group, supporting colleagues across creative practice, planning, sustainability, and design-led research. He also teaches on the M Arch programme, where his studio promotes critical experimentation and design as an ongoing, collaborative process. His academic leadership extends to mentoring, bid development, and strategic planning for REF 2029, where he plays a key role in cultivating a plural and inclusive research culture.

Taylor’s research has been widely disseminated through exhibitions, journals, film, and public lectures. His filmic research outputs—including an immersive study of Jørn Utzon—have been screened internationally in Venice, Berlin, New York, Zurich, and beyond. His forthcoming book, Learning from the Local (RIBA Publishing, 2025), consolidates this research into a manifesto for grounded, situated and socially responsive architecture.

Across all domains of his work, Taylor explores how architecture can move beyond being a product or service, and instead operate as a cultural and material practice—one that enables shared authorship, resilience, and transformation, both socially and spatially.

Publications

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