Dr Yahya Lavaf-Pour

• Qualifications:Dip Arch, MSc, PhD, SFHEA
• Position:Senior Lecturer in Architecture - BSc (Hons) Architecture Programme Leader
• Department:FET - Architecture and the Built Environment
• Email:Yahya.LavafPour@uwe.ac.uk

About me

Yahya is a Senior Lecturer in Architecture, Programme Leader for the BSc(Hons) Architecture degree, and a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. He teaches across both undergraduate and postgraduate levels and leads the final-year Architecture and Design Studio of the BSc (Hons) Architecture programme. He has been awarded the university’s Outstanding Teaching and Learning Award. Previously in practice, he worked on a range of design projects internationally, and in the UK contributed to the refurbishment of the Liverpool Royal Court Theatre.

Yahya holds a PhD in Architecture from the University of Liverpool. His research and studio teaching investigate the complex relationships between architectural form, historic and ecological events, the notion of Trace, and the interplay between fiction and fact in the production of form. Grounded in deconstructivist theory, his work interrogates how meaning in architecture is never fixed but continually reinterpreted through time, memory, and use. He examines how Form emerges as a result of a multiplicity of forces and layered information that are often unseen; the traces of historic events, stories, and ecological transformations that forms its becoming. Through this lens, Yahya positions sustainable design as an act of keeping alive the ecological traces, narratives, and stories of human–nature relationships.

Drawing from theory, philosophy, and design practice, his work positions architectural Form as a field of relations shaped by both human and non-human forces. He pursues an Integral approach to architecture, one that entangles spiritual, social, and pragmatic aspects of design into a coherent understanding. His research contributes to the emerging discourse on theoretical and critical sustainability in architecture, seeking to move beyond technocratic approaches to sustainability toward a more integrated understanding that embraces its cultural, ecological, and historical narratives.

Yahya has served on scientific and organising committees for several international conferences and has reviewed for multiple journals. His research has received internationally excellent recognition in the Research Excellence Framework (REF). He has worked on funded projects in Malaysia, Hong Kong, and the UK, including an EPSRC Connected Everything II project on Intelligent Empathy in Design, and has been the recipient of the Vice-Chancellor’s Early Career Researcher Award for his work on architectural Form and perception. Yahya is also a reviewer and member of the AHRC, EPSRC, and British Council’s Arts and Humanities College.

As part of his pedagogic research, he is interested in experimental form-finding methods inspired by the Vkhutemas School of Architecture, particularly Nikolai Ladovsky’s course Space, exploring how early modernist ideas of spatial perception can inform contemporary architectural education and design thinking.

Area of expertise

Yahya's current work centres around theoretical and critical sustainability in architecture, which seeks to entangle social, theoretical, psycho-physiological, and ecological considerations into sustainable design practices. This emerging field aims to go beyond technical aspects of sustainability to address the complex and interconnected social and cultural dimensions of sustainable architecture. His research contributes to this field by exploring new ways of understanding and practicing sustainable architecture through a critical and theoretical lens in particular, Wilber's "Integral Theory" and Derrida's "Deconstruction".

If you are interested in pursuing a PhD in a related topic, please submit your research proposal and CV to Yahya.lavafpour@uwe.ac.uk

Publications

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