Joe Holyoak

Short CV

December 2008

I am an architect and urban designer, with a Diploma in Architecture (1968) and an MA in Urban Design (1980). I am Reader at Birmingham School of Architecture, Birmingham City University, and an architect and urban designer in practice. At BCU I am Director of the MA in Urban Design course. I have been an external examiner at Oxford Brookes University and at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh. My main research interests are in urban regeneration; the design, use and management of urban space; and 19^th, 20^th   and 21^st century architecture. My urban design practice is mainly concerned with the replanning and regeneration of postwar housing estates. I am an urban design consultant to Redditch BC and Bromsgrove DC.

I am active in the political and practical arenas of architecture, conservation and urban planning, particularly in Birmingham. I was instrumental in the creation of MADE, the regional centre for architecture, in 2000. I am a trustee of the Birmingham Conservation Trust, a member of the Executive Committee of the Birmingham Design Initiative (BDI), and Vice-Chairman of the Victorian Society (Birmingham and West Midlands Group) and Chairman of its Casework Subcommittee. In 2006 I chaired the Victorian Society’s Working Group on Schools.

I am one of three Regional Representatives for CABE for the West Midlands. I am a deputy chairman of the Design Review Panel for Urban Vision North Staffordshire, and also a member of the  West Midlands Design Review Panel. I was chairman of the judges for the first Southern Staffordshire Design Awards, 2005, and also a judge in 2007. I was also a judge for the 2005 BDI Place and Genius architectural awards. I am a member of the BCU team awarded the contract by CABE for the 2007, 2008 and 2009 national Urban Design Summer Schools.

I write, speak and broadcast frequently on my subjects. Published in 2004 was Street, subway and mall, a study of the changes in urban space in the redevelopment of Birmingham’s Bull Ring, in Remaking Birmingham: the visual culture of urban regeneration (Routledge, 2004); I have written the history of Brindleyplace in Brindleyplace: a model for urban regeneration (Right Angle Press, 1999); and shortly to be published for the Victorian Society is a study of the architects Martin and Chamberlain in 19^th Century Birmingham Architects. In preparation is a chapter on Birmingham for  Urban Design and the UK Urban Renaissance, to be published by Routledge in 2009. I write regularly for the Architects’ Journal and for Urban Design.

I co-organised a national conference in 2005 on Urban Space and Anti-social Behaviour, and also the 2005 annual conference of the Urban Design Group on Urban Design and the Multicultural City. In 2008 I organised the conference Highbury 20 years on: Visioning the City, and the symposium Historic Buildings and the Challenge of Climate Change at the Climate Change Festival. I was in 2005 part of a team, Design for Change, which completed a project for CABE, running a pilot series of workshops on urban design for local authority councillors and officers in four regions of England. I was in 2006 a Technical Assessor for the Eastside City Park International Design Competition in Birmingham. In 2007/08 I delivered a series of Continuing Professional Development presentations on urban design for RIBA regions in the midlands and north. I was recently a member of a research team that recently completed a project on risk and urban space for CABE, published as Living with Risk.