Personal profile
Teaching Interests
Alessandro is a Senior Lecturer and MArch Architecture (RIBA pt.2) Course Director at the Birmingham School of Architecture and Design. He also co-established and leads the Co\\aborative Lab:oratory (Co.LAB) an award winning interdisciplinary design-research initiative within the school that integrates teaching with creative practices through live projects.
Alessandro leads modules at undergraduate and postgraduate levels in architectural studio, technology and history and theory in design, covering broad themes of psychogeography readings of the city, digital manufacturing and craft-based practices, socio-materiality, design entrepreneurialism, architecture and cinematic practices, Italian 20th Century art and architecture movements, trans-disciplinary design practice.
Enterprise Interests
Alessandro has been as Enterprise School Lead role: working on the academic strategy and creative direction for enterprise and innovation activity in the Birmingham School of Architecture & Design, KEF coordination, CPD, consultancy, sponsorships and external industry activity.
Key projects include co-developing STEAMhouse with Birmingham City University and Eastside Projects, and designing DoE Skills Bootcamps in Climate Literacy and Retrofit for the West Midlands Combined Authority.
Alessandro was Steamhouse Academic Lead: connecting academics across the University, curriculum design, member’s design development, research collaborations and building design advisor for the ERDF project – a prototyping and innovation centre.
Research and Innovation interests
Alessandro's research is predominantly practice based and inherently linked in enterprise activity within architectural education.
Academic research interests can be categorised in five intertwined themes; contemporary vernacular language of digital-analogue craft processes, communal production/fabrication, transmedia representation for architecture, agency/entrepreneurialism in the design studio.
Education/Academic qualification
PG Cert, Higher Education, Birmingham City University
MA, Architecture and Urbanism, University of Manchester
BArch, Architecture (RIBA Pt.2), University of Manchester
BA (Hons) , Architecture (RIBA pt. 1), University of Manchester
External positions
Specialist Member, Birmingham City Council Design Review Panel
2018 → 2020
Advisory Board member, Centrala
Board Member, RIBA Publishing Educational Committee
Keywords
- NA Architecture
- N Visual arts (General) For photography, see TR
- TT Handicrafts Arts and crafts
- Early Career Researcher
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Collaborations and top research areas from the last five years
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Delightful Fun: A Cedric Price Thinkbelt
Columbano, A. (Artist) & Martinez Sanchez, M. J. (Artist), 2025Research output: Non-textual form › Exhibition
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Action Space Revisited
Columbano, A. (Artist), 23 Oct 2024Research output: Non-textual form › Exhibition
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Parafictions of the Glitched Estate in Central Hill
Columbano, A., 14 Dec 2024.Research output: Contribution to conference › Paper › peer-review
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From Civic Responsibility to Socio-Spatial Civic Agency: Critiquing the Civic University Movement through live projects
Jones, M. & Columbano, A., 1 May 2023, In: Charrette. 8, 2Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
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Prototype City, British Council/IABsp – Instituto de Arquitetos do Brasil (São Paulo)
Columbano, A., 2022Research output: Other contribution › peer-review