Mr Derek Hales
School of Science, Engineering & Environment
Current positions
Lecturer
Biography
I am a registered architect whose research bridges architecture, literature, media, and science through the creative exploration experimental architecture. My long-term philosophical project in published work over the past 15 years has been to remobilise the concept of technical objects as objectile. The latest research in this project looks at technical research infrastructures - large scale laboratories, data centres and manufacturing. In my applied work I work in R&D on reflexive architecture, and in the technical stack, policy and innovation contexts of industrial digital twinning, data shadows and the mirror worlds of cyberphysical systems in experimental contexts.
Prior to returning to architecture and the convergence of media and urban infrastructures, I spent over 15 years in interdisciplinary R&D and artistic research. My work in communities of media artists, developers of open hardware and software, sound artists, device artists and art-science practitioners was supported by Arts Council England, AHRC, EPSRC, HEIF, and ERDF. I鈥檝e evaluated research and innovation for BRE, BSI, and the EU Framework Programme, and most recently completed UKRI-funded research via Innovate UK鈥檚 immersive technology accelerator, and policy and standards work in critical national infrastructures (UK) and virtual worlds (EU).
I am not currently accepting PhD students but acr[tively exploring applied research, KTPs with industry.
Keywords: Diegetic Protoyping, Experimental Architecture, Reflexive Architecture, Cyberphysical Systems, Speculative Infrastructure Digital Twinning, Process Philosophy, Media Infrastructures, Art-Science, EmTech Foresight, Deregulation and Innovation, intellectual property and open licensing.
Affiliations: MediaCityUK Immersive Technology Innovation Accelerator / Centre of Excellence for Practice as Research.
Current Project: Speculative, Emergent and Experimental Infrastructures
Areas of Research
My research operates at the intersection of speculative design, pataphysical computing, and posthuman architectural futures. I work across theory and practice, engaging with the philosophical and technical dimensions of the virtual鈥攆rom design fiction and machinic materialities to cyberphysical infrastructures and digital twins.
Rooted in a longstanding commitment to practice-based and artistic research, my inter- and trans-disciplinary writing explores how architecture can respond to鈥攁nd intervene in鈥攖he spatial, ecological, and ontological shifts produced by emergent technoscientific assemblages. This includes a sustained engagement with Deleuzian and post-Deleuzian thought, abstract culture, media infrastructures, and speculative hardware.
To challenge the disciplinary enclosure of architecture, I operate para-academically through experimental research studios and collaborative initiatives. These include The New Centre for Research & Practice (with Neil Spiller), the Extraordinary Experimental Laboratory (with Phil Watson), and the DreamLab collective鈥攁n offshoot of my research with the Greater Manchester Immersive Technologies Accelerator at MediaCityUK. Across these contexts, my studios explore the digital, physical, chemical, and biological dimensions of design, often blurring the boundaries between the vegetal, the machinic, and the x-reality of the virtual.
Current projects include a series Soft House Extraordinary Experimental Laboratories for 鈥渕achinic organs鈥 developed with Phil Watson, which explore pataphysical and speculative approaches to hardware and software in the bioscience of parallel botany. Alongside this speculative and design-fictional practice, I undertake applied research into the implementation of Digital Twins and the technical virtual as contemporary expressions of cyberspace and reflexive architecture as originally theorised by Neil Spiller with whom I run a research studio for the New Centre for Research & Practice.
I co-convene the Practice as Research cluster and the Centre of Excellence in Art, Media and Creative Technologies. I am also a member of the editorial boards for Digital Creativity and Architecture and Culture, and have guest edited special issues on design fiction (2013, 2025) and speculative hardware (2016).
Areas of Supervision
We are seeking architecture + design practice as research doctoral candidates. Interested in visionary architecture, speculative design and design fiction approaches in immersive media - we are interested to hear from applicants interested in both drawing as a mode of research and XR as a mode of constructing autonomous architecture
> Speculative Hardware and pata(physical) computing. Constructing non-standard methodologies and objectile systems for visionary architectural design methodologies. Applying Open hardware and F/L/OSS from the fields of vfx, games and XR production together with artistic research methodologies to contemporary architectural practice in XR media infrastructures.
We seek doctoral students to construct abstract machines /pataphysical hardware for XR architectures in collaboration with myself and AVATAR Professor Neil Spiller. This work builds upon my previous practice-based UK Research Council supported research in theatre, performance and scenographic devising practices applied to the design of technological objects together with Neil's long-term visionary architectural works.
My teaching interests engage with the tension between regulatory mechanisms and disciplinary traditions that seek to standardize and constrain the production of architects and architectural knowledge, and experimental practices鈥攁longside developments in art and science鈥攖hat challenge these limitations. I am particularly interested in how such interdisciplinary tendencies open architecture to external influences, fostering innovation and enabling novel forms of practice. This, in turn, contributes to the emergence of new disciplinary configurations and the ongoing speciation of architecture itself.
In 2026 we launch the Masters by Research in Advanced Architecture, incorporating the RIBA Part 3 Award. I am currently writing this programme.
At the 海角乱伦, I currently teach the following postgraduate modules:
Histories, Theories & Methodologies
Advanced Digital Design Technologies
Technology, Innovation & Law
Dissertation (Architecture)
Dissertation (Built Environments)
Research Methods
I am the former Director of both the Professional Doctorate in the Built Environment and the Master of Architecture programme. I currently convene the Practice Futures professorial lecture series as part of the 海角乱伦 Laboratory of Architecture and lead the development of Professional Studies within the School.
My pedagogical practice is informed by a commitment to facilitating experimental practice both within and beyond formal academic structures. I previously led speculative design research studios within the professionally validated framework of architectural education, and I now continue this work in para-academic contexts through my Research Fellowship with the New Centre for Research & Practice. The NCRPs mission to support practitioners working between disciplines and outside conventional institutional boundaries aligns closely with my interest in fostering independent research, critical inquiry, and innovative architectural thinking that exceeds traditional categories of academic and professional practice.
Qualifications
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Cultural and Historical Studies
2014 - 2019
Recognitions
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Member, RIBA Business Futures National Advisory Group