Flora Samuel
Supervisor ESR15; Co-supervisor ESR2 - Host coordinator Flora ceased to be ESR15 supervisor and ESR2 co-supervisor on April 2023, Her role was taken over by Lorraine Farrelly.
Host university
B10 - School of Built Environment, University of Reading
Flora Samuel is Professor at the University of Reading where she came from being Head at the University of Sheffield school to help start a school of Architecture delivering ‘an education for uncertainty’. She has long been interested in the connections between people and the environment with a particular emphasis on mental health and spirituality and is trying to bring some of this into the industry value agenda, one outcome being her most recent book Why Architects Matter (2018). Flora was the first Royal Institute of British Architects Vice President for Research and has been working hard to promote research in architectural practice, most notably through Post Occupancy Evaluation. In 2016 she set up the Research Practice Leads, a group of over 30 practices that meets quarterly to advance the cause of research of architectural research. Together they published the Social Value Toolkit for Architects with the RIBA earlier this year. This, together with her work on social value mapping has attracted considerable industry interest. She leads the ‘place’ strand within the UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence (CACHE).
