University of Westminster

Graduate Student, Architecture and the Built Environment

PhD Candidate

Thesis Title: Improving the Construction of the Image: Painting as a Theoretical Proposition to the Architectural Discipline

About

Agnieszka Mlicka studied Fine Art at the University  of Oxford, obtaining a BFA/MA in 2006, and a Distinction in Preliminary  Examination. She then followed this up with an MA in Painting at the University  of the Arts London in 2007. Agnieszka started her practice-based PhD research  at the University of Westminster in 2010, under the supervision of Professor Jeremy Till and Professor Lindsay Bremner (since 2012).
  Agnieszka has extensive experience of working  in the non-profit arts sector as well as the art market. She has curated several  exhibitions and has herself exhibited widely. Her art practice is a combination  of painting and drawing, inspired by architecture, the city and urban planning.

Thesis Synopsis: How can painting, in its threefold meaning of medium, form and practice, function as a proposition to the architectural discipline? In answering this question, this research tries to move beyond an understanding of painting as mere representation of architecture; rather, the proposition is that painting can function as an investigation into architecture’s principles, which contains in itself the possibility of creating architecture. This offers a provocation to most forms of architectural design process, questioning the primacy of drawing and digital rendering. It also questions what the purpose and limit of painting is, beyond its autonomous, self-referential form, thus what painting can do, rather than what it is. This interdisciplinary research investigates the potential of the architectural painting, in order to 'improve the construction of the image' (a pun on the slogan ‘Improving the image of construction’), referring to the practice-based research methodology.

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