Research
Architecture and energy
Barnabas is the first historian of architecture to study the influence of human energy use on the long history of architecture. Following a year's British Academy Mid Career Fellowship he is completing a book to be published by Pelican on the topic, tracing the growth in cities and monumental architecture that followed the invention of agriculture, and redoubled with the exploitation of fossil fuels from the seventeenth century onwards.
Barnabas is keen to supervise PhD research on this rich and important topic, relating to architecture of any period or place understood in relation to the energy economy of the society concerned.
British architecture since 1945
Brutalism, especially the work of Sir Denys Lasdun. High Tech, especially the early work of Cedric Price. Postmodernism.
Barnabas is interested in supervising PhDs and MPhils in architectural history, heritage and urban history.
Research grants
Architecture and Planning in the Tropics: From Imperial Gold Coast to Tropical Ghana
BRITISH ACADEMY (UK)
November 2015 - December 2018
Lasdun Online
GRAHAM FOUNDATION (USA)
July 2012 - February 2021
Energy in the History of Architecture
BRITISH ACADEMY (UK)
September 2017 - August 2018