Prof. D.J. Rosbottom

Professor of Architecture of the Interior - Department of Architecture

The Chair of  Interiors Buildings Cities is, despite its name, not  led by an interior architect. According to Professor and  architect Daniel Rosbottom, the architecture of the city and architecture of the interior should be seen as parts of the same system of spatial and architectural order and thought about in response to one another.

Daniel Rosbottom (1969) has excelled for many years in combining academia and practice at an international level. He is an advocate of teaching through projects that look beyond the academy and “create a symbiotic relationship between practice and teaching”. As Head of the School of Architecture and Landscape at Kingston University in London, he worked with his students on design research projects that had a direct impact on the wider city through collaborations with the office of London’s Mayor. 

At DRDH Architects, the firm he co-founded in 2000 with David Howarth, he has gained international recognition through competition-winning projects, notably a concert hall and public library for the Norwegian city of Bodø, which has won multiple awards. His appointment at the  Delft University of Technology underlines the ongoing international focus of the chair, which was previously held by his countryman Professor Emeritus Tony Fretton. It gives the Chair of  Interiors Buildings Cities a distinctive British signature. “I have considerable empathy with Fretton’s position on architecture and his understanding of architecture as a social discourse as well as a material one,” says Rosbottom. “That is one of the reasons why I applied for the post. It is a huge advantage to have the opportunity to build from a common ground.”

The post of professor gives Rosbottom the opportunity to lead a discourse that considers the way in which contemporary cities are inhabited. :Although the focus of the chair is on the interior, we will understand it as part of the wider context, taking on the mantle of Interiors Buildings Cities inherited from Emeritus Professor Fretton. Paradoxically, that idea receded through the course of modernity into an obsession with the gaze; the visual overcame more bodily understandings.”

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Chair of Interiors Buildings Cities