Bea Martin

Bea Martin is a Senior Lecturer in Architecture at the Manchester School of Architecture, Manchester Metropolitan University, where she serves as the Inscriptive Practices and Future Processes Lead. She is a qualified British architect, writer, and artist with over fifteen years of professional experience, having worked with renowned firms such as Richard Rogers and Partners in London. Prior to joining MSA, she taught at University of Huddersfield (where she was the BA Architecture Part 1 program leader), Birmingham City University, and University of California at Berkeley.

Her academic qualifications include an ongoing PhD, MArch, and MA/Dip Arch/Urban Planning. Professionally, she holds FHEA, RIBA, ARB, and OASRS credentials. As founder of Speculative Assemblies, an experimental design lab, her work explores the visual construct in architecture through both digital and analogue approaches to drawing, questioning the boundary between drawing as architectural process and drawing as art.

Bea Martin's research focuses on architectural drawing as a conceptual investigation that challenges conventional boundaries between architecture and art. Her work explores mental space representation through geometric constructs, the topography of the unconscious, and machine-like architectural constructions inspired by literary works such as those of Jorge Luis Borges. She investigates how geometry serves as a skeleton for mental space, ready to be fleshed out by imagination, creating spatial configurations that form porous machinic arrangements.

Her recent publications demonstrate a consistent exploration of spatial mapping techniques, mental frameworks, and the relationship between time, space, and architectural representation. Through her work with Speculative Assemblies, she addresses issues of construction, translation, and transformation of meaning through assembled visual constructs, aiming not at reproduction but at reincarnation of concepts in new languages and modes of expression.

Bea Martin has received recognition for her work through exhibitions such as "Impossible Drawings" at the A+D Museums in Los Angeles (2024-2025), which featured 30 works exploring spatial assemblage at the threshold of physical realization.

As an educator, she brings her extensive professional experience and theoretical research into the classroom, leading innovative approaches to architectural education through her role as Inscriptive Practices and Future Processes Lead at MSA.