Belinda Mitchell

University of Portsmouth, School of Creative Technologies, Senior Lecturer

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Belinda Mitchell is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Portsmouth, School of Architecture, where she co-ordinates masters programmes taught in an interdisciplinary environment; Interior Architecture and Design, Conservation Architecture and Sustainable Cities. Her teaching and visual art practices take place through collaborative and interdisciplinary processes that use drawing as an interactive site of exchange.

Her current research is focused around Wymering Manor, a 16th century house in Cosham, Portsmouth that examines the disciplinary territory in the overlap between interior design and conservation practice by focusing on ways of conceptualising historic interiors as unfinished sites of experience that are loaded with affective capacity.

Recent exhibitions include Sites of Conversation (2017) group exhibition and symposium at Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton; Matter of the Manor (2018) Friends of Interpretable Spaces, group exhibition, Hackney.

Recent papers, Yonat Nitzan Green, Ms Belinda Mitchell & Jane A. Bennett (2019) Sites of conversation: the table method, In : Tracey: Drawing and Visualisation Research. 14, 1, 13 p. and Karen Fielder & Ms Belinda Mitchell, Thresholds of the Future, May 2019, Interior Futures. Brooker, G., Harriss, H. & Walker, K. (eds.). Crucible Press, Vol. 3. p. 138-150

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Papers by Belinda Mitchell

Drawing spaces

Drawing Spaces is a collaborative research initiative establishing links across traditional subje... more Drawing Spaces is a collaborative research initiative establishing links across traditional subject boundaries and bringing teaching and research closer together. Initiated by Trish Bould, Colin Harper, Belinda Mitchell in September 2005.The project engages debates in Fine Art and Fine Art Education Part one: An interactive and site specific work, Hartley Library University of Southampton 16 May – 27 June. Drawing Spaces: Picturing Knowledge, explodes the process of creating an artwork in the public space of a library, inviting contribution and providing access into what is usually a closed activity. The work, places drawing and art making at the centre of research activities in the University Library creating a dialogue between different research practices. ‘Drawing Spaces’ activates drawing as a forum through which, links can be established across traditional subject boundaries. A site specific work in Hartley Library has been used to activate and develop relationships with staff ...

Marking presence

Much has been written about the visual understanding of space through perspectival constructs, wi... more Much has been written about the visual understanding of space through perspectival constructs, with emphasis given to an assumed static observer. This paper aims to find new innovative ways of understanding our dynamic bodily relationship with our surroundings, by including a sensory investigation of everyday experiences of our encounters with buildings, which are often overlooked. The paper will explore the body in relationship to the built environment, and the proprioception of bodies and buildings. It will be based on our current research, investigating ways of mapping and notating bodies and their responses to architectural space. It will look at what types of notation are appropriate, and how these findings can be used to affect and enhance the design and building process. The aim is to develop scores through an investigation of various forms of notation that emphases the sensory, and our experiential perception and response to space. The paper will look at a number of graphic representations including: dance notation, language, architectural plans, maps, sketches, drawings and diagrams. In order to investigate the possibilities for considering the relationship between body and building, an exchange will be used between the disciplines of architecture, interior design and dance by considering the body moving through a series of spaces, and the act of mark-making as a method of recording sensory response. The results of the exchange offer new ways to describe and represent space that take place through an evolving process, drawing in the materiality of the building, its tactility, its surface qualities, and felt language. Insights have been gained into how we perceive space offering new ways to describe and develop design interventions informed by the sensory. The project develops a broader set of linguistic possibilities to engage with the built environment and a grammar of notation, with a choreographic score that describes and activates the moving body in the built environment. Theme Drawing and Notation. Drawing as a sometimes intuitive other times driven by convention means of mapping appearance and movement, with special reference to innovative methods of notation.

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Emodied Methodologies, Matter of the manor

Buildings decay and mutate, they are made of hybrid assemblages of material sourced from near and... more Buildings decay and mutate, they are made of hybrid assemblages of material sourced from near and far…. ‘they are emergent mosaics of various temporalities, collages of matter characterised by an incessant becoming’. Our interest is in historic places where space, time, materials and people are intertwined in an unfolding process, where the past dwells on in the spectral traces of absent things, of past people, objects and events, of longings, desires and gestures. We investigate the disciplinary territory that lies in the overlap between interior design and conservation practice by focusing on ways of conceptualising historic interiors as unfinished sites of experience that are loaded with affective capacity. Our work uses an uninhabited 16th-century timber-framed manor house as a case study. Here we propose that the house is experienced all the more poignantly as it hangs in a liminal state prior to any programme of restoration and reuse which aspires to implement a unifying schem...

Sites of Conversation

The matter of a manor

Drawing in the built form

Completed June 2004: Drawing in the Built Form: commissioned permanent work in the central atrium... more

Making conversation

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Interior archaeologies

An artwork, The Value of Things, was part of a wider exhibition that took place in the, City Spac... more An artwork, The Value of Things, was part of a wider exhibition that took place in the, City Space Gallery, UK. The project started with a visual artist bringing together a collection of threads, objects, maps, elastic, a teapot, books, which were ordered and reordered and placed in relationship to each other. The objects, become a landscape of provocation for others to make connections, to have conversations of, express views they hold and acted as a starting point for discussion.

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Matter of the Manor

Journal of Interior Design, 2018

Buildings decay and mutate; they are made of hybrid assemblages of material sourced from near and... more Buildings decay and mutate; they are made of hybrid assemblages of material sourced from near and far, "…emergent mosaics of various temporalities, collages of matter characterised by an incessant becoming". 1 We are interested in the "continuity of process-that is with the perdurance or life expectancy of a thing, or how long it can be kept going". 2 This thinking supports us to shift away from a reading of historic buildings as objects analogous to documents inscribed with fixed histories to one where space, time, materials and people are intertwined in an unfolding process. We are interested in matter as material as affective particles, atmospheres, spectral traces, gestures and actions.

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Drawing IN: Bodies in Motion

Remote Practices: Architecture in Proximity, May 7, 2021

Matter of the manor: the life and death of a timber joist

41st Theoretical Archaeology Group Conference, Dec 18, 2019

McCall's Multi Blue

Perception, 2017

Lines between: writing/drawing, space and the artist’s book

Lines between: writing/drawing, space and the artists’ book is an interdisciplinary exchange betw... more Lines between: writing/drawing, space and the artists’ book is an interdisciplinary exchange between Interior design and Illustration. The artists’ book acts as a hinge between 2D drawing/writing practices and 3D space to generate material propositions for major project briefs and to develop new forms of disciplinary representations. The book supports an engagement with space that is located in embodied experience and the generation of ideas through the dance of writing, the play of text and the tactile engagement with visual images

Marking Presence Bmkbsi

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More and less than conversation

Wandering spleen refers to a hypermobile state of the spleen, abnormally located in the lower abd... more Wandering spleen refers to a hypermobile state of the spleen, abnormally located in the lower abdomen or pelvis, responsible for 0,2% of splenectomies, tending to manifest at two age peaks: in children below 10 years and women of childbearing age group. The diagnosis is essentially radiological. The findings of computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging are the absence of the spleen in the anatomical location and the presence of mass with attenuation / signal soft tissue in the lower part of the abdomen. The treatment of choice for wandering spleen when asymptomatic, is splenopexy and, in urgent cases, splenectomy. The authors describe a case of this disease whose diagnosis was made by the magnetic resonance.

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Thresholds of the future

Sites of exchange : materialising conversations

A research-led exhibition that explored ‘making’ as a way of investigating and sharing ideas. The... more A research-led exhibition that explored ‘making’ as a way of investigating and sharing ideas. The project questioned how acts of 'doing' inform research and interpretation. The Faculty of Creative and Cultural Industries' Space, acted as an inter-disciplinary laboratory bringing together unique ideas, opening new dialogues through the 'art of inquiry'. The exhibition held conversations from different locations, ‘Warp Scaffold’ was based on research in Gujarat, India alluding to current change taking place in the country through the artists' observations of weaving and shifts in economic and construction processes. Silent Conversations was a material network of crafted conversations that were made in Winchester's Cathedral and archaeology archive. It formed a layered installation of different visual languages referencing the people and locations it was made in. A research showcase project presented by Trish Bould, Belinda Mitchell, Kathy Oldridge, Eileen White and invited participants including LOkesh Ghai. was a work based on research in Gujarat India, makes present some of the current changes taking place in the country through an observation of weaving, economic and construction processes. ‘Silent conversations’ is a material network of crafted conversations that were made in an archaeology archive and a Cathedral. It forms a layered installation of different visual languages referencing the people and locations it was made in. A research project showcase presented by Trish Bould, Belinda Mitchell, Kathy Oldridge, Eileen White.

Interior urban room

The sensory experience of space

Our bodies are in constant dialogue with our surroundings. Our understanding of architectural and... more Our bodies are in constant dialogue with our surroundings. Our understanding of architectural and interior space is predicated on this although it is not always very obvious. We tend to think of it and record it as a visual experience. As a consequence, we analyse buildings and interiors through conventional visual representation, which does not take into account our other senses. We concentrate on what things ‘look’ like. We have been challenging this approach. By considering the interplay between our bodies and buildings, we can gather insights into the habitability of buildings and our environment, and how we occupy and understand space. To investigate this further we asked students to analyse buildings and how people use them through observing and engaging with dance and movement within a building. In this paper we will be exploring our sensory experience of space, ways of expressing it, and to use this as a basis for the design process. Our movements through a building are central to the design process for architects and interior designers. We will consider the dialogue between built form; it’s textural and material qualities, and our haptic response to it. We aim to develop a new language of drawing that expresses students’ personal experience of space rather that a more delineated and ordered way of understanding space that comes from a more conventional ways of recording space. We are looking at the body and its dynamic relationship with buildings and discussing experimental ways of notation that incorporate the dialogue between body and building. We think of this as a creative process that develops with the involvement of dancer/artist/ student. To understand how we experience buildings, by trying to connect the felt and the abstract, we have encouraged students to use themselves as a resource in a building. The buildings provide the frame to work within, the container and the contained. We will describe an on-going project at the University of Portsmouth, now in its second year, where students work together with dancers and artists. It requires a process of loosing inhibitions, having to invite uncertainty, and allow for mistakes, or questioning when there is no clear path to follow. Design students tend to use drawing for analysis and are encouraged into accuracy. Their drawing boxes consist of the 0.1/0.5 ink pen a pencil and memory stick, they work with CAD. The output for their thinking ends up on a screen or a small-scale sketchbook. Very rarely do the students get the opportunity to ‘touch’ their process, the tactility of a drawing, its gestural and sensual qualities. We are interested in how experiencing space and exploring experimental ways of notating space come together and give a definition to a new space.

Interior archaeologies: knots, viewpoints and entanglements

Tiene este libro del profesor Cruz una enjundia de sabiduría que los fi lósofos especialistas pod... more Tiene este libro del profesor Cruz una enjundia de sabiduría que los fi lósofos especialistas podrán valorar en detalle. Espero, en estas líneas de síntesis, haber sido justo y agradecido al magnífi co esfuerzo intelectual que el autor ha vertido en este libro, donde aprendemos no solamente lo que es la intimidad personal y su crecimiento, sino las actitudes básicas que no pueden faltar en el desarrollo psicológico y moral de cada uno.

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Drawing spaces