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The Global Architect

Part 2 Project 2007
John Coutinho
University of Greenwich | UK
This study explores change locally, nationally and internationally. It illustrates the importance of connecting context with change in an increasingly transferable society. This tapestry of work highlights a personal journey that has developed my position as an architect. It has brought new perspective in making change and the rationale behind it.

The territories I have chosen to explore demonstrate some of the diverse challenges and the important areas in which I wish to operate and develop. As an entrepreneurial architect, engaging with multiple disciplines, new opportunities within the profession have opened up and been created as a result of this study.

John Coutinho


Since the beginning of his diploma architecture project John Coutinho has consistently demonstrated an unusual level of determination and the skill to explore the outer edges of architecture on his own terms. The work throughout his Global Architect project has been to raise himself to the challenge of implementation within the regeneration context of the UK, informed in process and product from diverse practices abroad.

John has we believe correctly identified that at a time when there have been so many strategies developed for towns and cities within the UK and often little delivery, it is the entrepreneurial identification and implementation of projects that urgently need to become the focus of architects such as himself. He has consistently challenged his tutors and the school in rising to the challenge of a focus upon intangibles as much as tangibles within inventive implementation processes.

John has undertaken this enquiry with great maturity for his age and level of experience by allowing the project to take him on what might be considered a professional ‘derive’, using himself as a tool to unlock otherwise tangled and impenetrable situations. Never satisfied with simple gestures and explanations for complex observed phenomena, John has taken himself around the world in the pursuit of a practice understanding that can allow him to be confident within developed, fast developing and underdeveloped nation contexts.

John has used this understanding as a lens through which to implement his entrepreneurial ideas and practices within the town of Lowestoft UK, where he is shortly to take his implementation discussions to the next level, in negotiating parts of his project for real implementation with clients and other stakeholders of the town, as a global yet very much local architect of great promise.

We wish him all the best in his endeavours

Duncan Berntsen and Jamie Laffan

2007
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