Architecture in the divide
Sean Noon
Kamen Rusev
We are (a) rooms+cities collective. A trio of past architecture graduates from the University of Dundee. During our final year under the tutelage of Dr Lorens Holm, our artistic egos were continuously challenged by one another, sparking a fascination of what our collective potential could lead to.
Rather than pursue conventional paths, we chose to continue our collaboration as a “moving studio,” which is a research practice defined by travel, conversation, and a shared obsession with cities and spatial complexity. In 2024, we were awarded the Martin Jones Travel Scholarship, which allowed us to establish our collective by learning and developing our manifesto. Currently, this work focuses on our project exploring the divisions in Cyprus. Our goals are hopeful: to inspire more creatives to engage with complex urban and social issues beyond the rigidity of traditional architectural 9-to-5 routines.
We consist of myself, Emilia Chegini, a critic with unhinged imagination; Kamen Rusev, a philosophical compass and rigorous questioner; and Sean Noon, a structured thinker with grounding clarity.
Together we’ve earned several design accolades (RIBA Journal, RIBA President’s Medal Nomination, DIA Group Award) and exhibited our work publicly. But more importantly, we are building a practice rooted in friendship, rigour, and curiosity — one that hopes to expand what architectural research can be.
Architecture in the Divide is the first chapter of an ongoing inquiry by a group of recent architecture graduates who have chosen to continue the romantic tradition of the architectural studio — not as a formal institution, but as a mode of living, thinking, and collaborating. Inspired by radical studios and travelling thinkers, we see our collective not as a company, but as an ongoing conversation. Too shy to claim architectural authorship alone, we formed rooms+cities as a shared journey to find and shape a common spatial language.
This project uses Cyprus and its Green Line to examine the architecture of division. We traveled across both sides of the border — and into the UN Buffer Zone — to observe how architecture holds memory of conflict, adapts to uncertainty, and how people live in these in-between spaces. Through drawing, note-taking, interviews, and mapping, we collected physical, emotional, and atmospheric traces of division. The architecture became testimony, not just evidence.
It is also a study of ourselves. As emerging thinkers, we use this project to develop our collective architectural language. By closely observing how others inhabit complexity, we better understand our role as designers and observers. Studying spatial division is a way of becoming: a voice, a practice, a “we.”
After receiving the Martin Jones Travel Scholarship in 2024, the work evolved into a growing spatial archive, drawings, and public conversation. What began as fieldwork is now a framework we hope to apply in other cities marked by conflict, uncertainty, or erasure.
We look forward to new sites that challenge and deepen our thinking. Each place acts as mirror and testing ground, shaping how we study and collaborate.
Architecture in the Divide is not fixed, but a portable, evolving model — growing through exhibitions, publications, and workshops. It invites emerging architects to engage with space politics, observation ethics, and collective creativity.