IN-PERSON Manchester Livable Cities
Abstract
Portmeirion, designed by Sir Clough Williams-Ellis between 1925 and 1975, is widely recognised for its distinctive architectural character and picturesque setting in North Wales. While existing scholarship has often focused on its buildings and visual identity, less attention has been given to the role of its constructed landscapes in shaping the visitor experience. This paper argues that landscape at Portmeirion does not simply provide setting or backdrop, but operates as an active device for staging architecture. Drawing on Gordon Cullen’s concept of serial vision from The Concise Townscape (1961), the study examines how movement through Portmeirion produces a sequence of carefully composed views in which architecture is progressively revealed, framed, and dramatised. Through this lens, the paper explores how Williams-Ellis used planting, level changes, walls, pathways and spatial enclosure to construct theatrical settings that mediate between the natural landscape and the built form. In doing so, Portmeirion can be understood as a choreographed environment in which visitors are positioned simultaneously as spectators and performers within an architectural spectacle. By foregrounding the relationship between landscape, perception, and display, the paper contributes to a deeper understanding of Portmeirion as a designed heritage destination. More broadly, it demonstrates how constructed landscapes can shape architectural experience through sequence, framing and theatrical composition. This paper contributes to discussions in culture and heritage, and in landscape architecture, by showing how constructed landscapes shape architectural meaning and the public experience of historic places.
Bethan Anderson is a M.Arch student at the University of Salford, who holds an Architecture degree with First Class Honours. Interested in urban design and placemaking, she explores the intentional influence architecture and its arrangement has over people, and the interactions it promotes. Also, expressing an enthusiasm towards sustainable living, she is undertaking research and design projects, with the intention of discovering and developing new forms of green infrastructure.
Dr Fadi Shayya is a transdisciplinary scholar, educator, and civic strategist working across architecture, urbanism, and science and technology studies (STS). A Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, his research examines how design mediates relations between technology, politics, and the lived environment — particularly in contexts marked by conflict, displacement, and precarity. At the University of Salford, he is the Interim Director of the Built and Human Environments Research Centre, a Lecturer in Architecture & Urbanism, and the REF 2029 Impact Co-Lead for UoA 13. He also serves on the UKRI Talent Peer Review College and contributes to institutional equity and civic engagement through the Race Equity Group and advisory roles focused on Salford’s international partnerships in conflict-affected regions.
Dr. Ian W. Owen is an architect, researcher and lecturer in Architecture at the University of Salford, where he is Programme Director of the Master of Architecture (M.Arch). His research focuses on post-war architectural heritage, post-war industrial design and architecture pedagogy. His work examines questions of preservation, interpretation, representation and the evolving conditions of architectural education, while also engaging semiotics and visual analysis through particular expertise in Roland Barthes, mythology, and the cultural reading of images and objects. Working across qualitative and quantitative modes of inquiry, he explores how architecture and design are critically understood, historically situated, and pedagogically framed within contemporary cultural and technological contexts. He serves as an Architectural Archives Advisory Panellist for Wales, is a member of the Editorial Advisory Group for Touchstone, the annual journal of the Royal Society of Architects in Wales, and is a Contributing Editor for Architecture, Media, Politics, Society (AMPS). His latest book is Histories of Housing: From Historical Foundations to Modern Challenges.
3:30 pm - 5:00 pm
Wednesday 17th June, 2026