Symposium The Design of History and the History of Design


London College of Communication
15 September, 2025



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SpeakerS and Abstracts:

Huda Almazroua
Alberto Atalla Filho
Russ Bestley
Kevin Biderman
Silvia Bombardini
David Cross
Dora Souza Dias
Sam Gathercole
Ian Horton and Ian Hague
Jennifer Hankin
Zarna Hart
John-Patrick Hartnett
Fenella Hitchcock
Abbie Vickress and Sakis Kyratzis
Christopher Lacy
Timothy Miller
Danah Nassief
Jesse O’Neill
Nina O’Reilly
Patrick O’Shea
David Preston
Cheryl Roberts
Rebecca Ross
Antoin Sharkey
Andrew Slatter
Kate Trant
Vanessa Vanden Berghe
Judy Willcocks
Christin Yu



A symposium for UAL’s Design History research community


The Design of History and the History of Design is a one-day symposium that maps research into, through or at the boundaries of design history at UAL. While design history may underpin our teaching across different disciplines, research in design history across UAL is somewhat hidden. This symposium aims to share and make visible the work of researchers (staff and students) at all career stages across all UAL colleges.

Exploring the intersections of historical narrative and design practice, it examines how history is constructed, represented, and mediated through design, and how the discipline of design itself is shaped by its evolving historiography.

The symposium will serve as the starting point for a Design History Network at UAL, bringing together researchers from across the university. It also lays the foundation for a welcoming research community in design history, with potential for ongoing events, collaboration, publications, and curriculum development.

If you have any questions or would like to be involved in future activities, please get in touch with the convenors:

Rujana Rebernjak
r.rebernjak@lcc.arts.ac.ukTai Cossich
t.cossich@lcc.arts.ac.uk
Please also sign up for the UAL Design Histories Newsletter




    Huda Almazroua


    This research explores generative art as a speculative and historiographic method for re-narrating spatial rituals and cultural memory, particularly in the context of the practice of Tawaf, the circumambulatory movement around the Kaaba, as a case study in symbolic motion, abstraction, and algorithmic aesthetics. Tawaf is a theological and devotional practice; however, the research positions it as a spatial and cultural topology: a designed ritual form shaped by evolving visual regimes, architectures, and systems of mediation.

    Drawing on speculative historiography, media archaeology, and Actor-Network Theory, the paper argues that rituals such as Tawaf are not outside the scope of design history but are embedded within it, encoded, re-inscribed, and transformed across time through oral memory, manuscripts, photography, surveillance, and now generative systems. These transitions do not merely document the ritual; they reconfigure its visibility, temporality, and meaning.

    The generative artwork presented aims to engage with Tawaf’s invisible dimensions, its repetition, geometry, and collective flow, as a networked system of human and non-human actors. Through code, motion, and abstraction, the work renders visible the unseen: the spatial logic, spiritual resonance, and cultural memory embedded in the act.

    By treating generative art as a method of contemporary historiography, this research challenges linear, representational, and colonial models of historical narration. It proposes a non-linear, recursive, and speculative approach to visualising erased or abstracted cultural practices, where history is not only preserved, but re-authored through systems that think in motion, pattern, and relation.

    Ultimately, the paper contributes to emerging dialogues in design historiography, algorithmic aesthetics, and spiritual media, offering a framework for re-narrating the invisible through the lens of artificial intelligence.



    — Huda Almazroua

    Huda Almazroua is a GRiT lecturer and a fourth-year PhD researcher at the University of the Arts London, as well as a lecturer at Princess Nora University in Riyadh. Her practice-based research explores the intersection of generative art, spiritual aesthetics, and historiography, focusing on how algorithmic systems can re-narrate erased or abstracted cultural practices. Her current work uses Tawaf, the ritual of circumambulation around the Kaaba, as a case study to examine how rituals are mediated through evolving visual regimes, from oral memory to AI-generated imagery. Drawing on Actor-Network Theory, media archaeology, and speculative historiography, she positions generative art as a contemporary method of historical inquiry. Huda holds an MFA with distinction from the University of the Arts London and has exhibited her work internationally, including in London and New York. Her research contributes to decolonial design history, algorithmic aesthetics, and the politics of spiritual representation in non-Western contexts.