Dr Julia King
Julia King trained as an architect and her research, design practice and teaching focus on infrastructure and public space in the context of youth engagement, equitable infrastructure developments and urban culture.
My Background
Julia King worked at LSE Cities for a decade on a range of projects, including Super Diverse Streets, High Streets for All, and Incremental Infrastructural development with a focus on low-cost, community-led sanitation projects.
In 2020 she founded and directed the ‘Apprenticeship Programme in City Design’ and ‘Researcher-in-Residence’ at LSE Cities. Both schemes are novel outreach models for investigating and designing urban spaces with local young people - a constituency normally excluded from planning and development processes and is structured as a series of paid learning and working experiences that engage local young people– and notably young women – in public space research, planning and design processes.
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In 2024 she founded Social Place (formerly Julia King & Associates (JK&A) along with Olivia Theocharides Feldman to commercialise their work at LSE with a particular focus on community engagement. Social Place works to connect communities to design, architecture and development in their local areas. We support and enable diverse voices, particularly young people, to contribute to design and planning, and to shape the future of places with their needs in mind. Their core work delivers innovative forms of public consultation and community design services. Current clients include Chelmsford County Council, Lancaster West Neighbourhood Team (LWNT), and Peabody Trust.
Julia gained her doctoral degree at the Cass School of Architecture with the Department of Architecture of Rapid Change and Scarce Resources (ARCSR). She has taught previously at the AA, LSE, UCL and UAL. She has won numerous awards for her work including Emerging Woman Architect of the Year, NLA Award, Civic Trust Regional Award and short-listed for a Deutsche Bank Urban Age Award. Her work has been recognised as best practice on a European-wide basis at the recent Eurocities Awards as an example of how young people can lead the way in designing inclusive solutions to local needs. Her projects have been widely publicised, and she has authored chapters in ‘Home Economics’ and ‘Infrastructure Space’ and co-authored a chapter in ‘The SAGE Handbook of the 21st Century City’.