Benjamin Mehigan
b.mehigan@rca.ac.uk
Benjamin Mehigan is a Research Associate and PhD candidate in Architecture Research at the Royal College of Art (London, UK). He writes, lectures and undertakes practice-based research on projects concerning the built environment and extreme climatic events. His work concerns the aesthetic and epistemological tensions of how photography has functioned both as a documentary tool and a representational practice through which narratives of ecology, risk, and land use have been constructed and communicated.
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Research
PhD (2021 – Present)
Forging Wildfire Narratives: Mediation of Extreme Climatic Events
Designing Managed Retreat (2023-2024)
Designing Managed Retreat: Coastal Communities in the Green Transition
Second Sea (2022)
Second Sea: Global Sea Rise Affects on Coastal Cities
A Golden State (2019-2020)
Writing
Benjamin Mehigan, “Fireline Intensity: The Construction of Visual Knowledge,” Photography/Intensity/Measure, ed. Andrew Fisher and Ali Shobeiri (University of Amsterdam Press, 2026)
Benjamin Mehigan, “Houses in the Sky,” Folly Journal, ed. Rosie Ellison-Balaam and Francesco Fiammenghi (2025)
Folly Journal: Cultivation (2)
Exhibitions
Disseny Hub Barcelona (2025)
The Ocean Speaks. New Ecologies and New Economies of the Seas, DHub Barcelona (2024-2025)
MAK Vienna, MK&G (2024, 2025)
WATER PRESSURE: Designing for the Future
Betts Project (2021)
Talks
Conference Papers:
- “Construction of Visual Knowledge,” National Institute of Standards and Technology (2026)
- “Forging Wildfire Narratives,” Burning Matters, Association for Art History (2025)
- RCA Research Biennale (2025)
- “Light Without Heat,” Photography in Virtual Culture, Photographer’s Gallery (2024)
Lectures:
- “Domestic space in photography: in between staging & documenting space,” Royal College of Art, London, 8 November 2025
- “Architecture as Part of the Natural Environment,” New York Institute of Technology, New York, 13 November 2023
About
Education:
- PhD – Architecture Research – Royal College of Art (2021-2027)
- MA Architecture – Royal College of Art – Distinction (2020)
- BSc Architecture – The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL (2016)
Work supported by:
- Forest History Society Bell Travel Grant
- Design Museum’s Future Observatory: Design Exchange Partnership (AHRC)
- Disseny Hub Barcelona
- Royal College of Art Conference Fund
Awards:
- Royal College of Art – MA Architecture Head of Programme Award (2020)
- Royal College of Art – Drawing/Image Award (2020)