Emma Burke Newman
2000 - 2023
New Practice honour our friend and colleague Emma Burke Newman who passed away in January 2023. She was a passionate cyclist, who loved wild swimming, ceilidh-dancing, hiking, and ratatouille. She was an architecture student at Glasgow School of Art and Designer at New Practice.
New Practice, along with Glasgow School of Art, Karakusevic Carson Architects and Emma’s friends and family are currently taking time to consider the ways that others may learn, in Emma’s memory, to think differently and with deep joy about our cities and places.
““Valuing local knowledge in architectural and urban design is hugely important to me. It’s always a joy to learn about someone’s lived experience of their neighbourhood, and advocate for them in the design process.
As an engagement-led practitioner, I aspire to work with communities to foster a sense of belonging and pride in their neighbourhoods.
I am committed to prototyping new models of engaging in the built environment, both analogue and digital, to provoke change in the architectural sector and ultimately build more equitable cities.””
Emma joined New Practice in 2022. Between 2021-2022, she worked for Karakusevic Carson Architects delivering engagement and social value programmes on a variety of significant local authority-led housing and masterplan projects across London and in Portsmouth, UK. Prior to this, Emma contributed to The Glass-House Community-Led Design, a charity leading best practice in engagement and capacity-building in the built environment.
Emma graduated from University College London in 2021 with a first class Bachelor’s of Arts and Sciences (BASc), specialising in history & theory of architecture, urban policy and computer science. This interdisciplinary background underpinned her interest in creating digital tools to facilitate accessible, inclusive and playful participation in city-making.
Her approach to practice was driven by making and crafting as tools to facilitate conversations about place-based change. In her spare time, she enjoyed building and tinkering. She studied Korean pottery and painting at the Seoul National University School of Art in 2018. In 2021, she participated in Absolute Beginners, a zero-waste craft programme exploring industrial heritage in North West London.
