Rather a miserabilist piece, but gets in that fantastic Seneca quote: ‘Those were happy times before the days of architects.’
This was my first Zoom lecture, delivered as part of the Architecture Foundation's excellent 100 Day Studio intiative during the 2020 COVID lockdown. The video is here , and the transcript linked to the title above. The lecture speculates as to where architecture might be in the face of the twin crises of climate and COVID, arguing that these challenge some of the fundaments on which the modern project of architecture has based itself.
Lightish introduction to a whole issue of field (with articles worth reading); the start of the Spatial Agency Project.
This is the text of a short talk I did as part of the UAL Climate Emergency Network 5 day festival in September 2020. It picks up on some of the themes of Architecture After Architecture
Lecture given at the Australian Institute of Architects Annual Conference 2015. One of my better 'performances'
The keynote article for Architectural Review's 1500 issue. Draws heavily on the joint research with MOULD
Originally commissioned by the RIBA, a piece on what might or might not constitute architectural research. Big in Spain.
A short think piece on the 2011 Occupation movement and its relevance to architecture.
This is the transcribed text of my speech closing the What's the Point of Art School conference at Central Saint Martins in May 2013. It reads rather crudely, but the points are made
On the basis of a pitch written on an iPhone on the top of a mountain in Ethiopia, I was invited to curate the UK Pavilion at the 2013 Shenzhen Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism. The eventual pavilion was curated, designed and produced by students and staff from Central Saint Martins, and took the theme of Liquid Boundaries - arguing the need to find ways through the hardening of space as it is being increasingly controlled, regulated and divided. The pavilion presented four films, each 129 seconds long (the average time someone spends in a national pavilion at the Venice Biennale), which interpreted briefs provided by four UK architects and spatial agents. All in their own way open up ways in which boundaries might be negotiated with, and in so doing a more democratic form of space emerges. More information, including a downloadable pamphlet and 'user manual', can be found on the Liquid Boundaries website.
Scarcity Scares. Video here.
2021-24 AHRC-DFG funded research project in collaboration with Tatjana Schneider, looking at the implications of climate breakdown for spatial practice. Summary of project in the link. We formed a research collective, MOULD, to do the project, and work coming from the project is gathered together at the website MOULD. One of the main outputs of the project is the website Architecture is Climate, a resource that reimagines the future of architecture through its entanglement with climate breakdown.
Ten Theses on Scarcity. A lecture given in a tent on the steps of St Pauls during the Occupy London Stock Exchange period. Vocal audience who gave not a jot about my professorial authority. Rightly. Podcast, with the atmosphere of the occupation, is here.
My response as to why giving the official government website 2013 Design of the Year was not so cool.
An interview with the portuguese journal arqa. In portuguese, so translation below. On scarcity, politics and the need for alternatives. Done the day of Thatcher's funeral, so pretty gloomy.
In an idle moment I asked ChatGTP to "write a short statement in the style of the architecture critic Jeremy Till on the state of the architectural profession" The result is scarily good.
Texts for the catalogue to the British Pavilion at the 2006 Venice Architecture Biennale. On ideas of scale and stories in cities.