2021-24 AHRC-DFG funded research project in collaboration with Tatjana Schneider, looking at the implications of the climate emergency for spatial practice. Summary of project in the link. Work in progress on this project is gathered together at the website of the research collective MOULD, www.mould.earth
Another lecture from the Architecture after Architecture project, given to the Australian ArchiTeam conference. Lovely introduction from Michael Smith but the rest of the audience seemed either outraged or nonplussed or CPD-points-collecting at my rather intemperate take on the future of architecture
The first book from my scarcity research project. Edited with Jon Goodbun and Deljana Iossifova, it brings together some good articles, including ones by Ezio Manzini, Erik Swyngedouw, Winy Maas, Kate Soper and more. Table of contents is here.
My response as to why giving the official government website 2013 Design of the Year was not so cool.
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
This was a comment on the UK Government's White Paper on Higher Education from 2011. Corrects a few myths.
Lightish introduction to a whole issue of field (with articles worth reading); the start of the Spatial Agency Project.
A short think piece on the 2011 Occupation movement and its relevance to architecture.
The best essay on the building and meaning of our house, with stories.
More or less what it says on the tin — facts that were correct in early 2012.
Retrofit under conditions of scarcity. Pdf of presentation is here. Background to day here
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.
Originally commissioned by the RIBA, a piece on what might or might not constitute architectural research. Big in Spain.
A long piece on Trump-Brexit-Architecture. I was nervous doing it because I thought everything had been said, but thought there was an urgency, so any contribution felt worthwhile.
On the dangers and vanities of form. Written when I was wading through my philosophy degree and it shows.
Unpicking the differences between scarcity and austerity, the implications for the built environment. Good twitter feedback. Translated into French courtesy of the great journal Criticat. Pdf of translation here.
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.