Second of two, with some hints as to how to achieve flexible housing, much more developed in the book.
Chosen in open competition to curate the British Pavilion, I put together the best creative minds in Sheffield to present an echo of this wonderful city (the link takes you to my initial application, and I have to say the room data sheets are not bad). The team included: Ian Anderson, Tim Etchells, Hugo Glendinning, Encounters, Martyn Ware, and Jim Prevett. The show attempted to explain how a city is great beyond its buildings: it did not have much architecture in, which did not go down well with architects, especially those in London, who were doubly annoyed that a provincial academic was doing the show. But beyond the Clerkenwell goldfish bowl (with Ellis Woodman in particularly splenetic form, fortunately now behind a paywall), the exhibition was better received (i.e in Die Presse, Der Standard, Financial Times, The Architects Newspaper, The Times, The Yorkshire Post, and of course the Sheffield Telegraph)
Really just a transcription of a lecture — ideas on housing, the everyday and occupation over form.
My main statement of intent, which has been extensively reviewed (collected here) and featured on BBC Radio 3 and 4. The contents are available on the MIT Press website, as are pdfs of the preface and introduction. A version of Chapter 2 was published in field: and is available as a pdf. Winner 2009 RIBA President’s Award for Outstanding University based research.
Very early thoughts from our Scarcity and Creativity project. Now looks rather crude.
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.
Originally commissioned by the RIBA, a piece on what might or might not constitute architectural research. Big in Spain.
This was a comment on the UK Government's White Paper on Higher Education from 2011. Corrects a few myths.
Funny how ideas formed so long ago still come up. But rather gauche nonetheless.
A bit of a cheat, because it is really the second chapter of Architecture Depends
Rather a miserabilist piece, but gets in that fantastic Seneca quote: ‘Those were happy times before the days of architects.’
A short think piece on the 2011 Occupation movement and its relevance to architecture.
This is my very short response to Paul Finch's comments on Extinction Rebellion that he made in the Architects Journal on 14th May and 21st May 2019
A short think piece on the 2011 Occupation movement and its relevance to architecture.
Texts for the catalogue to the British Pavilion at the 2006 Venice Architecture Biennale. On ideas of scale and stories in cities.
My response as to why giving the official government website 2013 Design of the Year was not so cool.
Umeå School of Architecture, as part of their “Making Architecture Politically” lecture series. A new lecture. Quite bossy but clear about the issues. Video is here. Starts about 50mins in with a very generous introduction from Roemer Van Toorn (whose writing is always worthwhile).