Edited text of an interview with me about participation done with Bernd Upmeyer of the Dutch journal MONU
A critique of masterplanning. On to something here, but yet to be developed.
Very early thoughts from our Scarcity and Creativity project. Now looks rather crude.
Funny how ideas formed so long ago still come up. But rather gauche nonetheless.
Co-authored with Jon Goodbun, Michael Klein and Andreas Rumpfhuber. The main outcome of the Scarcity and Creativity in the Built Environment project. At the beginning of this project it became clear that there was no contemporary theory of scarcity that addressed the current conditions, so this book sets out to fill that gap, and then relate that theory to design. It is a short (15,000 words) book, and good value.
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)
Short piece examining local identity, starting with a pop at Frampton’s Critical Regionalism.
In order to get a balanced view, all reviews from the very nice to the very nasty are included here.
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.
Reforming.
As part of the series ‘The Social Production of Architecture’. Didn't go too well because I asked the question: Is Design Activism bad design and bad activism? This started a debate.
A short think piece on the 2011 Occupation movement and its relevance to architecture.
Architecture Depends
The foreword to Arna Mathiesen's great book Scarcity In Excess, which investigates the effects of scarcity on the built environment in Iceland following the economic crisis of 2008. Other excerpts of the book are on Issuu
My longest piece on architectural education. Finalist in EAAE competition. Maybe should have won, but the judges, Perez-Gomez and Palaasma, rose to my bait of inauthentic phenomenology and sulked.
My response as to why giving the official government website 2013 Design of the Year was not so cool.
Edited with Peter Blundell Jones and Doina Petrescu. A collection of essays setting out the whys and hows of new approaches to participation. My chapter in the book appears to have ended up on this website. (under Biblioteca) Other chapters include work by Jon Broome, Giancarlo de Carlo, CHORA, and my two fellow editors.
Originally commissioned by the RIBA, a piece on what might or might not constitute architectural research. Big in Spain.