Originally commissioned by the RIBA, a piece on what might or might not constitute architectural research. Big in Spain.
Lecture at Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam, that runs through the structure and argument of our book of the same title. The link is to the video, with my lecture on first.
The article when I found my voice. Stories, the everyday and a sprinkling of theory.
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.
“Beyond the Fountainhead” Lecture at the fantastic Studio X, a venture of Columbia's GSAAD. Video here
Written in despair that it appears to have become an acceptable norm for architects to work in Saudi Arabia. I pick off the common justifications one by one. Published on the day that Saudi was awarded the World Cup in a piece of egregious sportwashing.
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
Funny how ideas formed so long ago still come up. But rather gauche nonetheless.
I was invited by Rory Sherlock and Francesca Romana DellAglio to do something around architectural education at the Architectural Association. We decided to do it as a meal around a big table, calling the event ‘Three Courses of Architectural Education. At the end of the first course, when I had set out how the first year of architectural education introduces a set of rituals and codes that initiate students into the culture of architecture, I asked each participant, who came from a wide range of schools, to write down a sentence or two that described a particularly weird happening in their first year. Most of the people present were recent graduates. The following are the unedited stories. Together they present a shocking picture of the state of architectural education.
Not a lecture, but a podcast. The first episode from the new 'Architecture Academy' Podcast, set up and delivered by Marc Tuitt (who once was a student at Sheffield when I was Head of School). Under his wise questioning and sharp editing, I come across (though I say it myself) as sharp and focussed on some contemporary architectural issues (sexism, the profession, education and Brexit among them).
A short think piece on the 2011 Occupation movement and its relevance to architecture.
An invitation from the Italian journal STOA which I could not resist because the other invitee was Valerio Olgiati, whose take on architectural references is the polar opposite to mine. I swipe a bit, but maybe not hard enough, at his stance in this essay.
My response as to why giving the official government website 2013 Design of the Year was not so cool.
A critique of masterplanning. On to something here, but yet to be developed.
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.
Short piece on Samuel Mockbee and the Rural Studio, trying to find the line between adulation and critique.
The keynote article for Architectural Review's 1500 issue. Draws heavily on the joint research with MOULD