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Architecture After Architecture Research Project

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.

Flexible Housing, the means to the end (with Tatjana Schneider)

Second of two, with some hints as to how to achieve flexible housing, much more developed in the book.

Architecture after Architecture

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.

Occupational Hazards: Architectural Review

A short think piece on the 2011 Occupation movement and its relevance to architecture.

Scar(c)e Times

For Occupied Times, the journal of the occupation movement. On austerity contra scarcity

Flexible Housing, Opportunities and Limits (with Tatjana Schneider)

First of two articles setting out the preliminary argument for the book, Flexible Housing. Apparently, one of ARQ's most cited ever article.

Tent City University

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.

Three Myths and One Model

Originally commissioned by the RIBA, a piece on what might or might not constitute architectural research. Big in Spain.

The Design of Scarcity; 2015; Strelka Press

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. Unfortunately the publishers are no longer running, so the link is to the full text as submitted to them in 2015.

Design after Design

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

Glossing over the cracks

My response as to why giving the official government website 2013 Design of the Year was not so cool.

Designs of the Year 2014

Article for The Conversation critiquing the reductive way that things are chosen for the Designs of the Year exhibition.

Beyond Discourse: Notes on Spatial Agency (with Tatjana Schneider)

The first time that Tatjana and I used the term 'spatial agency'. It felt like a breakthrough. The ideas a much expanded upon in the book 'Spatial Agency'

Design after Design

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

Architecture Criticism against the Climate Clock

The keynote article for Architectural Review's 1500 issue. Draws heavily on the joint research with MOULD

Frames of References

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.

Echo City

Texts for the catalogue to the British Pavilion at the 2006 Venice Architecture Biennale. On ideas of scale and stories in cities.