Short piece on Samuel Mockbee and the Rural Studio, trying to find the line between adulation and critique.
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.
Early stuff on research and first ideas on contingency. Others like this more than I do - it won best paper at EAAE conference. Big in China (reprinted in The Architect (China), Vol 118 Dec 2005)
An extended argument of what participation might be and mean in architecture. Probably my most ‘scholarly’ piece. Widely cited and (so my co-design colleagues tell me) respected.
An essay on live projects written for a collection edited by Mel Dood and others from RMIT in Melbourne.
On Park Hill as an example of welfare architecture and its current demise. My first foray into the work of Zygmunt Bauman.
The keynote article for Architectural Review's 1500 issue. Draws heavily on the joint research with MOULD
Originally commissioned by the RIBA, a piece on what might or might not constitute architectural research. Big in Spain.
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.
Short and a bit inconsequential riposte to Markus Miessen’s Nightmare of Participation.
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
My response as to why giving the official government website 2013 Design of the Year was not so cool.
This was a comment on the UK Government's White Paper on Higher Education from 2011. Corrects a few myths.
A short think piece on the 2011 Occupation movement and its relevance to architecture.
“Beyond the Fountainhead” Lecture at the fantastic Studio X, a venture of Columbia's GSAAD. Video here
Scarcity Scares. 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.