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.
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.
A short piece that I wrote in 2010 for the Architects Journal about end-of-year architecture shows. Some rather paranoid architectural tutors at Westminster (where I was then Dean) saw this as an attack on them personally, and so excommunicated me forthwith. In fact it was nothing to do with them but rather a concern about the general direction of architectural education as manifested through the exhibition.
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.
“Beyond the Fountainhead” Lecture at the fantastic Studio X, a venture of Columbia's GSAAD. Video here
My response as to why giving the official government website 2013 Design of the Year was not so cool.
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.
The keynote article for Architectural Review's 1500 issue. Draws heavily on the joint research with MOULD
My contribution to Sarah Wigglesworth’s great book on our house, Stock Orchard Street. Outlines the tensions of being an architect-client.
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'
Scarcity Scares. Video here.
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.
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
For Occupied Times, the journal of the occupation movement. On austerity contra scarcity
A short think piece on the 2011 Occupation movement and its relevance to architecture.
The keynote article for Architectural Review's 1500 issue. Draws heavily on the joint research with MOULD