My response as to why giving the official government website 2013 Design of the Year was not so cool.
Originally commissioned by the RIBA, a piece on what might or might not constitute architectural research. Big in Spain.
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'
My first published work. Oh, what a clever young chappy I was. Sanctimonious posturing.
Scarcity Scares. Video here.
My contribution to the collection of fantastic photographs by Lisa Barnard of the former Tory Party Headquarters. The book, Chateau Despair, is an extraordinary document of the tawdry environment that Margaret Thatcher and her cohorts conducted their business in. Though I say it myself, I like my writing here, spurred by Lisa's great work. Buy the book!
Originally commissioned by the RIBA, a piece on what might or might not constitute architectural research. Big in Spain.
“Beyond the Fountainhead” Lecture at the fantastic Studio X, a venture of Columbia's GSAAD. Video here
Musings on Biennales and architectural exhibitions. Good opening! Light follow through.
On the basis of a pitch written on an iPhone on the top of a mountain in Ethiopia, I was invited to curate the UK Pavilion at the 2013 Shenzhen Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism. The eventual pavilion was curated, designed and produced by students and staff from Central Saint Martins, and took the theme of Liquid Boundaries - arguing the need to find ways through the hardening of space as it is being increasingly controlled, regulated and divided. The pavilion presented four films, each 129 seconds long (the average time someone spends in a national pavilion at the Venice Biennale), which interpreted briefs provided by four UK architects and spatial agents. All in their own way open up ways in which boundaries might be negotiated with, and in so doing a more democratic form of space emerges. More information, including a downloadable pamphlet and 'user manual', can be found on the Liquid Boundaries website.
On Park Hill as an example of welfare architecture and its current demise. My first foray into the work of Zygmunt Bauman.
Sticky opening (I was reading Kant at the time) but better later on issues of time in architecture.
A short think piece on the 2011 Occupation movement and its relevance to architecture.
This explains some the background as to why I have pledged only to accept invitations to panels, conferences and so on where there is at least 30% representation from women.
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
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.
Another version of Architecture after Architecture. This time in a conference about resilience held in Miami, and I went in hard. I think one of the better lectures on the subject that I have given. Starts at 23.30.