"Continue to contaminate your bed, and one day you will suffocate in your own waste" Duwamish chief Seattle to Pres… https://t.co/qTXguYJazz

Sheffield Live Projects

Working with colleagues at the University of Sheffield School of Architecture, most notably Prue Chiles and Carolyn Butterworth, we established the most developed live projects programme in the country, probably the world, with some truly wondrous results. For example, look at the final report (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) from a group of students that I supervised looking at the use of urine to make mud bricks in Darfur. It is remarkable what they achieved in six weeks - should be awarded a PhD for this alone IMHO.

Society of Architectural Historians: Detroit

From Objects of Austerity to Processes of Scarcity. Text of presentation available through link above.

The Architecture of Good Intentions

Reflections on 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale

Spatial Agency: 2011: Routledge

With Nishat Awan and Tatjana Schneider. Out of the Spatial Agency project, the book provides supporting texts to the website. A summary of the issues is in our Architecture Today article, and an early review by Luke Butcher is here, plus nice ones in archidose and arquilecturas. A short excerpt (on ecological examples of spatial agency) was published in field. Winner 2011 RIBA President’s Award for Outstanding University based research.

Glossing over the cracks

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

The Intimate Inner

My contribution to Sarah Wigglesworth’s great book on our house, Stock Orchard Street. Outlines the tensions of being an architect-client.

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

Anecdotes of architectural education

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.

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.

Three Myths and One Model

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

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.

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.

Oral History about my time as Head of Central Saint Martins

Judy Willcocks, the Head of the Museum at Central Saint Martins, sat me down to cover my time from 2012-222 as Head of Central Saint Martins. We covered a lot of ground in 50 minutes, and it is a useful summary/memory of that period (at least for me)

Occupational Hazards: Architectural Review

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

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'

The Urban Miniature

Funny how ideas formed so long ago still come up. But rather gauche nonetheless.

Architecture Criticism against the Climate Clock

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