Alternate Currents
Another introduction, this time for ARQ, to projects arising out of the Spatial Agency project.
Sarah by @sw_architects prize for best visual design at @ArchibooLive web awards https://t.co/EtdVfP0CB6
Another introduction, this time for ARQ, to projects arising out of the Spatial Agency project.
Chosen in open competition to curate the British Pavilion, I put together the best creative minds in Sheffield to present an echo of this wonderful city (the link takes you to my initial application, and I have to say the room data sheets are not bad). The team included: Ian Anderson, Tim Etchells, Hugo Glendinning, Encounters, Martyn Ware, and Jim Prevett. The show attempted to explain how a city is great beyond its buildings: it did not have much architecture in, which did not go down well with architects, especially those in London, who were doubly annoyed that a provincial academic was doing the show. But beyond the Clerkenwell goldfish bowl (with Ellis Woodman in particularly splenetic form, fortunately now behind a paywall), the exhibition was better received (i.e in Die Presse, Der Standard, Financial Times, The Architects Newspaper, The Times, The Yorkshire Post, and of course the Sheffield Telegraph )
Rather a miserabilist piece, but gets in that fantastic Seneca quote: ?Those were happy times before the days of architects.?
Short and a bit inconsequential riposte to Markus Miessen’s Nightmare of Participation.
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, and good value.
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.
A short think piece on the 2011 Occupation movement and its relevance to architecture.
A short piece written in 2012 for the RIBA Building Futures series on the future of architectural education and the profession. More bullish than I now feel.
A worthy piece that begins to unpick notions of autonomy in architecture. Good opening, slightly ploddy continuation.
My response as to why giving the official government website 2013 Design of the Year was not so cool.
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.
Is Doing Architecture Doing Research?
Will the real user please stand up?
Originally commissioned by the RIBA, a piece on what might or might not constitute architectural research. Big in Spain.
Entropic Research
On the dangers and vanities of form. Written when I was wading through my philosophy degree and it shows.
Second of two, with some hints as to how to achieve flexible housing, much more developed in the book.