Texts for the catalogue to the British Pavilion at the 2006 Venice Architecture Biennale. On ideas of scale and stories in cities.
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
Originally commissioned by the RIBA, a piece on what might or might not constitute architectural research. Big in Spain.
My response as to why giving the official government website 2013 Design of the Year was not so cool.
The keynote article for Architectural Review's 1500 issue. Draws heavily on the joint research with MOULD
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'
Sticky opening (I was reading Kant at the time) but better later on issues of time in architecture.
Another introduction, this time for ARQ, to projects arising out of the Spatial Agency 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.
When I was Head of Central Saint Martins, almost every year there was an article or radio programme lamenting the demise of the art school, often citing CSM as an example of this perceived collapse. This is my riposte to one such charge, published in 2015 in the establishment art journal Apollo.
A short think piece on the 2011 Occupation movement and its relevance to architecture.
A lecture on architectural education that I presented at The Agency Conference in Sydney in 2017, Yale Symposium on Rebuilding Architecture in 2018, and as part of the Bartlett International Lecture Series in 2018. It starts with the premise that architectural education is inherently conservative, and then spins out the argument from that uncomfortable start. The video link is from the Bartlett version. It did not go down universally well...
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.
A critique of masterplanning. On to something here, but yet to be developed.
An obituary written for the Architectural Review and Architects Journal, just a few days after the tragic loss of PBJ.
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 think piece on the 2011 Occupation movement and its relevance to architecture.