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

Stock Orchard Street

My last (ever?) building as an architect, designed with Sarah Wigglesworth. Made of straw and stuff. Best known for being on Grand Designs, the video of which is online. Sarah’s wonderful book on the project views it from all sides. Winner of the RIBA Sustainability Award, a Civic Trust Award and some others. Lots and lots of reviews of the project, including the Observer, and, and, ... A 2021 film of it by Jim Stephenson is here, with a discussion afterwards. We live in it and are happy.

Occupational Hazards: Architectural Review

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

Echo City

Texts for the catalogue to the British Pavilion at the 2006 Venice Architecture Biennale. On ideas of scale and stories in cities.

Glossing over the cracks

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

The Everyday and Architecture: 1997: Academy

Edited with Sarah Wigglesworth. Now all this stuff appears, well, everyday but back then it was quite original. Buying it is a problem because the publishers discontinued it, but there are some sellers out there in the US. Essays and work by, among others, Sam Mockbee (of Rural Studio, his only published writing, of which we are proud to have persuaded him to do), Greil Marcus, Niall McLaughlin and Michael Marriott.

Design Beyond the Object

A lecture given as part of the The UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose’s lecture series “Rethinking Public Value and Public Purpose in 21st Century Capitalism”. It is the first run out of what happens when the ideas I have been developing in architecture for some years get rolled out to the wider field of design.

Alternate Currents: Introduction (with Tatjana Schneider)

Lightish introduction to a whole issue of field (with articles worth reading); the start of the Spatial Agency Project.

Architecture Criticism against the Climate Clock

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

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.

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

Flexible Housing, Opportunities and Limits (with Tatjana Schneider)

First of two articles setting out the preliminary argument for the book, Flexible Housing. Apparently, one of ARQ's most cited ever article.

Three Myths and One Model

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

Modernity and Order, Architecture and the Welfare State

On Park Hill as an example of welfare architecture and its current demise. My first foray into the work of Zygmunt Bauman.

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.

Occupational Hazards: Architectural Review

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

Studio X: Rio de Janeiro

“Beyond the Fountainhead” Lecture at the fantastic Studio X, a venture of Columbia's GSAAD. Video here

Echo City: 2006: British Council/Cornerhouse

The catalogue of the British Pavilion at the 2006 Venice Architecture Biennale, with essays by me (the ones on scale are here), and an introduction - a love letter to Sheffield - by Go! Sheffield. Designed by the very brilliant Ian Anderson of The Designers Republic, so worth your £5 for that alone. The British Council website has a scammy scan of the catalogue.