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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.

Peter Blundell Jones: An Obituary

An obituary written for the Architectural Review and Architects Journal, just a few days after the tragic loss of PBJ.

The Urban Miniature

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

Occupational Hazards: Architectural Review

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

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.

Nature Unlocks Architecture

The presentation from a keynote that I gave at Polimi as part of the Architecture Unlocks Nature conference. I felt the need to reverse the title of the conference to reflect that our sensibility needs to shift to one that puts nature in the driving seat.

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

Glossing over the cracks

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

From Objects of Austerity to Processes of Scarcity

An essay based on a presentation to the Society of Architectural Historians, tracing various historical episodes of austerity.

Three Myths and One Model

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

Scarcity contra Austerity

Unpicking the differences between scarcity and austerity, the implications for the built environment. Good twitter feedback. Translated into French courtesy of the great journal Criticat. Pdf of translation here.

Lost Judgment

My longest piece on architectural education. Finalist in EAAE competition. Maybe should have won, but the judges, Perez-Gomez and Palaasma, rose to my bait of inauthentic phenomenology and sulked.

An Incomplete Encyclopedia: Rem Koolhaas and S,M,L,XL

A review of Koolhaas' S,M,L, XL. May appear a bit grumpy, but in the end I think this is the architectural book of its generation. Reprinted in a collection of essays about Koolhaas.

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 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.

Here, There and North of Nowhere

Short piece examining local identity, starting with a pop at Frampton’s Critical Regionalism.

Distributing Power

Edited text of an interview with me about participation done with Bernd Upmeyer of the Dutch journal MONU