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

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.

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.

Educating Otherwise

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...

Glossing over the cracks

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

Thick Time

Sticky opening (I was reading Kant at the time) but better later on issues of time in 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.

The Ethics of Technology

My first published work. Oh, what a clever young chappy I was. Sanctimonious posturing.

The Educator as Ironist

Another piece on architectural education. Rather showy-offy, but was an finalist in the EAAE competition for writings in architectural education that year.

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.

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

Alternate Currents

Another introduction, this time for ARQ, to projects arising out of the Spatial Agency project.

Response to Paul Finch on Extinction Rebellion

This is my very short response to Paul Finch's comments on Extinction Rebellion that he made in the Architects Journal on 14th May and 21st May 2019

Architecture Criticism against the Climate Clock

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

Reality in the Balance

A long piece on Trump-Brexit-Architecture. I was nervous doing it because I thought everything had been said, but thought there was an urgency, so any contribution felt worthwhile.

Three Myths and One Model

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

Occupational Hazards: Architectural Review

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

Spatial Agency

A research project funded by AHRC done with Tatjana Schneider and Nishat Awan at the University of Sheffield, gathering together numerous examples of how to use architectural intelligence beyond the production of objects, and in particular in terms of social and political agency. As part of the project we curated the 2009 RIBA Research Symposium (and Jonathan Charley’s video piece on the site is wonderful), produced a book, a website & various articles, and edited two special issues one of field: the other of ARQ. The project was awarded the 2011 RIBA President’s Award for Outstanding University-based Research, making me the only person to have received this internationally important award three times.