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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.

Frames of References

An invitation from the Italian journal STOA which I could not resist because the other invitee was Valerio Olgiati, whose take on architectural references is the polar opposite to mine. I swipe a bit, but maybe not hard enough, at his stance in this essay.

Oral History about my time as Head of Central Saint Martins

Judy Willcocks, the Head of the Museum at Central Saint Martins, sat me down to cover my time from 2012-222 as Head of Central Saint Martins. We covered a lot of ground in 50 minutes, and it is a useful summary/memory of that period (at least for me)

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.

Glossing over the cracks

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

Three Myths and One Model

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

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.

Architecture Criticism against the Climate Clock

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

Architecture Depends: 2009: MIT Press

My main statement of intent, which has been extensively reviewed (collected here) and featured on BBC Radio 3 and 4. The contents are available on the MIT Press website, as are pdfs of the preface and introduction. A version of Chapter 2 was published in field: and is available as a pdf. Winner 2009 RIBA President’s Award for Outstanding University based research. In 2025 I wrote an epilogue for the French translation.

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.

Occupational Hazards: Architectural Review

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

A Landscape of Pure Scarcity

The foreword to Arna Mathiesen's great book Scarcity In Excess, which investigates the effects of scarcity on the built environment in Iceland following the economic crisis of 2008. Other excerpts of the book are on Issuu

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

Spatial Agency: 2011: Routledge

With Nishat Awan and Tatjana Schneider. Out of the Spatial Agency project, the book provides supporting texts to the website. A summary of the issues is in our Architecture Today article, and an early review by Luke Butcher is here, plus nice ones in archidose and arquilecturas. A short excerpt (on ecological examples of spatial agency) was published in field. Winner 2011 RIBA President’s Award for Outstanding University based research.

Three Politics

This is the transcribed text of my speech closing the What's the Point of Art School conference at Central Saint Martins in May 2013. It reads rather crudely, but the points are made

Against Resilience

Another version of Architecture after Architecture. This time in a conference about resilience held in Miami, and I went in hard. I think one of the better lectures on the subject that I have given. Starts at 23.30.

The Design of Scarcity

Lecture at Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam, that runs through the structure and argument of our book of the same title. The link is to the video, with my lecture on first.