The Future is Hairy
The best essay on the building and meaning of our house, with stories.
"Continue to contaminate your bed, and one day you will suffocate in your own waste" Duwamish chief Seattle to Pres… https://t.co/qTXguYJazz
The best essay on the building and meaning of our house, with stories.
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.
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'
A short think piece on the 2011 Occupation movement and its relevance to architecture.
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
My contribution to Sarah Wigglesworth’s great book on our house, Stock Orchard Street. Outlines the tensions of being an architect-client.
The keynote article for Architectural Review's 1500 issue. Draws heavily on the joint research with MOULD
Short piece examining local identity, starting with a pop at Frampton’s Critical Regionalism.
A worthy piece that begins to unpick notions of autonomy in architecture. Good opening, slightly ploddy continuation.
My response as to why giving the official government website 2013 Design of the Year was not so cool.
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.
Another piece on architectural education. Rather showy-offy, but was an finalist in the EAAE competition for writings in architectural education that year.
Short foreword to a big collection of essays about, well, architecture and social engagement. This was written in the dog days of Brexit and Trump, so comes across as quite fluently pissed off. It captures in a short text what I have been ruminating on for a few years.
Second of two, with some hints as to how to achieve flexible housing, much more developed in the book.
My essay on architectural research, Three Myths and One Model, is being translated into French, so I thought it was time to write a new introduction to it, because the argument felt a bit tired, presented as it was ten years ago.
Originally commissioned by the RIBA, a piece on what might or might not constitute architectural research. Big in Spain.
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.