Rather a miserabilist piece, but gets in that fantastic Seneca quote: ‘Those were happy times before the days of architects.’
My response as to why giving the official government website 2013 Design of the Year was not so cool.
A further explanation of my 30% pledge, which seems to have raised debate (see comments) elsewhere on the very wonderful Parlour website.
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.
This is my glowing review of Barnabas Calder's new history of architecture, from the perspective of energy and climate. Spoiler alert: it is good.
The keynote article for Architectural Review's 1500 issue. Draws heavily on the joint research with MOULD
The article when I found my voice. Stories, the everyday and a sprinkling of theory.
Originally commissioned by the RIBA, a piece on what might or might not constitute architectural research. Big in Spain.
On the day that the Brexit referendum was announced, I impulsively wrote to all my CSM colleagues. The email was then leaked and waves were created, not least in the Daily Mail who later included this as evidence that I was one of many traitors to the so-called 'will of the people.'
Text of a short talk I gave at the RIBA during a seminar on the legacy of the Bauhaus.
Chosen in open competition to curate the British Pavilion, I put together the best creative minds in Sheffield to present an echo of this wonderful city (the link takes you to my initial application, and I have to say the room data sheets are not bad). The team included: Ian Anderson, Tim Etchells, Hugo Glendinning, Encounters, Martyn Ware, and Jim Prevett. The show attempted to explain how a city is great beyond its buildings: it did not have much architecture in, which did not go down well with architects, especially those in London, who were doubly annoyed that a provincial academic was doing the show. But beyond the Clerkenwell goldfish bowl (with Ellis Woodman in particularly splenetic form, fortunately now behind a paywall), the exhibition was better received (i.e in Die Presse, Der Standard, Financial Times, The Architects Newspaper, The Times, The Yorkshire Post, and of course the Sheffield Telegraph)
Sticky opening (I was reading Kant at the time) but better later on issues of time in 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
A short think piece on the 2011 Occupation movement and its relevance to architecture.
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.
Architecture Depends/Spatial Ethics. Video of the lecture is here.
Funny how ideas formed so long ago still come up. But rather gauche nonetheless.