"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.

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

30% pledge

This explains some the background as to why I have pledged only to accept invitations to panels, conferences and so on where there is at least 30% representation from women.

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

Modernity and Order, Architecture and the Welfare State

On Park Hill as an example of welfare architecture and its current demise. My first foray into the work of Zygmunt Bauman.

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

Competitive Strain Syndrome

A lecture as part of the brilliant Architecture and Labour lecture series and symposium organised by Mel Dodd and the Spatial Practices team at Central Saint Martins, in association with Olly Wainwright. A properly writtten version of the lecture appears as a book chapter in The Competition Grid. I have pasted the text of the chapter in the link, and this is the link to the video of the lecture. My lecture starts at 54.30, but it is very worth watching Peggy Deamer first.

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.

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.

The Urban Miniature

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

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.

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.

Glossing over the cracks

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

Podcast on art education

A podcast with me being interviewed by two great CSM students from the MA Culture, Criticism and Curation course - discussing art education at Central Saint Martins in relation to the contemporary condition

Architecture Criticism against the Climate Clock

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

The Design of Scarcity; 2015; Strelka Press

Co-authored with Jon Goodbun, Michael Klein and Andreas Rumpfhuber. The main outcome of the Scarcity and Creativity in the Built Environment project. At the beginning of this project it became clear that there was no contemporary theory of scarcity that addressed the current conditions, so this book sets out to fill that gap, and then relate that theory to design. It is a short (15,000 words) book. Unfortunately the publishers are no longer running, so the link is to the full text as submitted to them in 2015.