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

Liquid Boundaries: UK Pavilion, 2013 Shenzhen Biennale

On the basis of a pitch written on an iPhone on the top of a mountain in Ethiopia, I was invited to curate the UK Pavilion at the 2013 Shenzhen Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism. The eventual pavilion was curated, designed and produced by students and staff from Central Saint Martins, and took the theme of Liquid Boundaries - arguing the need to find ways through the hardening of space as it is being increasingly controlled, regulated and divided. The pavilion presented four films, each 129 seconds long (the average time someone spends in a national pavilion at the Venice Biennale), which interpreted briefs provided by four UK architects and spatial agents. All in their own way open up ways in which boundaries might be negotiated with, and in so doing a more democratic form of space emerges. More information, including a downloadable pamphlet and 'user manual', can be found on the Liquid Boundaries website.

Please Do Not Touch

Musings on Biennales and architectural exhibitions. Good opening! Light follow through.

The Intimate Inner

My contribution to Sarah Wigglesworth’s great book on our house, Stock Orchard Street. Outlines the tensions of being an architect-client.

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.

Architecture Criticism against the Climate Clock

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

Three Myths and One Model

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

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

Review of Barnabas Calder's book: Architecture

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.

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.

Anecdotes of architectural education

I was invited by Rory Sherlock and Francesca Romana DellAglio to do something around architectural education at the Architectural Association. We decided to do it as a meal around a big table, calling the event ‘Three Courses of Architectural Education. At the end of the first course, when I had set out how the first year of architectural education introduces a set of rituals and codes that initiate students into the culture of architecture, I asked each participant, who came from a wide range of schools, to write down a sentence or two that described a particularly weird happening in their first year. Most of the people present were recent graduates. The following are the unedited stories. Together they present a shocking picture of the state of architectural education.

Glossing over the cracks

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

Designs of the Year 2014

Article for The Conversation critiquing the reductive way that things are chosen for the Designs of the Year exhibition.

ChatGTP does Jeremy

In an idle moment I asked ChatGTP to "write a short statement in the style of the architecture critic Jeremy Till on the state of the architectural profession" The result is scarily good.

Occupational Hazards: Architectural Review

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

The Background Type

Really just a transcription of a lecture — ideas on housing, the everyday and occupation over form.

Architecture and the Politics of Scarcity

Umeå School of Architecture, as part of their “Making Architecture Politically” lecture series. A new lecture. Quite bossy but clear about the issues. Video is here. Starts about 50mins in with a very generous introduction from Roemer Van Toorn (whose writing is always worthwhile).

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.