My response as to why giving the official government website 2013 Design of the Year was not so cool.
On the dangers and vanities of form. Written when I was wading through my philosophy degree and it shows.
The keynote article for Architectural Review's 1500 issue. Draws heavily on the joint research with MOULD
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.
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.
When I was Head of Central Saint Martins, almost every year there was an article or radio programme lamenting the demise of the art school, often citing CSM as an example of this perceived collapse. This is my riposte to one such charge, published in 2015 in the establishment art journal Apollo.
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'
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.
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 long piece on Trump-Brexit-Architecture. I was nervous doing it because I thought everything had been said, but thought there was an urgency, so any contribution felt worthwhile.
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.
Scarcity Scares. Video here.
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
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.
A short think piece on the 2011 Occupation movement and its relevance to architecture.
Originally commissioned by the RIBA, a piece on what might or might not constitute architectural research. Big in Spain.
Thoughts on the London riots. I think good.