"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.

Four Radicalities

Text of a short talk I gave at the RIBA during a seminar on the legacy of the Bauhaus.

Architecture and Participation: 2005: Routledge

Edited with Peter Blundell Jones and Doina Petrescu. A collection of essays setting out the whys and hows of new approaches to participation. My chapter in the book appears to have ended up on this website. (under Biblioteca) Other chapters include work by Jon Broome, Giancarlo de Carlo, CHORA, and my two fellow editors.

Architecture Criticism against the Climate Clock

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

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

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.

Occupational Hazards: Architectural Review

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

Three Myths and One Model

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

Constructed Scarcity

Very early thoughts from our Scarcity and Creativity project. Now looks rather crude.

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.

Glossing over the cracks

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

Six Inches of Power

My contribution to the collection of fantastic photographs by Lisa Barnard of the former Tory Party Headquarters. The book, Chateau Despair, is an extraordinary document of the tawdry environment that Margaret Thatcher and her cohorts conducted their business in. Though I say it myself, I like my writing here, spurred by Lisa's great work. Buy the book!

From Objects of Austerity to Processes of Scarcity

An essay based on a presentation to the Society of Architectural Historians, tracing various historical episodes of austerity.

The King is Dead!Long Live the Queen!

Short and a bit inconsequential riposte to Markus Miessen’s Nightmare of Participation.

An Incomplete Encyclopedia: Rem Koolhaas and S,M,L,XL

A review of Koolhaas' S,M,L, XL. May appear a bit grumpy, but in the end I think this is the architectural book of its generation. Reprinted in a collection of essays about Koolhaas.

Is the Golden Age of Art Schools Over?

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.