Architecture in Space, Time
Early piece, written when I had just got Lefebvre. Introduces themes that I play on for years to come.
Early piece, written when I had just got Lefebvre. Introduces themes that I play on for years to come.
My first foray into the intersection of politics and architecture. Spiky.
Sticky opening (I was reading Kant at the time) but better later on issues of time in architecture.
The best essay on the building and meaning of our house, with stories.
Really just a transcription of a lecture — ideas on housing, the everyday and occupation over form.
Short piece on Samuel Mockbee and the Rural Studio, trying to find the line between adulation and critique.
An extended argument of what participation might be and mean in architecture. Probably my most ‘scholarly’ piece. Widely cited and (so my co-design colleagues tell me) respected.
Texts for the catalogue to the British Pavilion at the 2006 Venice Architecture Biennale. On ideas of scale and stories in cities.
This is a rare one where I write specifically about buildings, or in this case the subtlety of the plans of Proctor Matthews Architects. Online here, pdf here.
Rather a miserabilist piece, but gets in that fantastic Seneca quote: ‘Those were happy times before the days of architects.’
Musings on Biennales and architectural exhibitions. Good opening! Light follow through.
A critique of masterplanning. On to something here, but yet to be developed.
Short and a bit inconsequential riposte to Markus Miessen’s Nightmare of Participation.
My contribution to Sarah Wigglesworth’s great book on our house, Stock Orchard Street. Outlines the tensions of being an architect-client.
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 raw text 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.
Short foreword to a big collection of essays about, well, architecture and social engagement. This was written in the dog days of Brexit and Trump, so comes across as quite fluently pissed off. It captures in a short text what I have been ruminating on for a few years.
The foreword to Arna Mathiesen's great book Scarcity In Excess, which investigates the effects of scarcity on the built environment in Iceland following the economic crisis of 2008. Other excerpts of the book are on Issuu
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!