Posted in honour of their 2014 RIBA Gold Medal Award. First published in Architectural Review in 2005 (and needs the drawings/pictures) A bit of a rave.
Judy Willcocks, the Head of the Museum at Central Saint Martins, sat me down to cover my time from 2012-222 as Head of Central Saint Martins. We covered a lot of ground in 50 minutes, and it is a useful summary/memory of that period (at least for me)
This is my very short response to Paul Finch's comments on Extinction Rebellion that he made in the Architects Journal on 14th May and 21st May 2019
Happy to host Paul Chatterton's report: A Civic Plan for a Climate Emergency. Read it, y'all!
Not my musing, but that of my brother Nick Till. Nails the issues around Margaret Thatcher's funeral rather beautifully in two paragraphs
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
On the dangers and vanities of form. Written when I was wading through my philosophy degree and it shows.
Working with colleagues at the University of Sheffield School of Architecture, most notably Prue Chiles and Carolyn Butterworth, we established the most developed live projects programme in the country, probably the world, with some truly wondrous results. For example, look at the final report (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) from a group of students that I supervised looking at the use of urine to make mud bricks in Darfur. It is remarkable what they achieved in six weeks - should be awarded a PhD for this alone IMHO.
My response as to why giving the official government website 2013 Design of the Year was not so cool.
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.
A short think piece on the 2011 Occupation movement and its relevance to architecture.
Rather a miserabilist piece, but gets in that fantastic Seneca quote: ‘Those were happy times before the days of architects.’
Originally commissioned by the RIBA, a piece on what might or might not constitute architectural research. Big in Spain.
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.
The keynote article for Architectural Review's 1500 issue. Draws heavily on the joint research with MOULD
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.
Ten Theses on Scarcity. A lecture given in a tent on the steps of St Pauls during the Occupy London Stock Exchange period. Vocal audience who gave not a jot about my professorial authority. Rightly. Podcast, with the atmosphere of the occupation, is here.