Originally commissioned by the RIBA, a piece on what might or might not constitute architectural research. Big in Spain.
A lecture on architectural education that I presented at The Agency Conference in Sydney in 2017, Yale Symposium on Rebuilding Architecture in 2018, and as part of the Bartlett International Lecture Series in 2018. It starts with the premise that architectural education is inherently conservative, and then spins out the argument from that uncomfortable start. The video link is from the Bartlett version. It did not go down universally well...
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
Lecture at Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam, that runs through the structure and argument of our book of the same title. The link is to the video, with my lecture on first.
A critique of masterplanning. On to something here, but yet to be developed.
A lecture given as part of the The UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose’s lecture series “Rethinking Public Value and Public Purpose in 21st Century Capitalism”. It is the first run out of what happens when the ideas I have been developing in architecture for some years get rolled out to the wider field of design.
A short think piece on the 2011 Occupation movement and its relevance to architecture.
Scarcity Scares. Video here.
The keynote article for Architectural Review's 1500 issue. Draws heavily on the joint research with MOULD
Article for The Conversation critiquing the reductive way that things are chosen for the Designs of the Year exhibition.
A podcast with me being interviewed by two great CSM students from the MA Culture, Criticism and Curation course - discussing art education at Central Saint Martins in relation to the contemporary condition
Written in despair that it appears to have become an acceptable norm for architects to work in Saudi Arabia. I pick off the common justifications one by one. Published on the day that Saudi was awarded the World Cup in a piece of egregious sportwashing.
A short piece that I wrote in 2010 for the Architects Journal about end-of-year architecture shows. Some rather paranoid architectural tutors at Westminster (where I was then Dean) saw this as an attack on them personally, and so excommunicated me forthwith. In fact it was nothing to do with them but rather a concern about the general direction of architectural education as manifested through the exhibition.
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.
My response as to why giving the official government website 2013 Design of the Year was not so cool.
Sticky opening (I was reading Kant at the time) but better later on issues of time in architecture.