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
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.
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.
My essay on architectural research, Three Myths and One Model, is being translated into French, so I thought it was time to write a new introduction to it, because the argument felt a bit tired, presented as it was ten years ago.
A short piece written in 2012 for the RIBA Building Futures series on the future of architectural education and the profession. More bullish than I now feel.
The catalogue of the British Pavilion at the 2006 Venice Architecture Biennale, with essays by me (the ones on scale are here), and an introduction - a love letter to Sheffield - by Go! Sheffield. Designed by the very brilliant Ian Anderson of The Designers Republic, so worth your £5 for that alone. The British Council website has a scammy scan of the catalogue.
A short think piece on the 2011 Occupation movement and its relevance to architecture.
A research project funded by AHRC done with Tatjana Schneider and Nishat Awan at the University of Sheffield, gathering together numerous examples of how to use architectural intelligence beyond the production of objects, and in particular in terms of social and political agency. As part of the project we curated the 2009 RIBA Research Symposium (and Jonathan Charley’s video piece on the site is wonderful), produced a book, a website & various articles, and edited two special issues one of field: the other of ARQ. The project was awarded the 2011 RIBA President’s Award for Outstanding University-based Research, making me the only person to have received this internationally important award three times.
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'
Thoughts on the London riots. I think good.
The keynote article for Architectural Review's 1500 issue. Draws heavily on the joint research with MOULD
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.
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.
For Occupied Times, the journal of the occupation movement. On austerity contra scarcity
My response as to why giving the official government website 2013 Design of the Year was not so cool.