Edited text of an interview with me about participation done with Bernd Upmeyer of the Dutch journal MONU
A short introduction to the book Architecture, Participation and Society, edited by Leslie Forsyth and Paul Jenkins in 2009
Thoughts on the London riots. I think good.
Originally commissioned by the RIBA, a piece on what might or might not constitute architectural research. Big in Spain.
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.
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'
The keynote article for Architectural Review's 1500 issue. Draws heavily on the joint research with MOULD
On the basis of a pitch written on an iPhone on the top of a mountain in Ethiopia, I was invited to curate the UK Pavilion at the 2013 Shenzhen Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism. The eventual pavilion was curated, designed and produced by students and staff from Central Saint Martins, and took the theme of Liquid Boundaries - arguing the need to find ways through the hardening of space as it is being increasingly controlled, regulated and divided. The pavilion presented four films, each 129 seconds long (the average time someone spends in a national pavilion at the Venice Biennale), which interpreted briefs provided by four UK architects and spatial agents. All in their own way open up ways in which boundaries might be negotiated with, and in so doing a more democratic form of space emerges. More information, including a downloadable pamphlet and 'user manual', can be found on the Liquid Boundaries website.
My response as to why giving the official government website 2013 Design of the Year was not so cool.
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.
A short think piece on the 2011 Occupation movement and its relevance to architecture.
My response as to why giving the official government website 2013 Design of the Year was not so cool.
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.
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.
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.
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