My closing speech at the main conference for What's the Point of Art School, a series of events organised by Central Saint Martins. The video of the speech, which was well-recieved, is here. Other talks, including brilliance from Johnny Vegas, are here. There was a good write up of the day in the Guardian.
Texts for the catalogue to the British Pavilion at the 2006 Venice Architecture Biennale. On ideas of scale and stories in cities.
Originally commissioned by the RIBA, a piece on what might or might not constitute architectural research. Big in Spain.
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.
An invitation from the Italian journal STOA which I could not resist because the other invitee was Valerio Olgiati, whose take on architectural references is the polar opposite to mine. I swipe a bit, but maybe not hard enough, at his stance in this essay.
A short think piece on the 2011 Occupation movement and its relevance to architecture.
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.
My response as to why giving the official government website 2013 Design of the Year was not so cool.
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.
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.
The keynote article for Architectural Review's 1500 issue. Draws heavily on the joint research with MOULD
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.
The first book from my scarcity research project. Edited with Jon Goodbun and Deljana Iossifova, it brings together some good articles, including ones by Ezio Manzini, Erik Swyngedouw, Winy Maas, Kate Soper and more. Table of contents is here.
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
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.
Text of a short talk I gave at the RIBA during a seminar on the legacy of the Bauhaus.
My response as to why giving the official government website 2013 Design of the Year was not so cool.