"Continue to contaminate your bed, and one day you will suffocate in your own waste" Duwamish chief Seattle to Pres… https://t.co/qTXguYJazz

Echo City: British Pavilion at 2006 Venice Architecture Biennale

Chosen in open competition to curate the British Pavilion, I put together the best creative minds in Sheffield to present an echo of this wonderful city (the link takes you to my initial application, and I have to say the room data sheets are not bad). The team included: Ian Anderson, Tim Etchells, Hugo Glendinning, Encounters, Martyn Ware, and Jim Prevett. The show attempted to explain how a city is great beyond its buildings: it did not have much architecture in, which did not go down well with architects, especially those in London, who were doubly annoyed that a provincial academic was doing the show. But beyond the Clerkenwell goldfish bowl (with Ellis Woodman in particularly splenetic form, fortunately now behind a paywall), the exhibition was better received (i.e in Die Presse, Der Standard, Financial Times, The Architects Newspaper, The Times, The Yorkshire Post, and of course the Sheffield Telegraph)

Design after Design

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

Response to Paul Finch on Extinction Rebellion

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

Architecture after Architecture

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.

Sheffield Live Projects

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.

Flexible Housing, Opportunities and Limits (with Tatjana Schneider)

First of two articles setting out the preliminary argument for the book, Flexible Housing. Apparently, one of ARQ's most cited ever article.

Architecture Criticism against the Climate Clock

The keynote article for Architectural Review's 1500 issue. Draws heavily on the joint research with MOULD

Architecture after Architecture: May 2021

Another lecture from the Architecture after Architecture project, given to the Australian ArchiTeam conference. Lovely introduction from Michael Smith but the rest of the audience seemed either outraged or nonplussed or CPD-points-collecting at my rather intemperate take on the future of architecture

Keynote at opening of IABR

Together with members of MOULD, I delivered a keynote address at the opening of the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam, 'Nature of Hope', where we were also exhibiting our embroidery installation. The lecture has interventions from members of MOULD who stand up to read excerpts from our writings. Our bit starts around 32 minutes in.

Architecture is too important to be left to men alone

A further explanation of my 30% pledge, which seems to have raised debate (see comments) elsewhere on the very wonderful Parlour website.

Three Myths and One Model

Originally commissioned by the RIBA, a piece on what might or might not constitute architectural research. Big in Spain.

Architecture After Architecture Research Project

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.

Occupational Hazards: Architectural Review

A short think piece on the 2011 Occupation movement and its relevance to architecture.

Glossing over the cracks

My response as to why giving the official government website 2013 Design of the Year was not so cool.

Architecture Depends: Reviews

In order to get a balanced view, all reviews from the very nice to the very nasty are included here.

The Design of Scarcity; 2015; Strelka Press

Co-authored with Jon Goodbun, Michael Klein and Andreas Rumpfhuber. The main outcome of the Scarcity and Creativity in the Built Environment project. At the beginning of this project it became clear that there was no contemporary theory of scarcity that addressed the current conditions, so this book sets out to fill that gap, and then relate that theory to design. It is a short (15,000 words) book. Unfortunately the publishers are no longer running, so the link is to the full text as submitted to them in 2015.

Architecture Criticism against the Climate Clock

The keynote article for Architectural Review's 1500 issue. Draws heavily on the joint research with MOULD