Latest addition
Here is a link to a talk I gave at the Independent School for the City about the Banana ... as a way to talk about the relationships between artificial environments, colonial trade, cultural meaning, comedy, taste and mass production etc ...
Watch the videoA few places to begin in the archive.
First published in Exhibition as Interior, Interior as Exhibition, Spaces of Display within and beyond the Museum and Gallery, Edited by Penny Sparke, Jana Scholz, Pat Kirkham
Introduction: The Invention of Interiority In literature, the idea of interiority is controversial. Is it first seen in Shakespeare’s soliloquies? Is it introduced through the novel as a new form of literature? These arguments also argue that our own idea of a psychological interior stems not from within us but from theatrical and fictional sites.…
First published in Interni, May 2026
There is a line in Vincenzo Latronico’s novel Perfection (Le perfezioni in its original Italian) that reads “They spent all their time in plant filled apartments and cafes with excellent WiFi”. The novel describes the lives of expat digital nomads, their lives lived in loose connection with place, in the loopholes between tenancy agreements and…
First published in ArtReview, April 2026
‘Perfect Sound Forever’ was the slogan that launched the compact disc. No crackle, no scratches, no dust, no decay. Music’s presentness would persist in an infinite technical permanence, frictionless and immaculate. Sony’s and Philips’s fantasy was instructive: a dream that culture could be stripped of wear, accident and mortality. But anyone who remembers the glitchy…
First published in Architects Newspaper
I’m in a dollar store. I’m in a space for contemporary architecture. I’m in a dollar store space for contemporary architecture. There are products, but there is nothing to buy. I’m laughing, but I think I might be the punchline. Maybe I want to cry. I'm at Gag Economy, Dank Lloyd Wright's (DLW) debut exhibition…
First published in Rocky
Walking through a city you assume of course that you are in a heart of civilisation, Deep in a metropolis surrounded by streets and buildings far away from nature. Forms and shapes that have a recognisable scales, significances and meaning: An array of fluted columns, a portico for what was once a bank, a wall…
First published in Rana Begum: Space Light Colour
There is a video on YouTube of one of the lectures of the late Liverpool-born mathematician John Conway.[1] It starts in the lecture theatre at Princeton. We see him at the blackboard, where he is explaining to his students how rotating a brick in different orientations changes the way you can lay it. He shows…
First published in Prefab Scout
Static caravans, a term that already embodies a kind of self-cancelling logic. Static like the atmosphere before a thunderstorm, where your hair stands on end as if standing within different physics. Static as in lighter than air, the balloon clinging to the ceiling by charged electron alone. Static like the charge built up by friction…
First published in Halls & Oats
The history of avant guard architecture is in part a search for a holy grail of multifunctional democratic space. Social condensers (as the Russian Constructivists called them), Cedric Price’s celebrated (though unbuilt) Fun Palace, Constant's New Babylon - always looking for a form of architecture that could liberate its citizens. But maybe the answer was…
First published in Designo
“We saw a picture of it printed in Domus, back to front,” says Howard Raggatt of Australian architects ARM. He’s talking about ARM’s design for the National Museum of Australia, which features a black copy of Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye, designed to house the Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. Not actually…
First published in the catalogue of Values of Design
There is nothing more perverse than a Design Museum. A place specifically given over to the display of things made for the ‘real world’ – things we would usually eat from, wear, sit on, drive or otherwise use. Here though, they will never be eaten from, worn, sat on, driven or otherwise used. Things are…
First published in the Real Review
If this essay were a documentary, we would begin with a shot of the green-brown water of the river Thames lapping against the alginated stone embankment outside the House of Parliament. We would zoom out while fading to spliced footage of two boats on the river. One, a grainy video, would feature a punk band,…
First published in Art Review
It turns out that Francis Fukuyama - yes, that Francis Fukuyama - is quite the amateur carpenter who spends his down time making antique furniture. The American political scientist is best known for his essay The End of History? Published in 1989 while he was working for the State Department, it acted as a de…
First published in MoMA's Complexity and Contradiction at 50 special edition.
To see Venturi’s original manuscript, all yellow paper, typed hand written, cut up and taped together is a text that seems to be both shredded and composed, as if placing words and sentences together were an act of composition or construction. In fact, one might imagine Venturi with his scissors working on both text and…
First published in RA Magazine
“Everyone”, said Arsène Wenger in response to an Alex Ferguson jibe “thinks they have the most beautiful wife at home”. And therein lies the problem. What on earth is beauty? Obviously, as Wenger suggests, it’s relative. Your idea of beauty might well be different from mine. But if beauty is relative what exactly is it…
There are a number of theories as to why Britain missed out on capital M Modernism. Some say it was because our industrial revolution happened early, others cite a British culture of political moderation, while more point to the overbearing power of the class system that simply could not permit the revolutionary utopian ambition of…
It’s that nagging sensation that pervades what we vaguely call ‘modern life’. It’s there, somewhere in the background like a dull distracting hum or sheathing us with an imperceptible film separating us from the world. It’s that feeling that somehow something is lacking, strangely hollow. That feeling of that we’re dislocated and failing to really…
First published in Art Review
Staring out of the floor to ceiling window the city is laid out before you. The soft lights of your hotel room appear reflected in the glazing like UFOs in the darkening sky. Your own reflection floats like a ghost amongst the cityscape. With its huge plate window the room feels more like its part…
Sometimes its only when you’re a long way from home that you realise what home really is. And there’s nowhere less like home - wherever you live - than Antarctica. Antarctica’s remoteness and relatively pristine state make it a special resource. It is place where we can study our planet in ways that are impossible…
