17/03/2020 - Icon

This essay about rebalancing in favour of the rural was one of my most heartfelt. But the timing was bad - published a week after lockdown began, when we were all understandably preoccupied by more pressing fears. I’m glad to have found that a few people did read it, and liked it, nonetheless: recently I found it quoted in a new book on rural futures. I’ve bumped it to the top of this list, just because. PDF

25/2/2025 - Architect's Journal

I posted a photo on LinkedIn and was asked to write about it for the AJ. Depressingly, it became their most viewed article that week. The piece is about the footbridge at my local railway station, and the sorry state of public design in the country at this time. Full article.

17/10/2024 - Apollo

Is the Stirling Prize suffering from a case of tunnel vision?

I was asked to write about the Stirling Prize shortlist and winning scheme. I asked why more original, unusual and perhaps even difficult architecture is not celebrated, rather than the merely polite and decorous.

31/8/2023 - Architect's Journal

Architects should get involved with design codes - before it’s too late.

Self-explanatory headline for a commissioned opinion piece.

30/6/2023 - Apollo

Knockdown vices – why demolishing post-war buildings shouldn’t be the default.

I was asked to write about the RIBA’s new Reinvention award, and the present debate about retrofit vs demolition.

“Building - whatever their aesthetics - should not be single-use, disposable items to be crushed into landfill at the end of their first generation.”

1/6/2023 - The Planner

It’s great that Labour’s grasping housing - but homes have to make communities, too.

Another self-explanatory headline. I explore what Labour’s policies for building more homes were lacking - prior to the last election. Not much has changed since.