Profile

Biography

I am an architectural designer and theorist, Senior Lecturer and Director of Architectural Research at the Bartlett School of Architecture. My work makes links between architectural design, art, performance, psychoanalysis and philosophy, and is supported by two different but dialectically related practices: my teaching and research activities at UCL and my collaborative practice at AY Architects. I am interested in the productive and critical dialogues that can be made between speculative research and situated practice.

I have completed a PhD by Design focusing on the study of aleatoric practices in architecture and art (UCL, 2003) and a related project funded by the AHRC. I have published and exhibited my work internationally and have acted as external critic, PhD examiner, validation panel member for the Open University, academic advisor for the TU Delft, and peer reviewer for the arq, The Journal of Architecture, the ACSA, and the Greek Ministry of Education for the evaluation of EU research proposals.

I see architecture as a socially situated mode of practice and in the last decade I have co-founded Tessera (1999-2004) and AY Architects (2005-present), two collaborative studios which have systematically engaged with broad and non-academic audiences. Two distinguished installations at the EMST National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens (2002) and the RIBA, London (2003) and invited participations in the AJ/Argent King’s Cross Charrette 2008 and the 122 Leadenhall Competition, organized by the British Land and the NLA (2009), are examples of projects contributing to knowledge exchange. Recently the focus of AY Architects is on locality and buildings of environmental and community sustainability. For example we have researched the role of unformed play and forest learning related to early years settings and have instigated, designed and fundraised (Government funding 470K) for the realization of a new building for Camden Community Nurseries, a registered charity in the voluntary sector.

Research Summary

My research is design-led, combining drawing, making and writing. Through projects that emphasize the situational and aleatory elements of architecture I have advanced architectural knowledge and method in the field of design research and have contributed to the interdisciplinary study of space, making particular links between architecture and the fine and performing arts. My first sole-authored book, titled Architectures of Chance, will be the opening book in the new series Design Research in Architecture by Ashgate, forthcoming in 2012. This piece represents over a decade of research, proposing chance as a new area of study and practice in architecture and the related design disciplines. Architecture is drawing together: interwoven with subjectivities, the complexities of co-habitation and the environment, it is always experienced through time, situation and the simultaneity of events. These themes are further researched through AY Architects where chance is understood as socially located, affecting processes of dialogue and co-production.

As supervisor in the PhD Architectural Design programme I welcome students with design-led and interdisciplinary research proposals relating to: space, perception and embodied experience; theories and practices of design; the creative role of indeterminacy and chance; photography, film media and performance as experimental spatial tools and modes of architectural thinking; site specificity; the design and afterlife of buildings and open public spaces and squares.

Research outputs

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

Research activities