The Kids Don't Stand A Chance

News just in from FAT towers is that we will be returning to Yale to teach in the autumn. Time to dig out the sweater and tie combo.

Despite imagining ourselves as preppy sophomores we are, I fear, closer to Donald Sutherland's dissolute proffessor in Animal House. Unlike James Stirling though we have yet to urinate against Paul Rudolph's plate glass windows.

Visiting Prof.

FAT have a spate of lectures coming up. All three of us will be lecturing in the fabulous and faintly terrifying Christ's Church, Spitalfields for the 17th Berthold Lubetkin lecture. Our initial idea of a Chat Show format was unfortunately abandoned due to concerns over it working in such an imposing location and the fact that Michael Aspel wasn't available, so instead we will be giving three mini lectures in order to avoid the usual 'here is some stuff what we've done' format. Topics likely to include Copying, A Short History of the Popular Home and the unexplored interface between digital culture and mock tudor.

After that I'm at Oxford Brookes on November 13th and Sheffield University on a date soon to be confirmed.

Please come along to all or any of the above. The Lubetkin one is ticket only, so for details follow the link.

Coming soon!

After weeks of activity some news and upcoming features.

Currently reviewing two new books, one for Icon which is an A-Z of Design by our old friends Terence Conran and Stephen Bayley. I must confess to rather liking Stephen Bayley for a number of reasons. One he has the kind of camp and ludicrously mannered views that i find generally amusing a la Peter York. Two he once wrote a very funny review about baby wipes, which is the sort of modern phenomena I wish I had thought to write about. And three his wife once bought a very ugly and badly made clay reproduction of an Alessi coffee pot off me for £10. Apparently it is still in their house. Terence Conran, however, slightly scares me. The book they have written is no great shakes on first viewing but more to come on that subject....

Also, I'm reviewing a book on Austrian proto modernist Adolf Loos. I'm a huge admirer of his work and am pathetically overjoyed to receive this tomb of a book for free. Whether I can think of anything critically aposite remains to be seen. It will appear in RIBA journal next month and shortly after here.

My nostalgic journey into the hippy communes of Essex is being dignified with a formal reading in Berlin next month at a Die Planung event.

Other news is that I'm just back from the US where the FAT fellows and Mr Nick Johnson are currently English Eccentrics In Residence at Yale University. I'll post more news on this soon, but highlights so far include discussing with Leon Krier what pudding to have and having our own limo service.

More, much more to come......