right there, right then

After a long period when my whereabouts have been shrouded in mystery, the subject of endless gossip and intrigue, I can now write one of those "I will be making the following public appearances.." posts. 

So, I will be making the following public appearances:

As part of the London Metropolitan University*  lunchtime lecture series Right Here Right Now, I will be presenting FAT's recently opened Thornton Heath Library on Tuesday 26th. This project has a certain poignancy as public libraries are likely to be closing rather than opening as a result of the coalition government's public spending cuts.

Talking of LMU, anyone who can and who doesn't know about them already should get along to the Rip It Up And Start Again lecture series organised and MC'd by Kieran Long on Thursday nights.  There is an excellent range of speakers and an ambitious intellectual conversation emerging about architecture and the city. Be careful though, if you sit near the front you might have to ask a question.

On November 11th I will be giving a lecture on the rest of FAT's output at Canterbury School of Architecture, where I am currently teaching a diploma unit. The lecture is entitled All You Can Eat. Unfortunately there won't be a salad bar.

Finally, next month I will be commenting on, or participating in a discussion of, Owen Hatherley's book A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain at the Southbank Centre, where the author himself will be present and correct. Other more luminarious participants than me are likely to be taking part too.

* Suddenly the happening ticket in town with the 'whisperers' all but shouting from the rooftops.

What I Did This Autumn

Apparent on-line inactivity should not be taken for slothfulness. I have been busy. Honestly. I can be found, for example, reviewing Paul Barker's book The Freedoms of Suburbia in the current issue of Architecture Today. This is a book that has been reviewed pretty extensively in both the architectural and mainstream press so my piece is hardly new but it manages to be - unexpectedly - more critical than some others.

Although I'm generally pretty positive about the joys of suburbia, I was concerned by both a knee-jerk anti-modernism in Barker's book (a bit rich coming from someone complaining about aesthetic prejudice) and a strain of free-market libertarianism which dismisses any form of social policy or politically informed housing policy. "Politically informed housing policy" is a phrase likely to send a chill into Paul Barker's heart I imagine. Nonetheless I don't regard suburbia as some kind of natural phenomena - the unperverted manifestation of people's desires - as many of its apologists do. It is however pretty good at reconciling a number of competing desires that people seem to have. Its loose, relatively unplanned form also allows elements of the unexpected to occur which is one reason why architects, with their fetish for form and control freakishness, don't like it.

Anyway, it's all there in the review which is short but pithy! It's not to be found online unfortunately (pointless link here) so you will either have to buy a copy or, alternatively, study for seven years to become a registered architect and get a free subscription. Either way, the issue is well worth buying for the extended essay on the reconstruction of Berlin by Doug Clelland.

Also this month I'm in Icon reviewing James Wines' recent lecture at the Barbican and wearing a pair of silly sunglasses. That's me not James Wines. He's the guy with the big beard. This is something of a split jury review too as Wines is a bit of a hero of mine, albeit one whose recent work lacks the punch of his early stuff.

Finally, on Thursday I'm giving a lecture at the University of Portsmouth School of Architecture. If you live there and you read this (what are the chances?) come along.

(Illustration: George Shaw: What I Did This Summer. Via)

Short European Tour

I'll be making a couple of public appearances in the next month or so. First up, I'm speaking at this, a symposium on the suburbs, initially at University College London and then later at the Royal Academy of Arts. I will be talking specifically about the role of suburbia in sit-coms, with some observations about The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin chucked in. I have posted about Perrin before on this site so the talk is likely to be a reprise of some of the ideas in that together with some new and improved observations.

I'll be in Nuremberg on October 23rd to speak at the Architecture without Architecture symposium at the splendid sounding Academy of Fine Arts too. I'm hoping to talk about DIY and various other kinds of non-high architecture at this including, quite possibly, the recent climate camp on Blackheath (very well described here). In a funny sort of way, climate camp was an alternative, temporary suburb - particularly given its choice of location - a (somewhat) politicised version of Archigram's Instant Cities, which always had an element of the suburban street party about them.

Issues of social organisation, ad-hoc-ism and non-architecture (or non-urbanism) run through these otherwise disparate themes which I might try and join up here at some point.

A Narcissist Writes...

Original posts are in short supply here at the moment due to ongoing issues of being massively exhausted most of the time. A combination of work and a baby being to blame, not that I'm one to complain.....

However I have been busy elsewhere. My review of Jeremy Till's new book is in the current issue of Icon. I'll post it up here if it doesn't make it on to the Icon Eye website. I tried to avoid reading other reviews of Jeremy's book until I had written mine although I did listen to AJ editor Kieran Long discussing it on Radio 4. I have though just read The Sesquipedalist's excellent review, and there is a lot of overlap with my own (hopefully not the only reason I rate his review)

One of the things that Steve goes into that I didn't is Jeremy Till's role as an academic. Till initiated some very interesting things in his former role as Director of Architecture at Sheffield, including an attempt to abandon the ridiculous crit structure of teaching. I've thought for a while that architectural education is stuck in various ruts, although conversation around this seems to flit between either professional tutors who have a vested interest in it remaining the same, and blinkered professionals who regard all intellectual speculation as pretentious. Nonetheless Architecture Depends does clearly emanate from academia where myths of the architect's omnipotence flourish as a result of the unit system and its mini-starchitect structure.

Also in this month's Icon is my post on ice cream vans which has been published as their Icon of the Month. It looks lovely, much nicer than it does on-line. Thanks are due to Kosmograd and to Murphy at Entschwindet und Vergeht for their helpful comments on the post at the time, which have informed the slightly expanded version of it in Icon.

Finally, a reminder to any Manchester based people that I'll be giving a lecture as part of this tomorrow night. No support band I'm afraid but I will do encores. It starts at 6pm, and it's here: Room 303 Manchester School of Architecture, Manchester Metropolitan University, Chatham Building, Cavendish Street, Manchester.

That'll be the justification for the gratuitous Smiths picture too, although it's meant to be self-deprecating given that this post is written by me about some other things I've written. Or going to say. And sorry people of Manchester if using The Smiths is like making gor blimey guvnor jokes about London.

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.