Architects without architecture
Emerging models for a different kind of architecture due to different kinds of technology: transdisciplinary studios for 21st‐century challenges and ‘small pieces loosely-joined’ forms of urbanism
Published in
55 min readDec 30, 2020
Ed. In 2018, Mark Burry asked me to contribute to a special edition of Architectural Design journal that he was editing: AD: Urban Futures: Designing the Digitised City (Vol.90, Issue 3). I've written for AD before - on the tactical urbanism of pop-ups as a form of R&D in 2015; a 2050 version of 'the street as platform' in 2014 - and was delighted to be asked by Mark, someone I've known since my Australia days, and a pioneer in digital architecture (he's perhaps better-known globally, along with Jane Burry and others, for their multi-decade work completing the Sagrada Familia.) Although architecture faces many challenges and opportunities, this piece had to focus on the urban questions posed by tech. Familiar themes are presented — cooperative blocks, participatory platforms, strategic design, libraries, streets, mobility etc. Please forgive any repetition, as I tend to worry away at a few core themes across several contemporaneous pieces, each framed slightly differently. Writing is like sketching, in this sense.
