Hello.

I'm an independent thought leader working at the intersection of architecture, media, and technology.

Having trained as a Passivhaus architect, I have experience teaching, researching, and communicating architecture, alongside a background in software development.

Writing

In 2005, I started writing the 'Architectural Antifreeze' Part IV blog as 'Norman Blogster'. This generated a following and led to a side-career in journalism, initially with a column in the Architects' Journal. Since then, I have written over 150 articles for the international architectural press, including for Mark, Architecture Today, The Architectural Review, The RIBA Journal, Architectural Design, Building Design, icon, and Volume.

I was shortlisted for the IBP's ‘Architecture Writer of the Year’ in 2011 and 2012.

Books

Concrete (Bloomsbury, 2026)

Concrete is well known for two things: it is the most used artificial material on earth, and—no coincidence—its manufacture contributes 8% of the world’s CO2 emissions. Our addiction to the grey material is killing the planet almost as much as our addiction to oil: it is everywhere. And yet it remains invisible in our consciousness. Through a series of vignettes and paradoxes taken from across the world—from North and South America to China and the USSR via Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and Europe—Concrete explores this ‘liquid rock’, this ‘artificial stone’, upon which modern society is constructed, yet which simultaneously threatens to destroy it. Part personal memoir, part architectural history, part journalistic critique, the book attempts to explain how we need to respect—or at least notice—concrete more and think of it less as cheap and banal and more as a precious material.

Architecture's Agonism: a biography of AD magazine, 1930-1992 (submitted to Harvard Design Press, due 2027)

Extended from my PhD research, this book builds on the theories of Pierre Bourdieu, Bruno Latour, and relational biographies to develop a theory of architectural media as ‘the struggle to define architecture’ through a case study of Architectural Design magazine. Based on 18 years of archival research and numerous interviews with key protagnoists, through a series of human and non-human biographies, I tell the story of the magazine and its contribution to the architecture of architecture from its inception in 1930 to Andreas Papadakis's departure in 1992 via Theo Crosby's introduction of the Smithsons' Brutalism, Ken Frampton's invention of Critical Regionalism, Robin Middleton's introduction of Archigram, Peter Murray's celebration of Cedric Price, Martin Spring's anarchism, Charles Jencks's Post-Modern strategies, Demetri Porphyrios and Leon Krier's New Classicism, and the Deconstruction symposium which led onto the phenomenon of the starchitect. It's a completely unique history of 20th-century architecture as seen through the lens of architecture's favourite medium.

Editing

I have been the Editor-in-Chief for the RIBA's Journal of Architecture and joint Editor-in-Chief of the Diamond Open Access ARENA's Journal of Architectural Research as well as acontributing editor for the Architectural Review.

Research

My PhD, ‘Architectural Design 1954-1972: the contribution of the architectural magazine to the writing of architectural history’ won the 2012 RIBA President's Award for Outstanding PhD Thesis.

Since then, I have continued to research and write about the architectural media, both print and digital, including Generative AI.

Exhibitions

Sir David Chipperfield invited me to curate the solo exhibition ‘Architecture Magazines: Playgrounds and Battlegrounds’ in the Padiglione Centrale of the 2012 Venice Biennale. This featured AD, AR, Casabella, and Domus magazines from the 1940s to the 1970s and an 11m long network of relationships of key individuals and institutions related to these London and Milanese magazines.

I also curated the travelling exhibition ‘Dear Sheffield’ for the Sheffield Society of Architects 125th anniversay.

Teaching

I've taught Architectural History & Theory to postgraduate students at The Bartlett, Sheffield University, Nottingham University, and London Metropolitan University (CASS), led design studios at all levels, taught technology classes and workshops in concrete and CAD, and supervised a number of PhDs to successful completion.

I was an early and enthusiastic adopter of GenAI into my teaching.

Architectural Practice

I have experience working on enormous buildings in a large practice (Birmingham's Queen Elizabeth Hospital at BDP in Sheffield), medium-sized buildings at a medium-sized practice (resorts and civic buildings at James Christou and Partners in Perth, Western Australia), and small buildings in a small practice (community buildings at Allen Tod Architects in Sheffield).

Software Development

I have an MSc in Computation from Oxford University and in a previous career, I designed and brough to market the design review software NavisWorks which autodesk acquired in 2007.