AWARD NOMINATION APRIL 2025

2025 Architectural Book of the Year Award 

2025 Architectural Book of the Year Award 

LECTURE + WORKSHOP 

"SIMULATION + HYPERREALITY: THEORY & APPLICATIONS"

November 2024 / University of Warwick

This unique event is designed to engage students in meaningful contributions to the contemporary discourse on one of Jean Baudrillard's most compelling concepts—hyperreality—and its implications for understanding the current socio-political landscape. The workshop will open with a lecture delving into the intricacies of Baudrillard's notion of hyperreality, exploring its depth and philosophical implications, as well as how the concept has often been oversimplified or misinterpreted in mainstream popular culture, if academia itself. This event invites students to critically engage with and expand upon Baudrillard's ideas, fostering a nuanced discussion that connects theory with current cultural dynamics.

BOOK CHAPTER 

"GLOBAL THERMONUCLEAR AESTHETICIZATION: 

  MAURO CUPPONE'S META-IRONY"

  March 2023

This exploration of the work of the Italian conceptual artist Mauro Cuppone highlights his outstanding contribution to contemporary post-dadaist fine art trends, especially in terms of his personal reflection on capitalism's ability to commodify all aspects of life, death included. 

The chapter is published as part of a comprehensive international art catalogue edited by the artist himself also showcasing contributions by eminent scholars and artists.

The art catalogue, Mauro Cuppone: For Sale (Electa, 2023) will be officially launched at forthcoming venues (date + time TBC)         

ARTICLE 

"JAMES STILING'S POST-AVANT-GARDE COLLAGE: 

 THE FLATEBED PICTURE PLANE & THE PURSUIT OF VIRTUALITY" 

  April 2022 (Gold OA)

By opposing the customary view that stresses Stirling's legacy within the theory and practice of modernist architecture and the historical avant-garde, the point is made that Stirling’s work parallels, if not anticipates, the coeval achievements of American neo-avant-garde artists (notably Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol), as well as the writings of a leading art theorist of the time - Leo Steinberg. 

The Leicester Engineering Building, Oxford’s Florey Building and the Olivetti Training School are discussed in the light of the pop art collage, and acquires here an unexpected dimension: that deriving from the updated realm of the commodity form in architecture.

Available at::

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/arq-architectural-research-quarterly/article/james-stirlings-postavantgarde-collage-the-flatbed-picture-plane-the-pursuit-of-virtuality/4620F977A1753E1B875A6F6B9B899D5E

BOOK CHAPTER 

"Spectacle and the Screen, Thematic Section Introduction” 

in The Routledge Handbook of Architecture, Urban Space and Politics, edited by Farzaneh Haghighi and Nikolina Bobic. Routledge (Forthcoming 2022)

ONLINE LECTURE 

ARCHITECTURE & PHILOSOPHY: JEan Baudrillard 

Book 

Baudrillard for Architects (Routledge, 2020)

By presenting an introductory but in-depth formalization of Baudrillard's interest in architecture and related fields, this book makes intelligible his philosophical premises thus showing, through the prism of architecture, their relevance and persuasiveness today. Key concepts such as the object system, the code, simulation, hyperreality and precession, to name a few, are addressed in the light of the specially reconceptualized key construct of ambience, thus emphasizing how the mutual concerns of architecture, urban studies and cultural studies provide a fertile ground for debate.