Professor Jeremy Till

BA(Hons), DipArch, MA, RIBA, RegArch

Background

I joined the University of Westminster as Dean of the School of Architecture and the Built Environment in 2008. Previously I was Professor of Architecture and Head of the School of Architecture at the University of Sheffield. I have pursued a dual life as architect and educator. As an architect, I worked with Sarah Wigglesworth Architects with whom I designed our `seminal´ house and office, 9 Stock Orchard Street, (The Straw House and Quilted Office) which has received extensive international attention and received numerous awards, including the prestigious RIBA Sustainability Prize. In 2006 I was selected to represent Britain at the Venice Architecture Biennale.

Teaching

I guest lecture on various courses in the School, and supervise a number of PhD students.

Research and Consultancy

My research interests centre around the social and political context of architecture. I am interested in the way that design, ideas and ideology intersect in the production of architecture, seeing theory and practice as an indivisible whole. This is underpinned by my academic background in both architecture and philosophy. My research is conducted through multiple methods including building design, exhibition curating, funded projects and writing; although diverse, all my work revolves around the social and ethical position of the architect.

In the 1990s, my writing focused on architecture and the everyday, including The Everyday and Architecture (Academy Editions, with Sarah Wigglesworth), The Future is Hairy (in Architecture; The Subject is Matter, Jonathan Hill, Routledge) The Architecture of the Impure Community (in Occupying Architecture, ed Jonathan Hill, Routledge) and The Vanity of Form (Journal of Architecture). More recent work investigated the role of participation in architecture including Architecture and Participation (with Peter Blundell Jones and Doina Petrescu) and a much cited article for Open Democracy. I also address issues of architectural education, and have twice been a prizewinner in the EAAE Prize for Writings in Architectural Education. My book on Flexible Housing, written with Tatjana Schneider (Architectural Press 2007, with an accompanying website), was awarded the 2007 RIBA President´s Research Award. My major book on architectural theory and design, Architecture Depends, was published by MIT in 2009, and has been extensively reviewed, including being selected as book of the week in

Times Higher Education. It is shortlisted for the 2009 RIBA President´s Research Award.

My exhibition for the British Pavilion at the 2006 Venice Architecture Biennale, entitled Echo/City, looked at the social dynamics of cities through the prism of Sheffield. I worked with an internationally significant team of Sheffield based artists, writers, designers and architects to create an urban register of the city across a variety of scales.

Research Grants

• 2006 Alternative Architectural Praxis • AHRC Research Grant, £189,000 for two year project (principal investigator)
• 2006 Manual on Flexible Housing • Housing Corporation Innovation and Good Practice Programme
• 2006 • £19,000
• 2005 Practice Led Research in Architecture, Art and Design • Co-investigator with Prof Chris Rust (Sheffield Hallam, Design) and Prof Judith Mottram (Nottingham Trent, Fine Art) £45,000 for six month contract
• 2004-6 The Past, Present and Future of Flexible Housing • AHRB Research Grant, £125,000 for two year project (Principal Investigator)
• 2003-5 Sino-Anglo Architectural Education • British Academy • £4,500 (Co-Investigator)

External Activities

Recent External Activities

• 2008 Academy of Urbanism • Elected Academician

• 2007 AHRC • Appointed as member of Fellowships Committee, Arts and Humanities Research Council

• 2007 Yorkshire Forward • Appointed as Renaissance Advocate

• 2006 Sheffield Urban Design Review Panel • Appointed as member

• 2006- Sheffield Culture Board • Appointed to new culture board as urban design representative

• 2005- RAE 2008 • Appointed to Sub-Panel 30, Architecture and the Built Environment, for the Research Assessment Exercise 2008

• 2004-6 Royal Institute of British Architects • Appointed Chair, RIBA Awards Group, directing the UK´s and one of the world´s most pretigious awards programmes.

• 2004- Royal Institute of British Architects • Member of reconstituted Research and Development Board


• 2004- Architectural Humanities Research Association • Founding Member and Steering Group of new organisation to promote Architectural Humanities Research

• 2004- University College London • External Examiner, MSc course

• 2003-2008 Beam • Deputy Chair of Wakefield based organisation for the promotion of the built environment

• 2003- Station House Opera • Trustee/Board Member of internationally acclaimed performance group

• 2002-04 National University of Singapore • External Examiner, MA/BA courses


Recent Awards and Prizes

• 2007 RIBA President´s Award for Research: Outstanding University-based category

• 2007 University of Sheffield • Awarded inaugural Senate Prize for leadership in teaching

• 2005 Venice Biennale • Selected by British Council in open competition to curate the British Pavilion at the 2006 Venice Architecture Biennale

• 2004 EAAE Biennial Award for Architectural Writing • Jeremy Till, `The Lost Judgement´, selected finalist in European Association for Architectural Education Biennial Prize for Architectural Writing, Copenhagen, 2004

• 2004 RIBA Sustainabilty Prize • 9 Stock Orchard Street awarded UK´s most prestigious prize in sustainable design

• 2004 RIBA Awards • Awarded RIBA National Award for Architecture

• 2002 RIBA Journal • 9 Stock Orchard Street nominated as runner up, RIBAJ Building of the Year, 2002

• 2002 Civic Trust Awards • Awarded National Civic Trust Award and shortlisted for sustainability prize

• 2002 Royal Fine Art Commission Building of the Year • 9 Stock Orchard Street shortlisted for Building of the Year

• 2001 Blueprint Award • 9 Stock Orchard Street awarded Blueprint Awards Best Residential Building in international competition

Recent Talks and Keynotes

• 2008 Keynote, CODE Symposium, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia
• 2007 Keynote, National Housing Colloquium, Belo Horizonte, Brazil

• 2007 Keynote, Architectural Humanities Research Association International Conference, Kingston University

• 2007 Keynote, Bremen Architekturkammer 

• 2006 Keynote, Swedish Architecture Day conference

Publications

Books in print and in press

• 2009 Jeremy Till, Architecture Depends, (Cambridge MIT Press, 2009)
• 2007 Jeremy Till and Tatjana Schneider, Flexible Housing, (London, Architectural Press 2007)
• 2006 Jeremy Till, Echo City, (British Council, London 2006)
• 2006 Jeremy Till and Tatjana Schneider, Flexible Housing: A Guide (Bank of Ideas for the Housing Corporation, London 2006)
• 2005 Jeremy Till, Peter Blundell Jones, Doina Petrescu (eds), Architecture and Participation (London, Routledge 2005)


• 2001 Jeremy Till and Sarah Wigglesworth, 9 Stock Orchard Street, A Guidebook (Bank of Ideas, London 2001)
• 1997 Jeremy Till and Sarah Wigglesworth, editors, The Everyday and Architecture (Academy Editions, London 1997)

Selected Book Chapters

• 2009 Jeremy Till, ‘The Selfless Plan’, in Pattern, Purpose, Place: The Work of Proctor and Matthews, (London, Black Dog Publishing 2009)
• 2009 Jeremy Till, ‘Please (Do Not) Touch’, Afterword to Curating Architecture and the City, eds. Sarah Chaplin and Alexandra Stara (London, Routledge 2009)
• 2008 Jeremy Till, ‘A Happy Age (Before the Days of Architects)’, in Wernick, Jane (ed.), Building Happiness (London: Black Dog Publishing, 2008)
• 2005 Jeremy Till, `The Negotiation of Hope´, in Blundell Jones, Petrescu, Till (eds), Architecture and Participation, (London, Routledge 2005), pp25-44 • Translated into Polish


• 2003 Jeremy Till and Sarah Wigglesworth, `Strong Margins´, in Samuel Mockbee and the Rural Studio (Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham Alabama 2003) pp66-68. Reprinted in Architectural Regionalism, editor V.Canizaro, (New York: Princeton Architectural Press 2007) pp428-432

2002 Jeremy Till and Sarah Wigglesworth, `The Background Type´, in Accommodating Change, ed Hilary French (Architecture Foundation/Circle 33, London 2002) pp150-158


• 2001 Jeremy Till and Sarah Wigglesworth, `The Future is Hairy´, in Architecture: The Subject is Matter, editor Jonathan Hill, (Routledge, London 2001) pp11-28


• 1999 Jeremy Till, `Thick Time´, in Intersections, editors Iain Borden and Jane Rendell, (Routledge, London 2000) pp156-183 • Translated and reprinted in Hans Weidinger, Patina (Munich: Deutches Verlags-Anstalt, 2003) pp14-19: "An inspired essay", Neue Zürich Zeitung, 4 Sept 2004

Selected Refereed Journal Articles

• 2009 Tatjana Schneider and Jeremy Till, ‘Beyond Discourse: Notes on Spatial Agency’, Footprint, Vol 4, pp 97-111
• 2006 Jeremy Till and Tatjana Schneider, Flexible Housing: the means to the end, Architectural Research Quarterly, vol 9 no 3/4 pp287-296


• 2006 Jeremy Till, Modernity and Order: Architecture and the Welfare State, Verksted (Office for Contemporary Art, Oslo) vol 7, Sept 2006, pp41-60


• 2006 Jeremy Till, Judith Mottram and Chris Rust, `Adapting research activity AHRC review of practice-led research´, Architectural Research Quarterly, vol 9 no 2, pp103-104


• 2006 Tatjana Schneider and Jeremy Till, Flexible Housing: opportunities and limits, Architectural Research Quarterly, vol 9 no 2, pp157-166

2005 Jeremy Till, `The Lost Judgement´, EAAE Writings on Architectural Education (EAAE, Copenhagen), Vol 2, 2005, pp164-183.

A selection of these publications is available on Westminster Research, with links to pdf’s and journal websites where available

http://westminsterresearch.wmin.ac.uk/view/people/Till,_Jeremy.html