I am a registered architect whose research bridges architecture, literature, media, and science through the creative exploration of speculative design methodologies. I work at the intersection of posthuman futures, cyberphysical technologies, and virtual architectures—drawing on process philosophy and futures thinking to explore new design paradigms and experimental architecture.
Prior to returning to architecture and the convergence of media and urban infrastructures, I spent over 15 years in interdisciplinary R&D and artistic research. My work in communities of media artists, developers of open hardware and software, sound artists, device artists and art-science practitioners was supported by Arts Council England, AHRC, EPSRC, HEIF, and ERDF. I’ve evaluated research and innovation for BRE, BSI, and the EU Framework Programme, and most recently completed UKRI-funded research via Innovate UK’s immersive technology accelerator.
I am open to supervise PhD students in speculative design, experimental architecture or design fiction and have supervised and examined PhD students in the cultural and creative sector as well as professional doctorates in the built environment.
Keywords: Speculative Design Fiction, Experimental Architecture, Posthuman Futures, Cyberphysical Systems, Infrastructure Digital Twinning, Process Philosophy, Media Infrastructures, Art-Science, EmTech Foresight, Deregulation and Innovation, intellectual property and open licensing.
Affiliations: MediaCityUK Immersive Technology Innovation Accelerator / Salford Laboratory of Architecture / BuHU / ThinkLab / Centre of Excellence for Practice as Research.
Current Work: Research Infrastructure Digital Twinning
Research Interests
My research operates at the intersection of speculative design, pataphysical computing, and posthuman architectural futures. I work across theory and practice, engaging with the philosophical and technical dimensions of the virtual—from design fiction and machinic materialities to cyberphysical infrastructures and digital twins.
Rooted in a longstanding commitment to practice-based and artistic research, my inter- and trans-disciplinary writing explores how architecture can respond to—and intervene in—the spatial, ecological, and ontological shifts produced by emergent technoscientific assemblages. This includes a sustained engagement with Deleuzian and post-Deleuzian thought, abstract culture, media infrastructures, and speculative hardware.
To challenge the disciplinary enclosure of architecture, I operate para-academically through experimental research studios and collaborative initiatives. These include The New Centre for Research & Practice (with Neil Spiller), the Extraordinary Experimental Laboratory (with Phil Watson), and the DreamLab collective—an offshoot of my research with the Greater Manchester Immersive Technologies Accelerator at MediaCityUK. Across these contexts, my studios explore the digital, physical, chemical, and biological dimensions of design, often blurring the boundaries between the vegetal, the machinic, and the x-reality of the virtual.
Current projects include a series of “machinic organs” developed with Phil Watson for his Soft House, which explore pataphysical and speculative approaches to hardware and software. Alongside this speculative and design-fictional practice, I undertake applied research into the implementation of Digital Twins and the technical virtual as contemporary expressions of cyberspace and reflexive architecture as originally theorised by Neil Spiller.
I co-convene the Practice as Research cluster within the Directorate of Sustainable Built and Natural Environments (BuHu) and the Centre of Excellence in Art, Media and Creative Technologies. I am also a member of the editorial boards for Digital Creativity and Architecture and Culture, and have guest edited special issues on design fiction (2013, 2025) and speculative hardware (2016).
Teaching and Learning
My teaching interests engage with the tension between regulatory mechanisms and disciplinary traditions that seek to standardize and constrain the production of architects and architectural knowledge, and experimental practices—alongside developments in art and science—that challenge these limitations. I am particularly interested in how such interdisciplinary tendencies open architecture to external influences, fostering innovation and enabling novel forms of practice. This, in turn, contributes to the emergence of new disciplinary configurations and the ongoing speciation of architecture itself.
At the University of Salford, I currently teach the following postgraduate modules:
Histories, Theories & Methodologies
Advanced Digital Design Technologies
Technology, Innovation & Law
Dissertation (Architecture)
Dissertation (Built Environments)
Research Methods
I am the former Director of both the Professional Doctorate in the Built Environment and the Master of Architecture programme. I currently convene the Practice Futures professorial lecture series as part of the Salford Laboratory of Architecture and lead the development of Professional Studies within the School.
My pedagogical practice is informed by a commitment to facilitating experimental practice both within and beyond formal academic structures. I previously led speculative design research studios within the professionally validated framework of architectural education, and I now continue this work in para-academic contexts through my Research Fellowship with the New Centre for Research & Practice. The NCRPs mission to support practitioners working between disciplines and outside conventional institutional boundaries aligns closely with my interest in fostering independent research, critical inquiry, and innovative architectural thinking that exceeds traditional categories of academic and professional practice.
PhD Supervision Availability
Yes
PhD Topics
We are seeking architecture + design practice as research doctoral candidates. Interested in visionary architecture, speculative design and design fiction approaches in immersive media - we are interested to hear from applicants interested in both drawing as a mode of research and XR as a mode of constructing autonomous architecture
> Speculative Hardware and pata(physical) computing. Constructing non-standard methodologies and objectile systems for visionary architectural design methodologies. Applying Open hardware and F/L/OSS from the fields of vfx, games and XR production together with artistic research methodologies to contemporary architectural practice in XR media infrastructures.
We seek doctoral students to construct abstract machines /pataphysical hardware for XR architectures in collaboration with myself and AVATAR Professor Neil Spiller. This work builds upon my previous practice-based UK Research Council supported research in theatre, performance and scenographic devising practices applied to the design of technological objects together with Neil's long-term visionary architectural works.
