Advisory and Editorial Board

Andrew Benjamin (Melbourne)
Andrew Benjamin is Professor of Critical Theory and Philosophical Aesthetics in the Centre for Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies at Monash University. He was previously Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Centre for Research in Philosophy and Literature at Warwick University. An internationally recognised authority on contemporary French and German critical theory, he has been Visiting Professor at Columbia University in New York and Visiting Critic at the Architectural Association in London. His many books include: What is Deconstruction? (1988), Art, Mimesis and the Avant-Garde (1991), Present Hope: Philosophy, Architecture, Judaism (1997), Philosophy’s Literature (2001) and Disclosing Spaces: On Painting (2004), Style and Time: Essays on the Politics of Appearance ( 2006). He also edited The Lyotard Reader(1989), Abjection, Melancholia and Love: the Work of Julia Kristeva(1990) and Walter Benjamin’s Philosophy: Destruction and Experience (1993) and Walter Benjamin and Romanticism (2002).

Sanford Kwinter (New York)
Sanford Kwinter is a New York based writer and editor with a background in comparative literature. He is associate professor at the School of Architecture at Rice University, and co-founder of Zone Books, with Jonathan Crary and Bruce Mau, which includes the journal Zone, a serial publication of philosophy and contemporary culture. He has written widely on philosophical issues of design, architecture and urbanism and has been involved in the series of ANY conferences and publications, as well as the journal Assemblage, and was part of the exhibition and book Mutations in Bordeaux (2001). Head of Studio !KASAM, a content and communications design firm in the USA, Kwinter has published Pandemonium: The Rise of Predatory Locales in the Post-war World and Architectures of Time: Towards a Theory of the Event in Modernist Culture.

Christian Girard (Paris)
Christian Girard is an architect and theoretician practicing in Paris. He studied architecture in Paris, and holds a PhD in philosophy from the University of Paris I Sorbonne. From 1993 to 1999 he was Professor of Architecture at Ecole d'Architecture Paris-Villemin where he served as Chairman 1996–98. He was a founding member of the Ecole d’Architecture at Paris Malaquais, which opened in 2000, where he heads the Theory History Projects Department. In 1986 he published an essay on architectural epistemology “Architecture & Concepts nomades, Traîté d’Indiscipline” (Edition Mardaga). He has lectured in France, USA, Japan and Brazil. He opened his own practice as Atelier d’Architecture Christian Girard in 1987. The Atelier participates in competitions and has built public buildings and social housing programs. Works by the firm have been published in professional magazines. Christian Girard serves on the editorial board of Chimères, founded by G.Deleuze & F.Guattari and is a member of the Comité Technique of the FRAC Centre, Orléans. He is a regular participant in the Archilab conferences.

Christopher Hight (Houston)
Christopher Hight is Associate Professor at Rice University teaching in the areas of Architecture, Urbanism, Media, Emerging Material and Information Technology. His numerous essays and book chapters in architectural theory include “Architecture After Capitalism” Praxis 5, "Yahoo-topia: architecture at the end, of history?"  in Latent Utopias: experiments within contemporary architecture (2002), “Bleeding Edges: space beyond the machine and organism" in DO: the space of extremes (2002), “Stereo Types: The Operation of Sound in the Production of Racial Identity” in Leonardo (2003), "Breakspotting: matter, signification and order in contemporary architecture." in Signs as Surfaces (2004) and “After all: Architecture Practice after globalization” in Perspecta (2004). He is a member of the do-group, an organization founded for the experimental research in design as a philanthropic engagement.

Mark Cousins (London)
Mark Cousins studied at the Warburg Institute with Ernst Gombrich before moving into the field of cultural theory and architecture. He initially trained to become an Anna Freudian psychoanalyst, and has brought his vast range of philosophical, psychoanalytical and theoretical knowledge and experience to bear on the fundamental questions of architecture, where architecture itself is viewed as a major site of critical, social and cultural thought. He directs the Architectural Association's Histories & Theories programs at both graduate and undergraduate levels. He is also Visiting Professor of Architecture at Columbia University and Visiting Professor designate at the University of Navarre, Pamplona. He is a founding member of the London Consortium graduate school.

Barbara Penner (London)
Barbara Penner is Senior Lecturer at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. In 2003, she completed her doctoral dissertation, "Alone at Last: Honeymooning in America, 1820-80," an interdisciplinary work which explores the intersections between public space, architecture and private lives. Her essays have been published in several edited collections and scholarly journals, most recently in Negotiating Domesticity (Routledge 2005); the Journal of International Women’s Studies, (http://www.bridgew.edu/SoAS/jiws/, June 2005); Architecture and Tourism (Berg, 2004) and Winterthur Portfolio (Spring 2004). With Jane Rendell and Iain Borden, she edited Gender Space Architecture (Routledge, 2000), and with Charles Rice, she guest-edited the Journal of Architecture on the theme of ‘Constructing the Interior’ (Autumn 2004).

Branden Hookway (Cornell)
Branden Hookway is Visiting Critic at Cornell University - College of Architecture, Art and Planning, having completed his PhD at Princeton University. His published work includes Pandemonium: The Rise of Predatory Locales in the Postwar World with Sanford Kwinter and Bruce Mau, “Cockpit” in Cold War Hothouses: Inventing Postwar Culture, from Cockpit to Playboy and “Games, Mapping, and Mediation” in Mapping in the Age of Digital Media: The Yale Symposium. His thesis, “Cockpit Console Cubicle”, examines the interplay between organizational theory, ergonomics, and design. He has taught at Rice University and the Pratt Institute, and has worked as an architect, graphic designer, and industrial designer in Houston, Toronto, and New York.

Jane Rendell (London)
Jane Rendell is Professor in Architecture and Art at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, and is an architectural designer and historian, art critic and writer. Through individual and collaborative research projects, her work over the past ten years has explored various interdisciplinary intersections – feminist theory and architectural history, fine art and architectural design, autobiographical writing and criticism – examining how the theories and practices of one discipline can be used to explore and question another, producing in the process new modes of knowledge. She considers certain types of writing, as well art and architecture, to be forms of critical spatial practice, and is currently engaged, through teaching and research, a project of ‘site-writings’. She is author of Art and Architecture (2006), The Pursuit of Pleasure, (2002); co-editor of Pattern (2006), Critical Architecture (2007), Spatial Imagination (2005), The Unknown City, (2001), Intersections, (2000), Gender Space Architecture, (1999), Strangely Familiar, (1995) and editor of ‘Critical Architecture’ special issue of the Journal of Architecture (June, 2005) and ‘A Place Between’, special issue of the Public Art Journal, (October, 1999).