publications
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Talk on clinker at Veretec 2022
Talks at Veretec
2022-23

Postcard, Brasilia, date unknown c. 1960s
BBC: The Inquiry
BBC World Service 2019

Itapoã, DF Brazil photograph © Joana França 2011
Brasília: Life Beyond Utopia
Brazil Institute, Kings College London 2016

Brasilia, DF Brazil photograph © Joana França 2011
Brasília: Life Beyond Utopia
Architectural Design [April 2016]

McAslan Gallery: Emerging Architects
Two exhibitions for the McAslan Gallery
McAslan Gallery 2016

Edzell Castle, Angus
Edzell Castle: Architectural Treatises in Late 16th Century Scotland
Garden History Society 2014

Palladio
Architecture and the Humanities
Architectural Research Quarterly 2014

Rio: Canal do Mangue Postcard
Urban Planning in Rio 1870-1930: the Construction of Modernity
Brazil Institute, Kings College London 2014

London Tower Block
Review of Remaking London: Design and Regeneration in Urban Culture
Architectural Research Quarterly 2013

Oscar Niemeyer: House in Canoas, Rio de Janeiro
Life's a Beach: Oscar Niemeyer, Landscape and Women
The Rest is Noise Festival
South Bank, London 6 October 2013

Brasilia Tres Poderes
BBC: Last Word
BBC Radio 4 7 & 9 December 2012

Brasilia Tres Poderes
Brasilia: Fictions and Illusions
Brazil Institute, Kings College London 2012

Nolli Plan of Rome
Connected Communities Symposium
University of Dundee 2011

Arup: White Building, St John's College Oxford
Architecture + ESI: an architect's perspective
FESI [The UK Forum for Engineering Structural Integrity] 2011

Booth Poverty Map of London
Review of Mapping London
Architectural Research Quarterly 2010

RIAS: landworkers exhibition
Landworkers
Dundee Contemporary Arts
14-28 May 2009

Antonio Carlos Elias: Epulis Fissuratum
The Studio of Antonio Carlos Elias
Epulis Fissuratum [Brasília 2006]

Thomas Deckker: superquadra penthouse project
Superquadra Penthouses
Penthouse Living
[Wiley 2005]

Arquivo Brasilia
Arquivo Brasília
Sala Martins Penna
Teatro Nacional Cláudio Santoro
Brasília
19-20 April 2005

Revisiting Brazil: View of Exhibition
Revisiting Brazil
RIBA Gallery 2
9-30 October 2003

Houston Car Park
Urban Entropies: A Tale of Three Cities
Architectural Design [September 2003]

Guedes Apartment, São Paulo
New Architecture in Brazil - Photographs by Michael Frantzis
Brazilian Embassy, London
5-6 March 2003

Joaquim Gudes: Kerti House, São Paulo
Natural Spirit (Places to Live 007)
Wallpaper* [January/February 2003]

Wallpaper*: Architects Directory
Architects Directory
Wallpaper* [July/August 2002]

RIBA Journal: Foreign Legion
Foreign Legion RIBA Journal [March 2002]

Le Corbusier: Heidi Weber Pavilion, Zurich photograph © Thomas Deckker 1996
Architects and Technology
The Encyclopaedia of Architectural Technology [London: Wiley 2002]

Mission Concepcion (1755) San Antonio, Texas
Mexican-American Architecture
Mexican-American Encyclopaedia [2002]

W3 Brasilia 1960s Archive Photograph
Brasília
Canberra / Brasília
Canberra Contemporary Art Space [Canberra: CASC 2001]

Oscar Niemeyer: Congresso Naçional Brasília
In the Realm of the Senses
Architectural Design [July 2001]

Thomas Deckker: Magalhães House
Thomas Deckker: Two Projects in Brasília
Architectural Design [Oct 2000]

Degree Unit G: Mexico 1997-98
First International Seminar on the Teaching of the Built Environment [SIEPAC]
University of São Paulo, Brazil
13-15 Sept 2000

Thomas Deckker: The Modern City Revisited
The Modern City Revisited
[London: Routledge 2000]

Thomas Deckker (editor): Issues in Architecture Art & Design
Issues in Architecture Art & Design
vol. 6 no. 1 [University of East London 2000]

Luigi Snozzi: Monte Carasso, Bellinzona photograph © Thomas Deckker 1982
The re-invention of the site
Relating Landscape to Architecture
[London: Routledge 1999]

The Modern City Revisted Conference
The Modern City Revisited
University of East London
27/28 Mar 1999

Luigi Snozzi: Kalman House, Locarno photograph © Thomas Deckker 1982
Monte Carasso: The re-invention of the site
Issues in Architecture Art & Design vol. 5 no. 2 [University of East London 1998]

Donald Judd: Chinati Foundation, Texas
Specific Objects / Specific Sites
Rethinking the Architecture / Landscape Relationship, University of East London,
26-28 Mar 1996

Herzog & deMeuron: Hebelstrasse Apartments, Basle
Herzog & deMeuron
Issues in Architecture Art & Design vol. 3 no. 2 [University of East London 1994]

Donald Judd: Chinati Foundation photo © Thomas Deckker 1995
Donald Judd: Chinati Foundation
photograph © Thomas Deckker 1995

Specific Objects / Specific Sites

Rethinking the Architecture / Landscape Relationship
University of East London 22/23 June 1996

In 1971 Donald Judd decided to leave New York and create a permanent setting for his work outside the museum circuit, where he considered that it was treated as a commodity, in Marfa, Texas. To encounter Judd's work in Marfa inevitably involves a re-appraisal not only of his sculptural pieces - displayed under what he considered ideal conditions - but of their relation to the landscape in which they were sited - the plains of West Texas. His sculptural pieces - series of precise cubic forms arranged without composition, such as '100 mill aluminium works' or '15 concrete works' - seem to be stripped of all cultural and metaphorical references, but their placing in the landscape has brought to them another dimension: that of the personal experience of the material object in natural space and light.

The intense physical experience of Judd's work seen on site has engendered a particular critical vocabulary - scale, form, material, light, and topography - for both art and landscape. Judd was not the only artist to work in this manner: equally important are works by, for example, Carl Andre and Richard Serra, but Judd intended to bring aesthetic experience into all levels of life - from landscape to architecture to furniture, an intention which he realised in Marfa. Judd had been initially attracted to architecture and never relinquished this interest, as may be seen in his various houses in New York and Marfa, and his house and architectural projects in Switzerland; his formative experiences as an artist were with Robert Smithson in the Meadowlands, the industrial hinterland of New York, as were those of Andre and Serra. He was working on the design for a railway station in Basle, with the architect Hans Zwimpfer, when he died suddenly in 1994.

Judd's rejection of contextualism and emphasis on personal experience have attracted a radical young generation of contemporary European architects to his work, such as Tony Fretton, Helio PiÖn & Albert Viaplana, and Herzog & deMeuron. Furthermore, this definition of object and site has provided a key to appreciating the work of an older generation - Luigi Snozzi, Aurelio Galfetti, Francesco Veneziano, Alvaro Siza, and Juan Navarro Baldeweg, whose attitude to architectural typology cannot be thought of as historical, but rather experiential. In common with Judd, both generations have rejected representation in favour of experience in their buildings; their work is concerned more with the intimacies of movement, material, and light. In general, one might characterise the sites of their buildings as the wastelands of modern cities: railway yards - such as PiÖn & Viaplana's Sants Plaza, Barcelona, suburbs - such as Galfetti's urban structures for Bellinzona, or the suburbanised countryside - such as Snozzi's work in Monte Carasso. These architects are proposing, in effect, the redefinition of the urban domain as topography.
Thomas Deckker
London 1996
The visit to Marfa formed part of Thomas Deckker's Degree Unit G Study Trip 1995/96.