Brett Steele - Notes on Architecture and Globalisation

Brett Steele is the Director of the Architectural Association School of Architecture, including the AA Public Programme and AA Publications. The Architectural Association is the UK’s oldest and only private school of architecture, which has for decades been recognized as an influential worldwide leader in architectural education. AA graduates are the recipients of the world’s leading prizes and awards in architecture, including three of the past nine Pritzker Prizes, the RIBA Gold Medal & Stirling Awards, AIA and other design awards. AA graduates have created many of the iconic buildings and led the most important schools of our time. The AA School is the world’s most international school of architecture, with 90% of the school’s 650 full-time London students originating from sixty or more overseas countries each year. In 2008 Brett founded the AA Visiting School, an international programme of global design workshops that have enrolled more than a thousand visiting students in Dubai; Turin; Istanbul, Madrid, Berlin and elsewhere in Europe; in Santiago, Chile; Bangalore, India; Singapore; Shanghai; Beijing; San Francisco; Dae Jon, Korea; Tel Aviv; Madrid; San Paolo; Tokyo; Tehran; and other cities.
Brett is the founder and former Director of the AADRL Design Research Lab, an innovative team-based M.Arch programme established as the school’s first-ever full-time, accredited graduate design degree. He is a partner of desArchLab, an architectural office in London, and has taught and lectured at schools throughout the world. He is the editor of NEGOTIATE MY BOUNDARY (2002); CORPORATE FIELD (2005); DESIGN AS RESEARCH (Beijing 2005); FIRST WORKS: ARCHITECTURAL EXPERIMENTATION OF THE 1960S & 1970S (2009; vol. 1 of his ‘works’ trilogy on the critical and experimental architectural of the 20th century); and SUPERCRITICAL: PETER EISENMAN MEETS REM KOOLHAAS (2009). Brett’s articles, interviews & lectures have appeared in ARCH+, ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN, ARCHITECTURAL REVIEW, A+U, ARCHIS, AA FILES, HARVARD DESIGN MAGAZINE, HUNCH, WORLD ARCHITECTURE, LOG, MARK, FRAME, JAPAN ARCHITECT, MONOCLE, ICON, DAIDALOS, AREA, and other journals; on CNN and the BBC, in THE WALLSTREET JOURNAL, FINANCIAL TIMES and other media. He is the series editor of ARCHITECTURE WORDS, critical writings in modern and contemporary architecture; and AA AGENDAS, a series documenting the work of the AA School.