Nicholas Lobo Brennan

About

I am a London based designer and academic working with the construction of architecture as a critical social practice. In September 2018 I joined Kingston School of Art as Associate Professor of Tectonics in the Department of Architecture.

My work has been exhibited internationally, including Making It Happen, RIBA, 2018; Friday Sermon, Venice Architecture Biennale, 2018; Is this Tomorrow?, Whitechapel Gallery, 2019; The State of the Art of Architecture, Triennale Milano, 2020.

The themes and directions of my academic work and practice are intimately linked, focusing on material and architectural elements themselves as a starting point for unpicking and reconstructing the forces that form the material and social world.

I gained professional experience with Architecture Research Unit (ARU), Peter Zumthor, ACQ, UNA Arquitetos São Paulo. My academic experience includes working at the research and teaching studios of Prof Tom Emerson at ETH (co curating the ATLAS projects and pavilions), Profs Florian Beigel and Philip Christou at ARU London Metropolitan. I have led academic studios at the Royal College of Art London, Sandberg Instituut Amsterdam, and HEAD Geneva. 

I co-founded Apparata Architects in 2015 in London, with whom I primarily work on the development and delivery of new spatial models for collective life. I am presently working on a co-housing project for London Borough of Barking and Dagenham, Greater London Authority, Create London; an off-grid house; and ecological residential development. I previously formed GRUPPE in Zurich in 2011 and co founded and edited the publication Models Ruins Power.

At KSA I have been working on structuring the architecture department's approach to tectonics. This work includes bringing to the department a teaching approach that uses the constraints of engineering and material as a creative starting point, presently based around lightweight civic structures.