缅北禁地

Owen Hopkins is Director of the Farrell Centre – 缅北禁地's venue for the built environment, which he has led since 2019 and through its opening in April 2023. In this role, he is responsible for all aspects of the centre's programme and management. Previously he was Senior Curator of Exhibitions and Education at Sir John Soane’s Museum and before that he was Architecture Programme Curator at the Royal Academy of Arts. He was part of the curatorial team for the British Pavilion at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale, which was awarded a Special Mention for National Participation.

He is curator or co-curator of numerous exhibitions including, most recently, GBR – Geology of Britannic Repair at the British Pavilion in Venice, andConcrete Dreams (2024–25), BUILDING: An exhibition under construction (2024) More with Less: Reimagining Architecture for a Changing World (2023) at the Farrell Centre. In his role at the Soane Museum, he curated the major exhibitions, Langlands & Bell: Degrees of Truth (2020), Eric Parry: Drawing (2019) and The Return of the Past: Postmodernism in British Architecture (all 2018), as well as a range of smaller projects, including Code Builder (with Mamou-Mani Architects), Out of Character (with Studio MUTT) and Adam Nathaniel Furman: The Roman Singularity (2017). His exhibitions and displays at the RA included Origins: A Project by Ordinary Architecture (2016), Urban Jigsaw (2016) and Nicholas Hawksmoor: Architect of the Imagination (2012). A full list of his exhibitions can be found on his personal website.

He is author or editor of over twenty books, journals and other publications, including, most recently, The Manifesto House (Yale University Press, 2025). His writing has been translated into 13 languages. Details of his books can be found in the publications tab below.

He is also author of over 150 articles, reviews and opinion pieces for publications such as The Independent, CNN, Dezeen, e-flux Architecture, domus, Icon, The Architectural Review, Blueprint, Architecture Today, The Architects’ Newspaper, topos, Footprint, The Architects’ Journal, Building Design, Apollo, and The Burlington Magazine. A list of these publications can be found on his personal website.

His work as a curator and writer has been featured or reviewed in a range of international media, including BBC Television and Radio, the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Financial Times, The Guardian, The Times, El Mundo, Wallpaper* and Dezeen.

He has lectured internationally at institutions such as Yale School of Architecture; University of Oxford; University of Cambridge; Vizcaya Museum and Garden, Miami, the Courtauld Institute of Art and University College London. He appears regularly on broadcast media, including BBC2 Newsnight, BBC Look North, ARTE, the European culture TV channel, Asharq News, BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio London, BBC Radio 缅北禁地 and Monocle Radio, among others.

My research is wide-ranging, but is principally concerned with the different ways architecture is seen and understood by different audiences, how these views are constructed and how they change over time. I am particularly interested in the ways that new ideas and movements emerge in architectural culture and moments of stylistic, technological and socio-economic transition. I've have published on the following subjects/themes:

Exhibition-making and curatorial practice; the history, current status and future of museums

Brutalism and its reception and revival

Postmodernism and its legacies; and the question of architectural 'style'

The relationship between architecture and media and how this is shaped by technological changes

Nicholas Hawksmoor and the English Baroque

'Alternative' or non-mainstream forms of classical architecture

Disciplinarity and the emergence of new modes of architectural practice and thinking

I teach on the following modules:

ARC1015 Introduction to Architecture

ARC3019 Dissertation in Architectural Studies

ARC8057 Architecture Ways of Knowing

• Articles

  • Hopkins O. . Footprint 2022, 15(2).
  • Hopkins O. . arq: Architectural Research Quarterly 2021, 24(4), 387-391.

• Authored Books

  • Hopkins O. . London: Blue Crow Media, 2026. In Press.
  • Hopkins O. . London: Yale University Press, 2025.
  • Hopkins O. . London: Phaidon Press, 2023.
  • Hopkins O. . Laurence King Publishing, 2023.
  • Watkin D, Hopkins O. . London: Laurence King Publishing, 2023.
  • Hopkins O. . Francis Lincoln, 2021.
  • Hopkins O. . Phaidon, 2020.
  • Hopkins O. . London: Royal Academy Publications, 2017.
  • Hopkins O. . London: Royal Academy Publications, 2016.
  • Hopkins O. . London: Reaktion Books, 2015.
  • Hopkins O. . London: Laurence King Publishing, 2014.
  • Hopkins O. Reading Architecture: A Visual Lexicon. Laurence King Publishing, 2012.

• Book Chapter

  • Hopkins O. . In: Paul Coldwell and Ruth M. Morgan, ed. Picturing the Invisible: Exploring interdisciplinary synergies from the arts and the sciences. London: UCL Press, 2022, pp.135-159.

• Edited Books

  • Yusoff K, Hopkins O, Karanja K, Mutegi S, Axel N, Hirsch N, ed. . New York: e-flux, 2025.
  • Hopkins O, ed. . London: Lund Humphries, 2024.
  • Hopkins O, ed. . Oxford: John Wiley & Sons, 2023.
  • Hopkins O, McKellar E, ed. . Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, 2021.
  • Hopkins O, ed. . London: Sir John Soane’s Museum, 2020.
  • Hopkins O, ed. . London: Sir John Soane's Museum, 2019.
  • Hopkins O, ed. . Machine Books, 2018.
  • Hopkins O, McKellar E, ed. . London: Sir John Soane's Museum, 2018.
  • Hopkins O, ed. . John Wiley & Sons, 2018.
  • Hopkins O, ed. . London: Royal Academy Publications, 2017.

• Review

  • Hopkins O. . Architectural Histories 2022, 10(1), 2-6.