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Staff Profile

Owen Hopkins

Farrell Centre Director

Background

Owen Hopkins is Director of the Farrell Centre at Newcastle University – a new public centre for architecture and cities which opened in April 2023. In this role, he is responsible for all aspects of centre’s programme and operations. He acted as client for the £4.6 million building project to create the centre’s new home, formulated its mission and strategy, established its brand, visual identity, and website and developed its curatorial vision and approach. 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 is curator of numerous exhibitions including, most recently, the Farrell Centre’s inaugural show, More with Less: Reimagining Architecture for a Changing World. At the Soane Museum he curated, Langlands & Bell: Degrees of Truth (2020), Eric Parry: Drawing (2019), Code Builder (with Mamou-Mani Architects), Out of Character (with Studio MUTT), The Return of the Past: Postmodernism in British Architecture (all 2018) and Adam Nathaniel Furman: The Roman Singularity (2017), among other projects. 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).

He is author of eight books: The Brutalists (2023), The Museum: From its Origins to the 21st Century (Frances Lincoln, 2021), Postmodern Architecture: Less is a Bore (Phaidon, 2020), Lost Futures: The Disappearing Architecture of Post-War Britain (RA Publications, 2017), Mavericks: Breaking the Mould of British Architecture (RA Publications, 2016), From the Shadows: The Architecture and Afterlife of Nicholas Hawksmoor (Reaktion, 2015), Architectural Styles: A Visual Guide (Laurence King, 2014) and Reading Architecture: A Visual Lexicon (Laurence King, 2012), which has been translated into 11 languages.

He is the editor of a new edition of David Watkins’s seminal A History of Western Architecture (2023), Langland & Bell: Degrees of Truth (Soane Museum 2020), Eric Parry: Drawing (Soane Museum, 2019), Conversations on Postmodernism (Soane Museum, 2018), Sensing Architecture (RA Publications, 2017) and three special issues of Architectural Design magazine: Architecture and Freedom (2018), Multiform (2020) and most recently Multispace: Architecture at the Dawn of the Metaverse (2023).

His work 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 written widely on architecture for publications such as The Independent, CNN, Dezeen, domus, Icon, The Architectural Review, Blueprint, Architecture Today, The Architects’ Newspaper, topos, Footprint, The Architects’ Journal, Building Design, Apollo, and The Burlington Magazine.

An experienced public speaker, he has lectured internationally at institutions such as Yale School of Architecture; University of Oxford; University of Cambridge; Vizcaya Museum and Garden, Miami and the Courtauld Institute of Art, London.

He is a regular guest critic at a number of architecture schools, and has been a judge for the BD Architect of the Year Awards, the AJ Architecture Awards and at the World Architecture Festival.

He has appeared on BBC2 Newsnight, BBC Look North, ARTE, the European culture TV channel, Asharq News, BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio London, and Monocle Radio.

Publications