Neil Leach

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Neil Leach is an architect and theorist. He has taught at the University of Bath, Architectural Association School of Architecture, University of Nottingham, Columbia University, Cornell University, SCI-Arc, Royal Danish Academy of Art and Dessau Institute of Architecture. He was the co-curator (with Xu Wei-Guo) of the A2 Exhibition of Avant-Garde Architecture at the Architecture Biennial Beijing 2004, and of the Emerging Talents, Emerging Technologies Exhibition at the Architecture Biennial Beijing 2006.

Leach's position in regards to architectural theory was first set out in the "cultural reader" he edited, Rethinking Architecture (1997). The book contained a selection of well-known writings about architecture written by thinkers within Continental Philosophy, ranging from Hermeneutics and Phenomenology to Structuralism and Deconstruction, prefaced by Leach's own introduction. Among the authors included were: Jacques Derrida, Martin Heidegger, Umberto Eco and Andrew Benjamin. Though containing no contributions on feminism, queer studies, or ethnicity, what the selection set out to represent was a rethinking of architectural practice; making it a critical activity, not simply accepting the given paradigm, while at the same time placing architecture within the realm of cultural studies.

[edit] Publications

Emerging Talents, Emerging Technologies: Architects - co-editor with Xu Wei-Guo (2006)
Emerging Talents, Emerging Technologies: Students - co-editor with Xu Wei-Guo (2006)
Forget Heidegger (2006)
Camouflage (2006)
China (2004)
Fast Forward>>, Hot Spots, Brain Cells - co-editor with Xu Wei-Guo (2004)
Digital Tectonics - co-editor with David Turnbull and Chris Williams (2004)
Designing for a Digital World - editor (2002)
The Hieroglyphics of Space - editor (2002)
Mars Pants with Oliver Froome-Lewis et al. (2000)
Millennium Culture (1999)
The Anaesthetics of Architecture (1999)
Architecture and Revolution - editor (1999)
Rethinking Architecture - editor (1997)
On the Art of Building in Ten Books with Joseph Rykwert (1988, 1991)