‘A Kind of Loving’, Catalogue of Echo/City, British Pavilion, Venice Architecture Biennale (2006)

In 2006 Sheffield represented the United Kingdom at the Venice Architecture Biennale, unbeknown to me at the time but in actual fact the world’s biggest exhibition of architecture. Jeremy Till – who was then the head of the architecture school at the University of Sheffield – led a team of artists, musicians, photographers, and designers to recreate Sheffield in the British Pavilion in Venice in an urban register at a variety of different scales. The pavilion was inspired by the tale that during the Second World War an echo of Sheffield was made out of light in the hills of the neighbouring Peak District to distract the incoming bombers.

Tom James and I co-wrote an essay for the catalogue of the pavilion called ‘A Kind of Loving’, about how you can love a city that in some ways was unlovable, and the joys that different kinds of places offer.

You can read the text here. It’s really good.