Based in London, I work as a writer for the Architectural Record, The Critic and Icon, and publish books with Machine Books. I also work with the University of Oxford's Said Business School.

In an era of housing crisis, I am researching the development of suburbs globally with an aim to recommend how we might better plan and build homes in this country. Having watched through my professional career as a writer how modern housing ignores the needs of normal people, my aim is to research best and worst practice around the world so I might best inform the better design of modern housing in the places where people want it.

The first part of my research was two amazing weeks in California where I examined the urbanism of the state from two historical timeframes. Firstly, I explored the evolution of housing typologies from radical collectivism in the 1940s to conservative paradigm in the 1950s. Then I looked at how both the Bay area in the north of the state and the outer regions of Los Angeles have become denser in the last ten years and what this means for housing. I can't wait to go to Belgium and the Netherlands for the next stage.