Nick de Klerk
@nickdk.bsky.social
Architect, writer, occasional critic; hotel specialist / sector head at Purcell Architecture. Views all my own, ofc.
https://nicholasdeklerk.com
https://nicholasdeklerk.com
I love and learned a lot from Gehry’s early work, specifically the hay barn and his Santa Monica house, but it’s very hard to look at the Battersea housing project and not think it falls into the first, not the second category.
December 6, 2025 at 1:14 AM
I love and learned a lot from Gehry’s early work, specifically the hay barn and his Santa Monica house, but it’s very hard to look at the Battersea housing project and not think it falls into the first, not the second category.
OK, I’ll take the bait. Do we blame the prompt or the model for toilets with no servicing, endless surplus wardrobes, a master bed against the ‘view’ window, six sinks in the, er, kitchen, a (mostly) column-free, bi-fold pergola? I could go on.
December 1, 2025 at 10:00 PM
OK, I’ll take the bait. Do we blame the prompt or the model for toilets with no servicing, endless surplus wardrobes, a master bed against the ‘view’ window, six sinks in the, er, kitchen, a (mostly) column-free, bi-fold pergola? I could go on.
This is worth a listen for many reasons, but here’s one - behold the compliance culture we have built that doesn’t actually hold anyone to account; what is the actual point of any of it? www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...
The Reith Lectures - Rutger Bregman - Moral Revolution - 1. A Time of Monsters - BBC Sounds
Dutch historian Rutger Bregman delivers his first BBC Reith Lecture: Moral Revolution.
www.bbc.co.uk
December 1, 2025 at 3:07 PM
This is worth a listen for many reasons, but here’s one - behold the compliance culture we have built that doesn’t actually hold anyone to account; what is the actual point of any of it? www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...
James Gowan’s Schreiber House is on the market: sothebysrealty.co.uk/properties/b...
House for Sale in Schreiber House: A Modernist Masterpiece Opposite Hampstead Heath | UK Sotheby's International Realty
House ID 49739 in Schreiber House, Hampstead, London. The House has 5 bedrooms, 5 bathrooms, 5691 SQ.FT built up area. Amenities & facilities Garden, Parking, Grade II Listed and others.
sothebysrealty.co.uk
December 1, 2025 at 9:05 AM
James Gowan’s Schreiber House is on the market: sothebysrealty.co.uk/properties/b...
There is an irony about a project conceived to promote ‘long term thinking’ being funded by one of the key proponents of the on-demand economy. All very *cough* meta.
A giant clock to keep time for the next ten millennia is moving towards completion in a western US desert cavern.
It's meant to promote long-term thinking in an age of short termism. The project, backed by Jeff Bezos, has been a suitably drawn out and enigmatic affair.
www.ft.com/content/22c0...
It's meant to promote long-term thinking in an age of short termism. The project, backed by Jeff Bezos, has been a suitably drawn out and enigmatic affair.
www.ft.com/content/22c0...
The Clock of the Long Now is a 10,000-year-long timepiece backed by Jeff Bezos
Deep inside a Texas mountain, a vast mechanical clock tries to make humanity measure time on the scale of civilisation itself
www.ft.com
November 28, 2025 at 9:52 AM
There is an irony about a project conceived to promote ‘long term thinking’ being funded by one of the key proponents of the on-demand economy. All very *cough* meta.
Also feels like this is accelerating as we are in a political moment where malign actors and useful idiots are facilitating if not encouraging it. Even they recognise this is just a moment and thus existential for the project.
Once you start thinking of AI as a war on humanity, on human thought, on human inquiry, on human labor, on nuance and critical thinking, it slots in pretty seamlessly with the right wing ideological project, oligarchical political projects, big tech's political projects, etc
November 6, 2025 at 6:28 PM
Also feels like this is accelerating as we are in a political moment where malign actors and useful idiots are facilitating if not encouraging it. Even they recognise this is just a moment and thus existential for the project.
Reposted by Nick de Klerk
‘Stark displays of sexism’ driving women out of architecture, report finds
‘Stark displays of sexism’ driving women out of architecture, report finds
Riba and Fawcett Society survey finds many are afraid to report bullying, sexual harassment and unequal pay
Two decades after a seminal report on sexism in architecture, women are still abandoning the profession because of “toxic workplace cultures”, sexual harassment, long hours and unequal pay, according to a report from the Royal Institute of British Architects (Riba).
Female architects still faced intractable barriers, including “long hours being glorified, an imbalance of power between employers and employees, lack of clear policies and proactive action, and stark displays of sexism within practices”, according to the Riba Build It Together report, produced with the equality charity the Fawcett Society.
Half of all female respondents had experienced bullying at work
A third had been sexually harassed
A majority felt their architecture career progression had been stymied by having children Continue reading...
www.theguardian.com
October 20, 2025 at 5:09 AM
‘Stark displays of sexism’ driving women out of architecture, report finds
My latest review for Building Design considers Jon Blair’s recent film about Eric Parry’s approach to architecture - The Art of Architecture - and offered the opportunity to ask some big questions, as the film does: www.bdonline.co.uk/briefing/the...
October 12, 2025 at 1:33 PM
My latest review for Building Design considers Jon Blair’s recent film about Eric Parry’s approach to architecture - The Art of Architecture - and offered the opportunity to ask some big questions, as the film does: www.bdonline.co.uk/briefing/the...
Reposted by Nick de Klerk
For thousands of years we’ve been building with trabeated stone. For thousands of years it’s been chewed at, chased to abstraction. Repeatedly exhumed and revived, even after Roman concrete, even after Gothic vaults, after Rundbogenstil and Candela’s shells. Keeps coming back from the dead.
a 🧵:
a 🧵:
October 12, 2025 at 1:04 PM
For thousands of years we’ve been building with trabeated stone. For thousands of years it’s been chewed at, chased to abstraction. Repeatedly exhumed and revived, even after Roman concrete, even after Gothic vaults, after Rundbogenstil and Candela’s shells. Keeps coming back from the dead.
a 🧵:
a 🧵:
‘… everything must change so that everything can stay the same.’ Apparently this also holds for the life extending treatments on offer in the spa-adjacent clinic. A fascinating history of the Brenner hotel in Baden Baden: www.ft.com/content/f1ca...
Simon Kuper: in the footsteps of Queen Victoria (and Victoria Beckham) at Germany’s grandest spa hotel
After two years of restoration work, Brenners Park in Baden-Baden reopens this month
www.ft.com
October 5, 2025 at 2:23 PM
‘… everything must change so that everything can stay the same.’ Apparently this also holds for the life extending treatments on offer in the spa-adjacent clinic. A fascinating history of the Brenner hotel in Baden Baden: www.ft.com/content/f1ca...
‘Consider what is lost with a demolition… Histories are inscribed in architecture and to erase buildings is to strip cities of a layer of their culture.’
Great piece: "Architecture’s dark, dusty side is a shadow world in which buildings are demolished to make way for the new."
Adapt or die: the architects pioneering a new wave of building reuse on.ft.com/3VE0r5s
October 4, 2025 at 3:13 PM
‘Consider what is lost with a demolition… Histories are inscribed in architecture and to erase buildings is to strip cities of a layer of their culture.’
Despite the delusions AI remains a tool with fairly typical limitations (rubbish in, rubbish out etc), but the ambitions for which are also shaped by the intellect and creativity of its makers - which in this telling do not meet the moment at all.
Hello. I wrote a nice long essay about AI and this very strange moment where we're constantly told we're living in the dawn of a strange new future but the only thing that's actually clear is that everyone feels pretty unmoored and uncertain. I hope you'll read it
AI Is a Mass-Delusion Event
Three years in, one of AI’s enduring impacts is to make people feel like they’re losing it.
www.theatlantic.com
August 19, 2025 at 9:06 AM
Despite the delusions AI remains a tool with fairly typical limitations (rubbish in, rubbish out etc), but the ambitions for which are also shaped by the intellect and creativity of its makers - which in this telling do not meet the moment at all.
Reposted by Nick de Klerk
Hello. I wrote a nice long essay about AI and this very strange moment where we're constantly told we're living in the dawn of a strange new future but the only thing that's actually clear is that everyone feels pretty unmoored and uncertain. I hope you'll read it
AI Is a Mass-Delusion Event
Three years in, one of AI’s enduring impacts is to make people feel like they’re losing it.
www.theatlantic.com
August 18, 2025 at 9:21 PM
Hello. I wrote a nice long essay about AI and this very strange moment where we're constantly told we're living in the dawn of a strange new future but the only thing that's actually clear is that everyone feels pretty unmoored and uncertain. I hope you'll read it
‘Even the perspective view - all coloured and enlivened with cloud, tree, and figure - is more like a chimerical prospectus than an honest and bona fide prospect.’ George Wightwick, 1853.
July 27, 2025 at 2:50 PM
‘Even the perspective view - all coloured and enlivened with cloud, tree, and figure - is more like a chimerical prospectus than an honest and bona fide prospect.’ George Wightwick, 1853.
Reposted by Nick de Klerk
This reads as though Altman prompted his platform to write a paean to the future of humAInity in his own style - very *cough* meta.
Sam Altman posted this essay in the last hour. I’m someone who believes AI is a genuinely transformative technology – at least the biggest since the internet.
But I read this and it just comes across as either delusional or a bizarre, fantastical sales pitch. I can’t work out which is worse.
But I read this and it just comes across as either delusional or a bizarre, fantastical sales pitch. I can’t work out which is worse.
The Gentle Singularity
We are past the event horizon; the takeoff has started. Humanity is close to building digital superintelligence, and at least so far it’s much less weird than it seems like it should be.
Robots...
blog.samaltman.com
June 10, 2025 at 10:45 PM
This reads as though Altman prompted his platform to write a paean to the future of humAInity in his own style - very *cough* meta.
Watching Mountainhead - quality joke: ‘Was your interior designer Ayn Bland?’
June 9, 2025 at 8:05 PM
Watching Mountainhead - quality joke: ‘Was your interior designer Ayn Bland?’
May 30, 2025 at 8:43 PM
This feels like the most DS+R project ever: www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...
May 28, 2025 at 8:59 PM
This feels like the most DS+R project ever: www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...
The thing is though, they have no idea what these jobs actually entail and whatever the AI platform comes up with to attempt to replace them will be a cheap and cheapened copy of the real thing.
The level of hatred these AI bros have for creative people I just do not understand
May 26, 2025 at 11:15 AM
The thing is though, they have no idea what these jobs actually entail and whatever the AI platform comes up with to attempt to replace them will be a cheap and cheapened copy of the real thing.
In the last half hour of The Brutalist. Please send help.
May 22, 2025 at 9:34 PM
In the last half hour of The Brutalist. Please send help.
If the content is so critical or valuable to building LLM’s then let the companies pay for access to it: www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
House of Lords pushes back against government’s AI plans
Peers back amendment to data bill requiring AI companies to reveal which copyrighted material they have used
www.theguardian.com
May 14, 2025 at 9:24 AM
If the content is so critical or valuable to building LLM’s then let the companies pay for access to it: www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
Reposted by Nick de Klerk
V good thread. Worth your time.
Labour's immigration announcement today is a reflection of the paucity of honest debate by BOTH political parties over the last decade on this issue.
Labour has never made a counter-argument, or been honest about economic cost of immigration curbs, so it's stuck making Tory/Reform arguments 1/n
Labour has never made a counter-argument, or been honest about economic cost of immigration curbs, so it's stuck making Tory/Reform arguments 1/n
May 13, 2025 at 7:11 AM
V good thread. Worth your time.
And this, dear reader, is why people like this shouldn’t be anywhere near such consequential technology. ‘The coolest, really?’ And no, I didn’t read anything in the interview that persuaded me otherwise.
May 11, 2025 at 4:24 PM
And this, dear reader, is why people like this shouldn’t be anywhere near such consequential technology. ‘The coolest, really?’ And no, I didn’t read anything in the interview that persuaded me otherwise.
V interesting thread. I think the case for wholesale demo is increasingly diminished - necessarily - as the context shifts to carbon and material scarcity. A building has to be fundamentally unusable not to be retained / repurposed / reused - which is rarely the case.
Some weeks ago, Mansfield College Oxford announced plans to tear down nearly half their buildings, and a bunch of you asked what I thought, so here’s the thread: yes good actually and so is Magdalen tearing down the Waynflete, too. this building conservator is in favour! 🧵
May 11, 2025 at 3:32 PM
V interesting thread. I think the case for wholesale demo is increasingly diminished - necessarily - as the context shifts to carbon and material scarcity. A building has to be fundamentally unusable not to be retained / repurposed / reused - which is rarely the case.