Carolyn Steel
Carolyn Steel is an architect, lecturer and writer whose work has focused on the everyday lives of cities.
She was the inaugural studio director of the Cities Programme at the London School of Economics, and has run successful design units at London Metropolitan University and Cambridge University, where her lecture series Food and the City is an established part of the architectural degree programme.
She was a Rome Scholar in 1995-6, researching the Mundane Order of the City. A director of Cullum and Nightingale Architects, she has completed several major buildings for the Central School of Speech and Drama.
Her media work has included presenting on BBC TVs 'One Foot in the Past', and she is a regular columnist for Building Design.
Her first book, Hungry City: How Food Shapes Our Lives, was published by Chatto and Windus in 2008. It won the Royal Society of Literature Jerwood Award for Non-Fiction, and was one of the books of the year on BBC Radio 4s The Food Programme.
OpinionWhy not try living on the edge?
Street markets can be the key to breaking down barriers and creating vibrant cities
- Opinion
Going Dutch offers food for thought
Should the UK sacrifice its land to the intensive farming methods of the Netherlands?
OpinionWe must heed volcanic wake-up call
The importance of resilient, sustainable design has been brought home by the eruption in Iceland
OpinionDongtan, icon of our vanishing future
Two years after its ravishing images wowed the media, there is still no sign of an eco-city
OpinionDrinking in the Swedish experience
Sweden shows that if we want better public buildings, we need to address our society first
OpinionArchitects must lead the revolution
After the failure of Copenhagen, politics must return to its roots — and greater vision will be needed
OpinionWe can’t design buildings on our own
Unless we can develop a sense of common purpose all collaboration is doomed to fail
OpinionWe need to design in four dimensions
The Copenhagen summit is over after two weeks but buildings last for centuries
OpinionThe seductive new sound of success
A report on well-being should prompt us to re-examine what ‘success’ is in architecture
OpinionThe vicious circle of Slumdog city life
As we strive to create bigger and better cities, we are squeezing out the basic needs of life
OpinionArchitects must expand their horizons
The profession can learn a lot from the TED model of thinking outside the box
OpinionCrying out for local nourishment
New problems for dairy farmers highlight our failure to recognise the value of local economies
OpinionLet a hundred cauliflowers bloom
Growing food, not building houses, is a more sustainable way of saving the Thames Gateway
OpinionCourgettes loom over the city streets
Vertical urban farms could solve many of the world’s food problems - but at what cost?
OpinionWe have strayed too far from the flock
Our reactions to the G20 and ambivalence to rural life are symptoms of a wider dislocation
OpinionEasing the march of the Tesco towns
The supermarket behemoth won a competition ruling last week that will dictate the shape of our cities to come
OpinionWhere there’s muck, there’s indignation
The response to Peter Jones’s opinions shows how we’re failing to deal with rubbish
OpinionSociety is built on a shed in Thurrock
News this week that food prices in 2008 rose by 12% have confirmed what most of us already knew: that cheap food can no longer be taken for granted. But what about food itself? Surely we can rely on that? On the other hand, perhaps not
OpinionValues to save for Queen’s and country
What really counts in a building is its community role, and that’s worth fighting for
OpinionWay-out Westfield is about cashing in
Glitzy Westfield, in contrastingly bleak Shepherd’s Bush, is a surreal monument to capitalism