For the most part, history is the story of gradual change and evolution, of long term trends that give meaning to events as they unfold, even moments of apparent crescendo and climax. From time to time, however, there comes a tipping point when old certainties are overturned, new ideas break free and the clock of history is reset: we call this a Year Zero. A collaboration between Owen Hopkins and Sir John Soane’s Museum, this series of essays invites writers, critics, historians and architects to identify and reflect on a Year Zero – when the trajectories of architectural and broader history connect and coincide and the status quo is changed forever.
Very often contemporary architects in a desire to address the existing fabric of a city consider history as an extant material condition solely. History in architectural terms is simply that which remains. But what of the relationship between architecture and lived history? Year Zeros is a pioneering series that began as essays, exploring the interaction between architecture and the lived experience of humanity, but then became a set of incredibly popular lectures hosted at the Sir John Soane Museum, the extraordinary house and museum of the British architect Sir John Soane (1753-1837), the founding of which was in itself a kind of Year Zero. They became podcasts too.
The writers of the first round of essays included Otto Saumarez Smith, Alan Powers, Tim Brittain-Catlin, Frances Sands, Olivia Horsfall-Turner and a subsequent series featuring work by Erin McKellar, Eddie Blake, Lea-Catherine Szacka, Elizabeth Darling, Kate Jordan and Paul Dobraszczyk. Future essays are planned as is a single book in which these and others are compiled.
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