Where to begin? I have asked myself this a dozen times, gazing at a blank page. As if I needed to find the one, the only sentence that would give me entry into writing. Remove all doubts in one fell swoop - a sort of key. The meaning is sustained in the ooh and ah of a vowel on its way out. The word pertaining to the body. To ask 'why write' is to ask why breathe.

  

Contributed to and designed a collective publication as part of the FIELDNOTES Evening School programme. 

You can read the publication here.

  

A short piece about a home and the stories that are contained within it. I read this piece at the Soho House x Creative Mentor Network showcase in 2023. 

You can read the full piece here.

When prompted to think about structure, our minds almost always drift towards the fixed, the permanent. What drives us towards structure as a fixed position? How does it define us? How does it define our dreams, ambitions, cultures and perceptions of time? 

  

A short piece written in response to the New Architecture Writers programme application process. In this, I attempted to consider the idea of structure through two lenses, the personal and the speculative.

The application for the 2023 co-hort of the New Architecture Writers was utlimately unsuccessful, but the piece led to the development of an event discussing the structure of practice across different disciplines and practices -  The Structure of Practice: What Do We Have in Common?  

You can read the full piece here.

Exclusion and racial bias are built into our cities. In its debut publication Now You Know, Sound Advice – the platform exploring spatial inequality in architecture – has gathered the thoughts and reflections of more than 50 architects and urbanists of colour in an extraordinary compendium of essays, poems, interviews and, yes, advice on how to address the discrimination baked into our built environment.

Crowdfunded to the tune of £19,500 by 418 supporters, the 180-page paperback is designed by Joel Antoine-Wilkinson and edited by Sound Advice's co-hosts, the urbanists Pooja Agrawal and Joseph Henry. Its contributors range from MBEs to architecture students, artists to urban policymakers – each one accompanying their piece with a concise tip of the kind that has made the Sound Advice Instagram feed such a compelling resource, paired with a music recommendation.

Determined to incite meaningful action, Pooja Agrawal and Joseph Henry reached out to their network, their friends, family and colleagues of colour and asked them what should change, and how. Over the next few months, they received a stream of considered personal and practical responses – which today form Now You Know, an insightful exploration of how architecture, design, urbanism and technology could give us the tools to develop a more just built environment.

Contributed a short piece for Sound Advice’s first publication, Now You Know. In this piece, I reflected on the need to step away from institutions in order to enact meaningful change.  

“Through Now You Know we wanted to explore a compelling alternative and more plural vision of the future in our voice and within our own space. The contributors have created an incredible manifesto so we really hope that people engage with the content in the book and don’t just leave it collecting dust on a coffee table or to decorate a Zoom background.”

Joseph Henry, Sound Advice

"In Tirana, a city dealing with rapid urban population growth, Erion’s approach to rooting people through a literal and metaphorical sense of ownership (adopting schools and planting trees etc) offered up a positive outlook on where policy and design could combine forces – all the while helping combat anti-social behaviour passively. This style of urban acupuncture demonstrates an example of an awareness of the social value of buildings and urban interventions that architects seemed to have shied away from in recent years.

...

On the other hand, such an approach to the management of urban growth can only be effective when backed up with a progressive, forward thinking and robust policy framework. In this instance, measures for accountability and public scrutiny were highlighted by Jeroen van der Veer and Patrice Derrington. These systems of accountability, whether they are at the hands of housing associations, architects, local authorities or the developers themselves are only effective when priorities of the market and the public sector are divergent. As pointed out by Reinier, if the local authority is only interested in the value of new development as a commodity, in the same vein as the developer, both parties are working towards the same goal that ultimately renders the market inaccessible."

An event report covering a discussion in Rotterdam, for Topos Magazine. Launching the Baumeister x OMA issue, curated by Reinier de Graaf, this was an evening of discussion about architecture, economics, social policy and urban regeneration.

Moderated by OMA architect Alexandru Retegan and senior OMA architect Tanner Merkeley, the discussion had a distinctly experienced and policy-focused slant. Joining Alexandru was the curator himself Reinier de Graaf; Erion Veliaj, mayor of the Albanian capital Tirana; Jan Benthem, founding partner of Benthem Crouwel Architects; Jeroen van der Veer, Senior advisor at the Amsterdam Federation of Housing Associations and Patrice Derrington, director of the Centre for Urban Real Estate at the Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP).