Mail alf.y@icloud.com
Instagram @alf.y__
*open to writing commissions
His practice explores through ethnography, co-design and archival research; juxtaposed cultural identities under extractivism and the market-led drive for environmental sustainability. His time-heritage focused approach has been shaped by his MPhil at the University of Cambridge, and his professional role in historic projects like the shortlisted British Museum Western Range proposal and architectural ceramics R&D. Alfred’s writing blends essay and fiction, a method developed over texts published with the Architectural Review, Architects’ Journal, Open City, the Toe Rag, Pilot Magazine and more. He is an alumnus and mentor at the New Architecture Writers programme. His writing-led design approach was recognised by the 2025 AJ100 New Talent shorlist. He is a current Design Researcher in Residence at the Design Museum.
His ongoing research covers heritage, industry and energy concerning planning policies at the time of climate action.
University of Cambridge
ArchPGDip Professional Practice
University of Westminster
BSSc Architectural Studies
CUHK, Hong Kong/ Georgia Tech, USA
Design Researcher in Residence
Present
New Architecture Writers (N.A.W.)
Alum-Mentor
Present
Eric Parry Architects
Architect
Present
Edward Suzuki Associates, Tokyo
Designer
2017
Creative Writing
Architectural Design and Delivery (Stages 1-5)
The Design Museum
London
2026
Spatial Fictions
Staffordshire Street (with N.A.W.)
London
2025
Sediments
The Art House (with N.A.W.)
London
2024
ACAW VIII
Architectural Ceramic Assemblies Workshop
Buffalo, New York (with Eric Parry Architects)
2023
Meeting Point
Chinatown (part of ESEA Month)
London
Batsford Books
Contributor
Forthcoming
Bioclimatic Cermic Assemblies VIII
Applied Research and Design
Contributor
Forthcoming
Visions of Slate: Sustainability, Deindustrialisation and Identity in the Welsh Valleys
Re:Arc Institute
Author
Forthcoming
Minerals
Future Observatory
Contributor
2026
Bodily Charm: Embodiment, Digital Clones, and the Search for Authentic Presence
Pilot
Author
2025
London’s Hybrid Pubs
Open City
Author
2025
The Old Justice, Bermondsey
Open City
Podcast Co-host
2025
Open-ended: University of Westminster Student Show
Architects’ Journal
Author
2025
Shiplap House by Chenchow Little Architects in Sydney, Australia
The Architectural Review
Author
2025
Delirious London: Collective Dream off a Georgian Terrace
The Toe Rag
Author
2024
Swamp to Swamp: London County Hall 1986-2013
Carrion Press
Author
2024
Spatial Fictions
New Architecture Writers
Editor and Contributor
2024
The World’s First Sprayed Net Hyperboloid Ice Structure
IASSS
Co-author
2019
Shortlisted
2025
HIT Ice and Snow Innovation Construction
Best Design Construction (Cambridge Team)
2018
Last Updated 12.06.2026
Planning/ Community Engagement Research
Cornwall, UK
Residency at the Design Museum, London
This AHRC-funded research investigates the UK’s first lithium mine in Cornwall and proposes a new community engagement toolkit for living with extraction. The project aims to develop a Mineral GIS combining mineral waste data with social data to create a pilot Neighbourhood Plan and Mineral Planning SPD.
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Architectural Proposal/ Model-making
London, UK
With Eric Parry and Jamie Fobert Architects.
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Social Historical Research/ Mapping
London, UK
| The Hyphenated-Pub Project is an ongoing body of work challenging the popular belief that the public house is an exclusively traditional ‘British’ architecture typology and social space. The project aims to create an online open source Pub GIS for multicultural pubs, collating stories, photographs and documents usually not archived. |
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Material Research
Buffalo, New York
With Eric Parry Architects, FMDC and Boston Valley Terracotta.
A 6-month research and development process of a protoype ‘fish scale-like’, self-supported, dry-tied, hand-pressed, partially glazed, and living moss-supportive biophilic facade terracotta module.
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Embodiment, Digital Clones, and the Search for Authentic Presence
Article
Pilot Magazine
Sitting at the interface between the digital and the physical world. artist Ed Atkins’ work often involves cloning his body, sometimes naked, as a high-fidelity avatar. With life-like detail... The struggle to reach authenticity in the Sorkinian city space is now further complicated by the superimposition of the digital landscape onto the physical. The smartphone rewrites the dynamic of all public spaces alike...
[Read..]
Collective Dream off a Georgian Terrace
Article
The Toe Rag
In the distance: Brick-cladded concrete towers rise in great numbers, slicing through the earth like a sharp knife. In the office: The ARCHITECT panics in his library of one thousand bricks. He has exhausted every shade and grit imaginable...Owen Hatherley closes his article in the New Left Review with a sting.
Commenting on Caruso St John’s tenure as architects based in Clerkenwell, but who predominantly build
projects in Europe, he writes: ‘the redress of these enormous problems (climate and housing emergencies) will surely require utopians as much
as realists. But then who needs utopia when you have Switzerland?’ Almost the same can be said here. If
dreaming in isolation offers a quick escape from reality, who needs a collective dream?
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Pocket Guide + Podcast Episode
Open City
This alternative pub crawl of ‘hyphenated’ pubs takes you from Bermondsey to Mayfair, covering a collection of seven multicultural pubs emblematic of a London phenomenon combining European pints with ethnic foods. Varying greatly in ownership, management, spatial configuration, soundscape and beginnings; the seven selected pubs on this tour are together a nuanced and rich counter narrative to what is usually understood as an exclusively ‘British’ pub culture.
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[Listen to the podcast...]
Exhibition Review
Architects’ Journal
Despite obvious flaws in accessibility to the profession, facing the impending outcome-based ARB reform that will likely turn accredited architectural training into ‘what architects can do, not what they are taught’, ‘Open’ is a reminder to what encouraged open-endedness can contribute to education from the old guard...
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Building Review
The Architectural Review
With striking features both alien and familiar, a single-family home in Sydney’s Vaucluse neighbourhood references a lost vernacular that once lined the coast...
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