Theory of Practice | Practice of Theory is a publication series by AADR publishers, focusing on the fruitful relationships and tensions between thinking and making, theory and practice. The series highlights the value of theory for creative practice and investigates how practice can inform theory. Authors include Hélène Frichot, Esther Anatolitis, Marcus White and Nano Langenheim.

Prof Hélène Frichot presents her book Dirty Theory: Troubling Architecture, which follows the dirt of material and conceptual relations from the midst of complex milieus. It messes with mixed disciplines, showing up in ethnography, in geography, in philosophy, and discovering a suitable habitat in architecture, design and the creative arts. Dirty theory disrupts a comfortable status quo, including our everyday modes of inhabitation and our habits of thinking.

Prof Marcus White and Dr Nano Langenheim will talk about their publication Death of Urbanism: Transitions Through Five Stages of Grief, which explores urban design paradigms transitioning through a misappropriation of Kübler-Ross’ “five stages of grief” – from pro-sprawl ‘denial’, NIMBY ‘anger’, revisionist new urbanist ‘bargaining’, ‘depressed’ starchitects, through to an optimistic manifesto of ‘acceptance’.

Esther Anatolitis will present Place, Practice, Politics, which asks: What futures are we designing by default? What collaborations are we complicit in? How can we incorporate an active civic engagement into our professional and creative practice – into our everyday lives?