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Stephen Cairns

Professor, Urban Design

Accepting PhD students

Dr Stephen Cairns is an urban designer, writer, and teacher. He is Professor at Monash Indonesia, Titular Professor at ETH Zurich, and leads the Agropolitan Territories research group at Future Cities Lab (FCL) in Singapore. He has held visiting professorships at the Graduate School of Design (GSD) Harvard University and National University of Singapore. He co-authored Buildings Must Die: A Perverse View of Architecture (MIT Press 2017), co-edited the Future Cities Laboratory: Indicia series (Lars Müller Press with NUS Press 2017, 2019 and 2022) and designed the Expandable House (Awarded Living Space of Asia Pacific, 2020; nominated for ‘Building of the Year’, 2018 and 2020 Archdaily; and short-listed for Aga Khan Award for Architecture, 2022 cycle.

More information

Books

Cairns, Stephen and Devisari Tunas (eds) (2017, 2019, 2022). Future Cities Laboratory: Indicia volumes 1, 2 and 3. Zürich: Lars Müller Publishers. 292; 310; 368 pp.
Cairns, Stephen and Jane M. Jacobs (2017). Buildings must die: A perverse view of architecture. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. 304 pp.
Crysler, Greig, Stephen Cairns and Hilde Heynen (eds) (2012). The Sage handbook of architectural theory. London: Sage. 776 pp.
Cairns, Stephen (ed.) (2004). Drifting: Architecture and migrancy. London: Routledge: 299 pp.

Articles

Von Richthofen, Aurel, Pieter Herthogs, Markus Kraft and Stephen Cairns (2022). ‘Semantic City Planning Systems (SCPS): A Literature Review’. Journal of Planning Literature.
Chadzynski, Arkadiusz, Nenad Krdzavac, Feroz Farazi, Mei Qi Lim, Shiying Li, Ayda Grisiute, Pieter Herthogs, Aurel von Richthofen, Stephen Cairns and Markus Kraft (2021). ‘Semantic 3D City Database: An enabler for a dynamic geospatial knowledge graph’, Energy and AI.
Neudecker, David, Michael Joos, Muhammad Salihin Bin Zaol-kefli, Yuhao Lu, Niraly Mangal and Stephen Cairns (in press 2022). ‘ur-scape: Harnessing data for stakeholder participation in city-making processes’, Journal of Open-Source Software.
Cairns, Stephen and Jane M. Jacobs (2019). ‘Fallow Deferred’, New Geographies 10, Harvard School of Design.

Exhibitions

Cairns, Stephen and Daliana Suryawinata (2023). ‘Agropolitan Seed Town’, Jababeka, Cikarang.
Cairns, Stephen, Devisari Tunas, Laksmi Darmoyono, Zuzana Drillet, Michael Joos, David Neudecker (2018). Bandung smart systems. Singapore/Manila: Future Cities Lab / Asian Development Bank (ADB).
Cairns, Stephen, David Neudecker, Kezia Dewi, Alpano Priyandes et al. (2016). ‘Desakota landscapes: Urban-Rural Economies in Southeast Asia’. In The Next Economy, 7^th International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR). April – September 2016, Maarten Hajer (Curator), Netherlands Architecture Institute, Rotterdam.
Cairns, Stephen, Kees Christiaanse, Wong Chong Thai, and Daliana Suryawinata (2012). ‘Tropical Town: Planning for a transnational territory – SIJORI’, ‘Counter-Site’. In Making City, 5^th International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR), George Brugmans (Curator). April – September 2012, Netherlands Architecture Institute, Rotterdam.
Cairns, Stephen and Daliana Suryawinata (2010). ‘Reciprocity: Transactions for a city in flux’. Sub-curators for Open City: Designing Coexistence, 4^th International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR), Kees Christiaanse and Tim Rieniets (Curators). September 2009 – January 2010, Netherlands Architecture Institute, Rotterdam.

Teaching

In my teaching, I prioritise a design-led and science-informed approach that focuses on how design practice can help tackle the complex and practical challenges of sustainable urbanisation. This involves integrating the transdisciplinary, collaborative, and place-sensitive aspects of design with the data analytics, system perspectives, and quantitative tools of science.
The aim is to work together to harness the diverse impulses of such challenges – such as need, profit, comfort, convenience, identity, access, security, satisfaction, and aspiration – to generate plausible possibilities for workable solutions.

Problem-based learning formats like the studio and charrette are particularly well-suited to these broad goals. I have worked in these formats with diverse groups such as undergraduate and graduate students, faculty members, practitioners, civil society organisations, and government agencies in various international settings. Some notable examples include ETH Zurich, Harvard University, National University of Singapore (NUS), and University of Edinburgh, as well as government and multilateral agencies, such as Singapore’s Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB). I complement studio teaching with intensive seminars on related theoretical themes. In addition to my direct teaching responsibilities, I provide guidance for graduate and research-related studies and have contributed as an external examiner and curriculum reviewer internationally.

Research

My research work intersects the fields of architecture, urban design, and urban planning.It is committed to a comparative perspective on the limits of conventional understandings of these fields and their purpose. One articulation of this interest was my book-length exploration on how architecture addresses building decay and deterioration – Buildings must die: A perverse view of architecture (MIT Press 2017). My comparative interests are grounded in a knowledge of city and settlement forms of Asia, shaped by postcolonial theory and informed by European and North American disciplinary intellectual traditions.
My current research has focussed on agropolitan territories in monsoon Asia (with cases in Jakarta, Chengdu, and Kolkata), contributing to a wider scholarship on extended urban conditions. This research is, in turn, complemented by work on concentrated forms of urbanisation or high-density, mixed-use and responsive cities, which draws on case studies in Singapore, Europe and the US.

Work on these research themes is underpinned by an interest in debates on the appropriate research medium for design-based disciplines. To this end, I integrate design practice into research as well as teaching. Examples include: the ur-scape platform, an open-source software developed to support on-the-ground planning professionals and communities in rapidly urbanising regions; and the Expandable House / Seed Town project on new typologies for agropolitan territories. I have contributed to this debate in various exhibitions such as the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR), AEDAS Berlin, ETH Zurich and World Economic Forum (WEF) Davos.

Monash University, Indonesia