“Constantly exploring the relation to how architecture is imagined, represented and described, written about and written out, in research papers, critical histories, text books, surveys and journalism, Roger Connah discussed what is timely about architectural discourse and what is, perhaps more revealing, untimely. There was a period in the 20th Century when theory was taken beyond architecture, outside itself. This extra-disciplinary turn saw diverse philosophical adventures and/or ideological positions imported into or hijacked by architects and architectural thinkers. How can we reflect on this and try and resituate today the role of theory in contemporary society as it is being debated and questioned.
Some consider theory has now reached a point where it is simply ignored (after/post theory), and ideology (post-ideology) cornered between market spectacle and technology. Connah’s book “How Architecture got its Hump”, echoing Rudyard Kipling’s poem “How the Camel got its Hump”, addressed this issue and considers how film, photography, drawing and literature could be interpreted as emancipator insinuations within a more conventional architectural discipline. The final chapter speaks of architects creating out of such philosophical adventures, an ‘archobabble’?
From 2008-2013 Roger Connah has spent his years teaching architecture as a professor and re-structuring a graduate program in Carleton University and has used the experience to explore these issues under the theme of Deschooling Architecture, in The Anti-Library.
After Roger’s lecture, the discussion on how architectural knowledge can be shared continued: Daniel Dendra introduced the ideas behind Architectuul.com which was created as a crowd-sourced architecture community and publication by a team of architects, graphic designers and software engineers. He explained how one can join the world wide conversation on the built environment and become part of one of the most rewarding discussions on the world wide web.
Architectuul shares outstanding building projects and promotes their creators – from the acclaimed to the forgotten, from the classic to the contemporary and from the beautiful to the bizarre. Architectuul is rapidly evolving into what is very likely going to be the most complete open database of relevant architecture.” From Strelka Institute

The ten volumes of the Anti-Library are as follows:

1 Architecture Degree Zero (2008)
2 Pulp Architecture (2009)
3 A House for de Kooning’s Friend (2009)
4 Aalto-Ego (2011)
5 The Irresponsible Self (2011)
6 The Brautigan (2011)
7 Life After Architecture (2012)
8 Deschooling Architecture (2013)
9 Headless (2013)
10 iDeath (2013)