Owen Hatherley
Hatherley in 2009
Born	(1981-07-24)24 July 1981 (age 44) Southampton,Hampshire, England
Alma mater	Goldsmiths, University of London Birkbeck, University of London
Occupations	writer author
Owen Hatherley's voice [1] Writing career
Subjects	Architecture left-wing politics trade unionism
Notable works	A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain The Ministry of Nostalgia
Scientific career
Thesis	The Political Aesthetics of Americanism in Weimar Germany and the Soviet Union, 1919-34 (2011)
Doctoral advisor	Esther Leslie
Website	owenhatherley.co.uk

Owen Hatherley (born 24 July 1981) is a British writer and journalist based in London who writes primarily on architecture, politics and culture.

Hatherley was born on 24 July 1981, in Southampton, growing up in a 1930s suburban estate. He describes his parents as "trots" who were members ofMilitant.^[2][3] At the age of 12, he moved to the Flowers Estate inBassett Green, which he disliked, later saying: "I couldn't wait to get out of the sodding place, and the pitched roofs and front gardens didn’t exactly relieve the unpleasantness."^[3] When he was 16, he readEngland’s Dreaming byJon Savage, which inspired him to move to London to study.^[4] He studied atGoldsmiths, University of London, graduating in 2001.^[5] He then received a PhD fromBirkbeck, University of London in 2011.^[6] His supervisor wasEsther Leslie.^[7]

Hatherley started a blog,The Measures Taken,^[8] in 2005.^[9] He would go on to publish pieces elsewhere, including articles forSocialist Worker from 2006 to 2008, articles forNew Humanist since 2007,^[10] and articles forBuilding Design from 2008 to 2014.^[11]

Hatherley's first book,Militant Modernism, was published byZero Books in 2009.The Guardian described the book as an "intelligent and passionately argued attempt to 'excavate utopia' from the ruins of modernism" and an "exhilarating manifesto for a reborn socialist modernism".^[12]Icon described the book as "sparky, polemical and ferociously learned" although it "falters a little towards the end";^[13] whileJonathan Meades in theNew Statesman described the book as a "deflectedBildungsroman of a very clever, velvet-gloved provocateur nostalgic for yesterday's tomorrow, for a world made before he was born, a distant, preposterously optimistic world which, even though it still exists in scattered fragments, has had its meaning erased, its possibilities defiled" and Hatherley "as a commentator on architecture...in a school of one".^[14] The journalPlanning Perspectives suggested that the book "nicely explores the irony of the potential status of the remains of future-oriented architecture and urban design as ‘modern heritage'".^[15]

His bookA Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain, which was based on a series of articles he wrote forBuilding Design, was published byVerso in 2010.^[16]Landscapes of Communism: A History Through Buildings, a history of communism in Europe told through the built environments of former socialist states, was published byAllen Lane in June 2015.^[17] In 2018, he released two books,Trans-Europe Express with Allen Lane, andThe Adventures of Owen Hatherley in the Post-Soviet Space withRepeater Books.^[18]

Hatherley has written forDezeen,Building Design,The Guardian,Icon, theLondon Review of Books,New Humanist, theNew Statesman,Socialist Review,Socialist Worker,Dissent andJacobin Magazine.^[19] He has maintained three blogs,Sit down man, you're a bloody tragedy,The Measures Taken andKino Fist.

Hatherley has described himself as a communist "at least in the sense in which the word was used inThe Communist Manifesto". He wrote that "revolution might be a rather exciting thing, one that would transform the world, and transform space, for the better. Worth doing. Why not try it."^[20]

AmidstRussia's invasion of Ukraine, Hatherley argued that thepolitical left must fully supportUkraine, writing, "Ukraine is a fake country only in the ways that all countries are fake, and it is real in the way that any others are real. It has the same right to exist and the same right to peace as any others."^[21]

• Militant Modernism (Zero Books, 2009)
• A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain (Verso, 2010).ISBN 978-1-84467-700-9
• Uncommon: An Essay onPulp (Zero Books, 2011)
• A New Kind of Bleak: Journeys through Urban Britain (Verso, 2012).ISBN 978-1-78168-075-9
• Across the Plaza: The Public Voids of the Post-Soviet City (Strelka Press, 2012)
• Landscapes of Communism (Allen Lane, 2015).ISBN 978-0-14-197589-4
• The Ministry of Nostalgia (Verso, 2016)
• The Chaplin Machine: Slapstick, Fordism and the Communist Avant-Garde (Pluto Press, 2016).ISBN 978-0-7453-3601-5
• Trans-Europe Express (Allen Lane, 2018).ISBN 978-0-14-199157-3
• The Adventures of Owen Hatherley in the Post-Soviet Space (Repeater Books, 2018).ISBN 978-1-912248-26-1
• Red Metropolis: Socialism and the Government of London (Repeater Books, 2020).ISBN 978-1-913462-20-8
• Editor ofThe Alternative Guide to the London Boroughs forOpen House London (2020)
• Clean Living Under Difficult Circumstances (Verso, 2021).ISBN 978-1-83976-221-5
• Artificial Islands: Adventures in the Dominions (Repeater Books, 2022).ISBN 978-1-914420-86-3
• Ukrainian Postcards: A Limited eBook in Aid of Ukrainian Workers and Artists (Repeater Books, 2022).ISBN 978-1-914420-50-4
• Modern Buildings in Britain: A Gazetteer (Penguin, 2022).ISBN 978-0-241-53463-2

• The Measures Taken blog
• Sit down man, you're a bloody tragedy blog
• 3:AM interview
• An interview with Owen Hatherley byAlex Niven in theOxonian Review, October 2010
• Sit down man, you're a bloody tragedy
• Owen Hatherley on Diffusion.org.uk – 'A History of Municipal Housing' and 'In the Shadow of Senate House'
• 'Olympian Landscape' in Guernica
• An interview with Owen Hatherley onNotebook on Cities and Culture

• 1981 births
• Alumni of Goldsmiths, University of London
• British writers
• Living people
• Writers from Southampton
• British communists
• 21st-century British male journalists

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