I'm an architectural writer, photographer and artist based in Manchester, UK. I'm also a lecturer at the Bartlett School of Architecture in London. I'm currently working on a book Geological Architecture, to be published by Reaktion in 2026.

 

I'm the author of Botanical Architecture: Plants, Buildings and Us (Reaktion, forthcoming in 2024); Animal Architecture: Beasts, Buildings and Us (Reaktion, 2023); Architecture and Anarchism: Building Without Authority (Paul Holberton, 2021); Future Cities: Architecture & the Imagination (Reaktion, 2019); The Dead City: Urban Ruins & the Spectacle of Decay (IB Tauris, 2017); Iron, Ornament & Architecture in Victorian Britain (Ashgate, 2014); London's Sewers (Shire, 2014); and Into the Belly of the Beast: Exploring London's Victorian Sewers (Spire, 2009). I'm also co-editor of  Manchester: Something Rich & Strange (Manchester University Press, 2020); Global Undergrounds: Exploring Cities Within (Reaktion, 2016); and Function & Fantasy: Iron Architecture in the Long Nineteenth Century (Routledge, 2016). 

 

My writing and research broadly covers architecture and cities since the 19th century, with particular interests in ecology, self-building, Manchester, urban futures, underground spaces and ruins, print culture, and industrial architecture. I've published many articles on such diverse topics as drowned cities, the ruins of Chernobyl, neo-Victorian horror cinema, gardening catalogues, census forms, London guidebooks, sewage pumping stations and information for cab passengers. I am also a visual artist and photographer and created the website stonesofmanchester.com in 2018. 

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For any enquiries about writing, talks, photography or art work, please contact me at dobraszczyk@yahoo.co.uk 

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