Francesca Hughes had the great good fortune of studying architecture under Isi Metzstein, at the Edinburgh University, and Christine Hawley, at the University of East London. Graduating with Distinction in 1992, she has taught design studios and history & theory seminars since 1993, first at The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, in the degree and masters school, and then at the AA where she was Diploma 15 Unit Master for six years. Francesca currently lectures in the history and theory at the AA and supervises Masters dissertations at the Bartlett. She is currently guest professor on the International Masters Course at KU Leuven/ Brussels and seminar instructor at the Berlage/TU Delft.She continues to serve as external examiner at many schools in the UK and Europe and has lectured internationally and acted as keynote speaker at numerous conferences.
Francesca is editor of The Architect: Reconstructing her Practice (MIT Press, 1996), Drawings that Count (AA Publications, 2012), and author of The Architecture of Error: Matter, Measure and the Misadventures of Precision (MIT press, October 2014). Her written and built work has been published by AA Files, AR, A/R/P/A, ANY, Art Forum, Harvard Design Magazine, Merrel, Routledge, Monacelli and Wiley and exhibited in the UK and abroad. She is particularly keen on engaging in cross disciplinary productions, recent collaborations have included a book with classicist Mary beard and historian of science David Edgerton; a research project with the Science Museum on their physical infrastructure collections; and Aeolian Piano, a film with artist Catherine Yass. Francesca is a contributor to e-flux Architecture’s Superhumanity at the 3rd Istanbul Design Biennale and is currently working on a pre-history of the Universal Discrete Machine.
