Michael Speaks

Michael Speaks completed a Ph.D. in Literature at Duke University in 1993. He is the founding editor of Polygraph, and has been the Senior Editor at ANY magazine in New York, where he was also the Series Editor for “Writing Architecture,” published by the MIT Press. He has published and lectured internationally on art, architecture, urban design and scenario planning. Speaks is a contributing editor for Architectural Record, and serves on the editorial advisory board of A+U (Japan) and on the advisory board for the Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York. Currently Head of the Metropolitan Research and Design Post Graduate Degree at the Southern California Institute of Architecture in Los Angeles, Speaks has also taught in the graphic design department at the Yale School of Art, and in the architecture departments at Harvard University, Columbia University, Parsons School of Design and The Berlage Institute in Rotterdam. He has also been a research fellow on the architecture faculty at the TU-Delft in the Netherlands, and currently heads the Los Angeles-based urban research group, BIG SOFT ORANGE.