Adrian has taught across most levels of the BA/MA Architecture and MArch programmes. For the MArch, he has been Course Organiser for both Integrated and Modular Pathway design studios and Course Organiser for both the Design Report and Academic Portfolio 2. He is currently Studio Lead for the BA/MA Explorations and Studio Lead for BA/MA Tectonics.

With the artist Victoria Clare Bernie, Adrian has led a series of exploratory design studios under the title of Island Territories. These studios seek to address the nature of insularity in extreme environments where climate, economy, culture, politics and art – the stories that we tell about ourselves – inform the architectural language of a place creating agile, responsive, highly inventive, strange and beautiful buildings. In doing so, they intend to develop bold and imaginative architectural thesis proposals that engage directly, through materiality, spatiality, structure, situation and conceptual invention, with the conditions of uncertainty.

Island Territories Studios to date:

• island territories i : Valletta, Malta
• island territories ii : Venice, Italy
• island territories iii : Klaksvik, Faroe Islands
• island territories iv : Nicosia, Cyprus
• island territories v : Havana, Cuba
• island territories vi: Scapeland : Manhattan, USA
• island territories vii : Island Temporalities : Mont-Saint-Michel, France

Work of recent Island Territories studios can be viewed here.

Adrian supervises undergraduate architecture dissertations and is a supervisor on ESALA’s Architecture by Design PhD programme.

Adrian has lectured internationally and has acted as an invited critic to the Architectural Association, The Bartlett, University of Adelaide, Newcastle University, Arkitektskolen Aarhus, University of the West of England.

Adrian’s research practice is explored through both writing and speculative design. His recent written work has explored:

• The relationship between the historic island city and the landscape of limitations upon which it is founded - Absorbed in the limestone garden: Registering the historic island metropolis Valletta. SPOOL Vol. 7 (1), TU Delft (2021)
• Exploratory architectural drawing practice, a close reading of an unbuilt seminal project of the architect, Peter Wilson - Assisted/eccentric/adjacent: Bridgebuilding No.4, Ponte dell’ Accademia. Journal of Architecture Vol.26, Taylor Francis (2021)
• Representational processes of cartographic speculation- The Plane Table: A tool of speculation. LA+: Interdisciplinary Journal of Landscape Architecture, University of Pennsylvania (2022).

His speculative design practice has been awarded, published and exhibited internationally. He recently received the Merit Award for Sea Register (2020) in the international architecture competition LIVING upon the Nature organised by the Japan Architect publication Shinkenchiku.

In 1997 he co-founded Metis with Prof. Mark Dorrian as an atelier for Art, Architecture and Urbanism with the aim of connecting architectural teaching, research and practice.

Metis’s work focuses on the city and the complex ways in which it is imagined, inhabited, and encoded. Their approach is concerned with establishing a poetic but critical approach to the city that is sensitive to its cultural memory but is also articulated in relation to its possible futures. Metis’s installations, architectural and urban proposals have circulated internationally. Their book, Urban Cartographies, was published in 2002, and their work has been presented in exhibitions, lectures or discussions in Aarhus, Antwerp, Beijing, Berlin, Brisbane, Edinburgh, Florence, Gent, Hanzhou, London, Montreal, New York, Paris, Prague, Rhode Island, Santiago de Compostella, Venice and Warsaw. In 2014, Arkitektskolen Aarhus held a major retrospective of their work entitled On the Surface.

Metis is part of an international research collective, Drawing Architecture, that meets regularly to discuss and review ongoing work with the aim of exhibiting and publishing together. A book, Drawing Architecture: Conversations on Contemporary Practice edited Mark Dorrian, Riet Eeckhout and Arnaud Hendrickx and published by Lund Humphries in 2022 documents the work of this collective that led to a major exhibition, Drawing Conversations at the UQAM Design Centre, Montreal in 2022. With this group, Metis is currently developing work towards a further exhibition at A83 Gallery, New York planned for early 2025. A new book and limited edition folio is planned as a record of this research.