School of Architecture Public Lecture Series: Shahed Saleem

Before us: The city at close range brings together six practices to consider the local not as a retreat from the wider world, but as a lens through which to understand it more precisely. Spanning temporary interventions, sacred spaces, public housing, and urban ecologies, this series asks how global forces are made tangible in particular places. It also considers how architecture might respond across scales, from objects and interiors to buildings and urban spaces.

Shahed Saleem is the guest speaker on 3 December 2026.

Shahed Saleem is an architect, author and Reader in Architecture at the University of Westminster. He works across disciplines to create installations, buildings, texts and drawings. He explores the built environment as a complex interplay of narratives as embodied through people’s individual and collective memories and imaginations.

Matthew Blunderfield is an architectural editor, photographer and curator. He is the creator and host of Scaffold, the long-form interview series he founded in 2018, which became the Architecture Foundation's flagship podcast in 2021. At the Royal College of Art he curates the public lecture series and, with Cathy Hawley, leads a housing studio examining pleasure and comfort amid environmental crisis. His photography has appeared in The Architects' Journal and The Architectural Review and in the ongoing At Home in London book series published by MACK. He trained in architecture and English literature, and has practised with Waugh Thistleton, David Kohn and Henley Halebrown.

This series of lectures is from the RCA's School of Architecture.