Dr Jon Goodbun is based in London and Athens, where he runs rheomode, a small experimental research studio working at the intersection of architecture, technology, art and ecological pedagogy. He is a PhD supervisor and the Theory Lead on the MA Environmental Architecture programme at the Royal College of Art in London.
He is currently engaged in two major research projects:
The AHRC-DFG joint funded ‘Enacting Gregory Bateson’s Ecological Aesthetics in Architecture and Design’, which will result in the first major publication on Gregory Bateson ecology of mind in relation to architecture and design.
A long term research project into ‘The Ecological Semiotics of Heat and Pollution in Athens’ and the possibilities of developing passive evaporative cooling technologies as collective urban air conditioning negative feedback devices within urban ‘eco-mental systems’ expressing Urban Heat Island and Urban Pollution Island syndromes. This work has received support from various places during its development – most recently a RCA RKE Research Development fund award as seed funding towards a major new AHRC funding application in 2025.
As both a design studio tutor and a history/theory tutor, over two decades he has supervised students winning practically all awards available, including two RIBA Research Medals, a RIBA Silver Medal, Wallpaper magazines’ ‘Worlds’ Hottest New Talents’, and innumerable other industry and institution based prizes.
He has published widely and is currently working on a book ‘The Ecological Calculus’, which builds on his doctoral thesis ‘The Architecture of the Extended Mind’.
He is involved in a number of initiatives and projects at the intersection of ecological thinking, environmental architecture and experimental pedagogy, and runs the occasional nomadic school Derailed Lab, which uses very long distance train rides as site of personal reflection and a collective eco-political expression.
He is currently focused on setting up ‘rheomode’ spaces for short courses and collaborators-in-residence, aimed at developing a new kind of ecological learning context, adjacent to, but distinct from, his more mainstream academic teaching and research.
Many published works can be found at https://rca.academia.edu/JonGoodbun