Jon Goodbun’s research develops an understanding of architecture in relation to a wider field of systems-theoretic discourses, working in particular with concepts of ecological aesthetics and environmental semiotics that he develops out of the anthropological cybernetics of Gregory Bateson. Jon trained as an architect, and currently is a researcher, practitioner and educator at the RCA, the University of Westminster (MSc Advanced Environmental Design), and the Bartlett (MArch). In relation to Climate Justice research and the Environmental Architecture programme at the RCA, his recent work and publications have focused on the need for an dialogical re-conception of design, planning and strategy in relation to the emerging demands for global and local Green New Deals, while his co-authored 2014 book The Design of Scarcity has recently been translated into German (2018) and Greek (2020). Work based in material from the Bateson archive, together with various dialogic and pedagogic experiments, is moving towards a book entitled The Ecological Calculus, while a series of environmental architecture field projects are underway in Greece, in particular around evaporative cooling and pollution in Athens.

Research Interests: Ecological literacy, climate change, climate justice, environmental semiotics, embodied/extended/ecological cognition, evaporative cooling, pollution, cybernetics, Green New Deal.