Culture Now: Paul Shepheard

Join us for a lunchtime conversation with author Paul Shepheard, who will be talking about his recent book, How To Like Everything, a utopia, published by Zero Books in July 2013.

How To Like Everything is a utopia. 'Utopia' is a word invented five hundred years ago at the start of the modern age as a description of the ideal society. It's composed of Latin parts that taken together mean 'no place' or 'nowhere'. We now use the word utopia to mean an impossible dream of perfection. How To Like Everything recasts the actual world, the forever-changing world we live in, as utopia: to make the impossible possible. This is not a dry academic debate. Paul Shepheard takes on his subject by threading questions, evidence and logic through hilarious, moving and thought-provoking stories. The action is set in the complicated city of Amsterdam, where he gets stuck in the briars of love affairs, existential decisions and conflicts with complete strangers. And the philosophy? He is a materialist. His utopia hinges on the question of whether there can be anything other than the present moment.

Paul Shepheard is a writer living in London, England. He is qualified as an architect but since the publication of What is Architecture? by the MIT Press in 1994 has gradually shifted the emphasis of his activities to writing and lecturing. He has two other books with the MIT Press, The Cultivated Wilderness, about landscape, 1997, and Artificial Love about architecture and machines, 2003. Currently working on a collection of essays on Structure. He has taught at the Architectural Association in London, the University of Texas at Austin, the Academie Van Bouwkunst in Amsterdam and Artesis, Antwerp. More details at www.paulshepheard.com and @PAULSHEPHEARD