Tom Dyckhoff is a historian, teacher, writer and broadcaster about cities, architecture, geographies and visual culture. Tom presented the major BBC2 series, The Great Interior Design Challenge for four series, and is currently design judge on the Channel 4 series Handmade: Britain’s Best Woodworker, now on its third season. He teaches the history and theory of cities and architecture at the Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment, University College London and Central St Martins, University of the Arts, London. Tom also presented the BBC Radio 4 series, The Design Dimension which looked at the world we inhabit through the lens of design. He was previously architecture and design critic for BBC television’s arts programme, The Culture Show, for which he...
Tom Dyckhoff is a historian, teacher, writer and broadcaster about cities, architecture, geographies and visual culture.
Tom presented the major BBC2 series, The Great Interior Design Challenge for four series, and is currently design judge on the Channel 4 series Handmade: Britain’s Best Woodworker, now on its third season.
He teaches the history and theory of cities and architecture at the Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment, University College London and Central St Martins, University of the Arts, London.
Tom also presented the BBC Radio 4 series, The Design Dimension which looked at the world we inhabit through the lens of design. He was previously architecture and design critic for BBC television’s arts programme, The Culture Show, for which he interviewed architects from Oscar Niemeyer to Frank Gehry, and fronted special episodes on subjects including the Stirling Prize for architecture, Chinese culture, Lego, the new Birmingham library, and British architecture during the recession.
Tom has written and presented many series and documentaries on British television and radio, including Channel 4’s series The Secret Life of Buildings, which he looked at the effects of architecture and spaces on our brains and bodies; for BBC2’s series Saving Britain’s Past, Tom examined the country’s obsession with heritage; in I Love Carbuncles, for Channel 4, he revealed his passion for concrete Brutalism.
For radio, Tom has presented many BBC Radio 4 documentaries, too, such as ‘Anti-Architect: Cedric Price’, ‘Room With a View’ on the history of windows, ‘Animal Architecture’ on the architecture of zoos and a one-off special on polymath Buckminster Fuller.
He is the author of The Age of Spectacle: the rise and fall of iconic architecture (Windmill Books, 2017), and the official guide to the architecture of 2012’s Olympic Games, The Architecture of London 2012: Vision, Design, Legacy (John Wiley & Sons, 2012).
For a decade in the 00s, Tom was architecture and design critic for The Times newspaper, London. Tom also wrote a weekly column for The Guardian newspaper’s Weekend magazine for 20 years; and he writes and has long written for a wide range of publications including Esquire, GQ, Wallpaper, New Statesman, Domus, Icon and Blueprint.
Tom was educated at Oxford University and University College London, and began his career at Perspectives on Architecture for the then Prince of Wales, now King Charles III; he then became head of exhibitions at the Royal Institute of British Architects gallery, associate editor of Design magazine for the UK Design Council and then deputy editor of Space, The Guardian newspaper’s design and homes section.
Tom is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, and a trustee of the London Festival of Architecture. He has been a trustee of the Architecture Foundation, and a judge on many design and architecture prizes, including the Stirling Prize (2013). He regularly lectures and hosts or chairs events, including The Stirling Prize in 2009 and 2010.
He lives in London, with his family.
