Derek Thomas

The author is an architect and environmental scientist, living in Cape Town, South Africa. He is writer of monographs, technical and fictional publications and believes that history repeats itself and that humans cannot avoid crisis or failure. Expediency and opportunism are grist to his mill and underpin his philosophical approach in reflecting on the cultural landscape and the narratives he writes. The latter are stories well-told and always with closure, but also sometimes allegorical, sometimes more suited to the fable.

His first book on architecture was published in 2002 by the Architectural Press. The second edition is about holistic design which attempts to identify the essence of good architecture in a rapidly changing world, and encourages the involvement of the end user to achieve enabling and ennobling urban public space.