Timothy Moore is a young Australian with a post-post in architecture and work that revolves around “everything buildings.” His work life has serendipitously twisted with his passion to travel, and thus Moore has never stayed anywhere long enough to wear out his welcome. While it may have had to do with growing up a great distance from the rest of the world or simply his innate inquisitive nature, as soon as he could discuss the pros and cons of Dutch "radical architecture,” Moore was stepping onto the next flight to somewhere else. Less up front, however, is his passion for popular culture. Starting with local street press and zines, he has moved on to become the editor of the cool queerzine, They Shoot Homos Don't They? (TSHDT?). Between the somewhat conservatism of architecture and the “no limits” of independent press, Timothy Moore balances both in one easy movement.

psychoPEDIA joined Moore to find out how he mixes his two passions:

Having lived around the world, are there a few specific places that have impacted your life and loves?
Cities like Sydney and Rio can rely on their natural beauty alone to charm me over. For other cities, it’s not so much the consumptive aspects of the city-- you know, the things marketed in the hipster bibles, like the fab café off the tourist track [Cafe Nagel, Amsterdam], or the Picknick club you just have to go to at 4am if you’re in Berlin before doing the Berghain/Bar 25 tandem until 8 am Monday. In the end, I remember relationships I have with the city and the people-- like the cold Prussian bartenders in Berlin, or the aloof Nordic charm of a sober Stockholmare.

Does living any varying cities effect your view on architecture?
Each city is unique with its own relationship to an increasingly complex environment, so, there’s a lot to learn, good and bad. Bad: Rotterdam. I lived in the inner neighborhood of Coolhaven there for six months. Rotterdam was flattened by the Germans in WWII. So the city, known as "Manhattan on the Maas," was rebuilt with wide, open, 1960s urban spaces, and one just gets blown around in the wind between the skyscrapers. It’s also an industrial, working class port city and the home of gabba music. And, from all this, I know that a certain typology will create a certain condition, mixing in all the socio-eco factors. Due to the ground zero – it’s also a haven for architects. Anything is possible, there is no history. It’s also the home of MVRDV and Office for Metropolitan Architecture, and my favorite radicals – BAVO Architects - who have taken advantage of the conditions. It also has one of my favorite markets in Europe – Blaak –complete with a clown costume secondhand stall.

If Rotterdam is the worst, what is the best designed city?
You can’t go past Copenhagen. I lived half an hour from there - in Lund, Sweden - several years ago. It doesn’t have the touristic fanfare of the London skyline but it’s what’s on the inside that counts. The Danish have a word for it, hygge (pronounced whoo-guh) which translates as cosiness. So everything is designed for keeping one warm on the inside. From the meandering pedestrian networks where one falls in love a hundred times a day, to the civic architecture for the people that live there: Larsen's Opera House, PLOT's Maritime Youth Centre or the "Black Diamond" (The Royal Library).

Any other structurally interesting cities?
I also like cities that are not (really) designed. When over one billion people live in non-designed or informal settlements (i.e., favelas), it’s one of the biggest typologies of urbanism. Check out some city edges on Google Earth, like Caracas, Rio, or Lagos. These settlements are formed by their own logic, not by ruling grid lines on the computer screen. There’s a lot one can learn from the ground up. clubs of the world. These people had their own ingenuity, because they had to deal with the fact the government does not recognize them. This brings up unexpected results.

How did you get from working and studying architecture to editing queerzine TSHDT?
While studying architecture, I was writing for different magazines, like VICE and Oyster in Australia. So, it’s a part of my make up to not only make things, but to talk about things.

Do you have to organize time to work between these two seemingly unrelated jobs/careers, or do they somehow collapse into one?
My last architectural job, running a small project team with several consultants to make a gallery space is not dissimilar to being editor of the magazine, in terms of management. The approach is the same, although the content is different. I’m not going to laminate penises onto the facades of buildings. The beauty of architecture is that it gave me an inroad to various disciplines, like physics, engineering, fine art, design, and the ability to move between these; an architect is a jack-of-all-trades, and certainly has less ego than gay males I’ve met in the magazine world.

TSHDT? has a certain sharp and grid like aesthetic to it. Is this due to your architectural influence?
I am anal. Yet, although there is a set of rules to the design of the magazine, they are used generatively, so it all becomes a pretty mess in the end. This analogue process has been influenced by the idea of algorithm in design, which can be witnessed in the architectural studios of: Ocean North, Aranda/Lasch, and R&Sie(n), for example. A good open source example of this method in graphic design is the Scriptographer plug-in for Illustrator.

What do you see in the future for TSHDT?
TSHDT launches issue 005 at the New York Art Book Fair in October 2008, followed by viral parties in Melbourne, Athens, and Berlin. However, as every issue is dedicated to one color of the gay rainbow flag, the next issue – with purple – completes the set. I may be a friend of Dorothy, but I’m so not over the rainbow just yet. I imagine the magazine emerging into something new mid-next year. But no promises. I don’t want to jinx anything.

~Ilirjana Allushaj