This book is a free associative recount of the ‘I Prefer Not To’ lecture series staged by architect Peter Swinnen at the ETH Department of Architecture (Zürich).

Twelve particular guests touch upon various attitudes of professional abstinence and/or obstinacy.

In an offbeat manner, ‘I Prefer Not To’ can be understood as a critical re-assessment of architecture’s social and political ethos, often tightly contained and devoid of any unforeseen mischief.

Through the words, positions and works of the speaker guests ‘I Prefer Not To’ managed — for a brief moment — to install an unformatted stage for problematization and debate.

Each lecture is introduced by an editor’s note, contextualizing specific choices and unadapted zooms.

Contributors include Luc Tuymans, Christian Kerez, Something Fantastic, Anne Lacaton, Jan De Vylder, Philip Ursprung, Tom Emerson, Laurent Stalder, François Charbonnet, Anri Sala, Maarten Delbeke, Finn Williams, Arno Brandlhuber, ETH Studio Swinnen, Sophia Holst and Beatriz Van Houtte.

The quote ‘I prefer not to’ originates from Herman Melville’s short story ‘Bartleby, the scrivener: A story of Wall Street'(1853): a short story about a law-copyist who stops working because, he says, he ‘would prefer not to‘.