Paul Carter was born and brought up in Faringdon, Oxon., UK attending a local grammar school and later Oxford University.
In the 1970s he lived largely in Spain and Italy, working at a variety of jobs in order to support his own poetic education and cultural research.
[6] A multilingual soundscape (‘Columbus Echo’) designed for the Acquario di Genova led to a collaboration with composer Luciano Berio and to the ‘anti-novel’ Baroque Memories (the Italian translation included a preface by Antonio Tabucchi, who noted how a ‘further complication of an already complex situation produces, paradoxically, a simplification and, indeed, a resolution.’[7] In the late 1990s his studies in the mythopoetic mechanisms of placemaking led to major commissions as a public artist.
Relay (with Ruark Lewis) for the Sydney 2000 Olympics[8] and Nearamnew (a collaboration with Lab architecture studio and Karres en Brands) at Federation Square, Melbourne, used text, typography and ground patterning to integrate ‘reading’ and ‘treading.’[9] There followed numerous public space design projects, independently through the design studio Material Thinking, or in collaboration with leading Australian architects and landscape architects.
[10] His story-based tool for urban design and program integration, the ‘creative template’, was adopted by the Western Australian Government's major planning agency, the Metropolitan Redevelopment Authority, in 2016.
His publications in this area are characterized as ‘cultural writing,’ as the vehicle of the analysis is invariably a distinctive literary style and narrative structure.
Michael Bull describes his recent book Amplifications (2018) as ‘personal, poetic – full of literary allusions connected to significant radio productions re-visited, re-imagined and literally remade.
Urban Development Institute of Australia (WA), Award for Excellence, Government and Public Use Category (Material Thinking with Taylor, Cullity, Lethlean) for Scarborough Foreshore.
Member of the following team selected to represent Australia at 2010 Venice Architecture Biennale: Loop-Pool / Saturation City, McGauran Giannini Soon (MGS), Bild + Dyskors, Material Thinking, MGS - Eli Giannini, Jocelyn Chiew, Catherine Ranger, Bild - Ben Milbourne, Dyskors - Edmund Carter, Material Thinking - Paul Carter.