Sam Jacob: Code, representation, image, architecture.

⁠A is for Architecture’s⁠ 108th episode is a conversation with the architect Sam Jacob, principal of Sam Jacob Studio and Professor and head of Architectural Design Studio 3 in the Institute of Architecture (I oA) at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Formerly founding director of FAT with Charles Holland and Sean Griffiths, Sam’s work includes exceptional buildings and adaptations, exhibitions, interiors and things which, liberally distributed over the years of his practice[s], are to be found all over the internet. 

Sam puts it thus in the recording, ‘normally when we make architecture […] you start with a sketch, and then you make it a little bit more accurate, and you get it into Vectorworks, maybe. And then you might make a model, and then you do, you know, detailed design and the tender etc, etc. And that’s the kind of process and then you end up with a building. […] But if we think about like, architecture itself, maybe there's not really a point where it becomes real and different, you know, becomes part of the real world and different from all those other forms of representation, which you were using, as you went through the design process. Maybe we could understand architecture itself as a form of representation’. 

You can find Sam on Instagram.

Thanks for listening.

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Music credits: ⁠Bruno Gillick