A is for Architecture Podcast

In A is for Architecture’s third episode of the series, Monica Degen and Gillian Rose speak about their 2022 book, The New Urban Aesthetic: Digital Experiences of Urban Change. The book ‘explores how cities worldwide are being transformed and reconfigured by the twin forces of digital technologies and 'urban branding' [generating] ‘sensory bodily experiences [which] this book terms the new urban aesthetic.’ Documenting this shift through global examples, the book helps us understand the how and why of the experience of contemporary urban space.   Gillian is Professor of Human Geography at the University of Oxford, and Monica is Professor in Urban Cultural Sociology at Brunel University London. Gillian can be found on X, Monica is also on X and LinkedIn, as well as on the Timescapes of Urban Change website, where you can see her speak about other interests and research.  The New Urban Aesthetic is on the Bloomsbury website, where you can – probably should – buy it. Listen, learn, share, go on now. Available on Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts and Amazon Music. Thanks for listening. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Music credits: Bruno Gillick + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + aisforarchitecture.org Apple: podcasts.apple.com Spotify: open.spotify.com Google: podcasts.google.com Amazon: music.amazon.co.uk

In Episode 2, Season (or series) 3 of A is for Architecture, Simon Henley talks about his work as a designer, researcher, maker and teacher, and the work of Henley Halebrown, the practice he founded in 1995. Initially we had agreed to explore a notion Simon suggested of ‘beneficial building’. We never go there precisely, but perhaps in spirit. Henley Halebrown are increasingly significant players in the production of new urban housing, particularly in London, where their work has grown in stature and reputation. This year, their Taylor & Chatto Courts and Wilmott Court, Frampton Park Estate has been shortlisted for the RIBA Neave Brown Award for Housing, and the Hackney New Primary School and 333 Kingsland Road won the International Architecture Award 2023. Previous work  includes a litany of acclaimed schemes, including Chadwick Hall student housing in Roehampton which was nominated for the Stirling Prize in 2018. A great conversation, for sure. Available on Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts and Amazon Music.   Thanks for listening. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Music credits: Bruno Gillick + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + aisforarchitecture.org Apple: podcasts.apple.com Spotify: open.spotify.com Google: podcasts.google.com Amazon: music.amazon.co.uk

In the first episode of A is for Architecture’s third series, the effervescent Denise Scott Brown talks about her journey to and through architecture, as a designer, writer, planner, urbanist, theorist and teacher. It is a wonderful, remarkable story, told with great eloquence and elegance, and one which deserves continued attention. Denise’s work with her practice Venturi Scott Brown has inspired a great many people, with buildings including Franklin Court, Philadelphia (1976), the Children's Museum, Houston, Texas (1992), the Sainsbury Wing, National Gallery, London (1991), the Seattle Art Museum (1991) and the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego (1996). Her and Robert Venturi’s written work has been hugely impactful too, and includes the totemic Learning from Las Vegas: The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form, (1972, with Robert Venturi and Steven Izenour), Architecture as Signs and Systems: for a Mannerist Time (2004, with Robert Venturi), the significant essay Room at the top? Sexism and the Star System in Architecture (1989), and Studio, Architecture’s offering to academe (2016). Threaded through it all is a genuine belief in the value of ordinary and everyday ways of being and doing the built environment. There is a huge amount of material online, in libraries (in real books!), in magazines and journals, and to listen to about or featuring Denise. Go find a book, and think about it all. As she said, ‘People have learnt from Las Vegas, but they haven’t learnt the half of it yet’. It was an extraordinary sensation speaking with Denise, like swimming in very deep waters. Available on Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts and Amazon Music.   Thanks for listening. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Music credits: Bruno Gillick + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + aisforarchitecture.org Apple: podcasts.apple.com Spotify: open.spotify.com Google: podcasts.google.com Amazon: music.amazon.co.uk

Episode 37/2 of A is for Architecture is a conversation with Alan Dickson,  co-founder and director of Rural Design, an acclaimed and innovative architecture practice based on the Isle of Skye, Scotland. Rural Design’s work is characterised by a reappropriation of vernacular forms and construction traditions, which is both contemporary and contextually embedded. Have a listen and a look around. Rural Design’s website is a good one, and they are on Twitter and Instagram. You can see their work on Dezeen, ArchDaily, in the AJ, and a lot of other places too.  The Rural House scheme we spoke about can be found here. I first met Alan in 2012 when he came to the Glasgow School of Art to give a lecture, which you can watch on Vimeo here. Available on Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts and Amazon Music.   Thanks for listening. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Music credits: Bruno Gillick + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + aisforarchitecture.org Apple: podcasts.apple.com Spotify: open.spotify.com Google: podcasts.google.com Amazon: music.amazon.co.uk

In Episode 36, Season 2 of A is for Architecture, Eleanor Jolliffe and Paul Crosby speak about their book, Architect: The Evolving Story of a Profession, published by RIBA Publishing in March this year. Eleanor is an architect with Allies and Morrison and writes regularly for the architectural press, including a column for Building Design. Paul, also an architect, now leads the professional practice/ Part 3 course at the Architectural Association. Thematically a chronology of the emergence of a very particular discipline, Architect looks at ‘the key questions of where the architectural profession originated in the Western tradition, why it is, how it is today and where it might be going next [and] postulate that architects' ability to adapt and reinvent themselves in the past will stand them in good stead for the uncertainties of the future.’ We shall see, shan’t we? In the meantime, listen to these two fine folk, and find out. Eleanor is professionally here, at BD here, on LinkedIn here and tweets here. Paul’s AA profile is here, and LinkedIn-able here. The book is on the RIBA website here, where you can buy it. Available on Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts and Amazon Music.   Thanks for listening. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Music credits: Bruno Gillick + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + aisforarchitecture.org Apple: podcasts.apple.com Spotify: open.spotify.com Google: podcasts.google.com Amazon: music.amazon.co.uk

Episode 35/2 of A is for Architecture features Charles Holland, principal of Charles Holland Architects, and Professor of Architecture at the University of the Creative Arts, Canterbury. We speak about Charles’ work and research, focusing on his 2022 Davidson Prize-winning proposal, Co-Living in the Countryside, ‘a proposal for new rural housing […] developed as a collaboration with artist  Verity-Jane Keefe, urban designer Joseph Zeal-Henry and the Quality of Life Foundation. ‘Co-living in the Countryside responds to the brief for co-living and proposes a new rural housing typology [allowing for] shared spaces, flexible and adaptable house types and an approach based on mutual, cooperative governance’ on a site in Sussex. There’s much online about Charles’ work, both recent and in his previous iteration as founder-director of FAT, a design practice with a remarkable body of work that challenged the pieties of much late modern architecture. You can have a look at it here. You can find Charles on Twitter, Insta and LinkedIn. Co-Living has been covered in Dezeen, Architecture Today and the AJ (£), among others. Available on Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts and Amazon Music.   Thanks for listening. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Music credits: Bruno Gillick + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + aisforarchitecture.org Apple: podcasts.apple.com Spotify: open.spotify.com Google: podcasts.google.com Amazon: music.amazon.co.uk

In Episode 34/2 of A is for Architecture, Andrew Beharrell and Rory Olcayto talk about their book, The Deck Access Housing Design Guide: A Return to Streets in the Sky, published by Routledge this year. Andrew is a Senior Advisor for the London-based architects, Pollard Thomas Edwards, where he was formerly director and senior partner. Rory is  writer and critic at PTE, and formerly  editor of the Architects’ Journal and chief executive of Open City.   ‘Despite a chequered history that saw it linked with urban decay and social malaise in the 1970s and 80s, deck access housing […] is fast becoming the default solution for mid-rise housing in the UK, and London in particular. This is in part down to architects’ renewed interest in post-war Modernist typologies, but also due to specific planning standards that favour the qualities – dual-aspect plans, ‘public’ front doors – of deck access design.’ It features work from architects such as AHMM, DO Architecture, Henley Halebrown, Mæ, Maison Edouard François and Waechter + Waechter, among others. The book has been covered in the press, including on Dezeen, the Architects’ Journal and Architecture Today. Then head to the Routledge website, where you might consider buying it. Available on Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts and Amazon Music.   Thanks for listening. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Music credits: Bruno Gillick + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + aisforarchitecture.org Apple: podcasts.apple.com Spotify: open.spotify.com Google: podcasts.google.com Amazon: music.amazon.co.uk

Episode 33/2 of A is for Architecture’s features Ben Derbyshire, Chair of HTA Design LLP and  Immediate Past President of RIBA. We talk about Home Truths, Ben’s 2022 book, published with Hatch Editions. The book, so it states, is ‘a manifesto for professional practice in an era of multiple crises – in social, economic and racial disparity, in housing supply and affordability, in climate change, in our emptying high streets and homelessness in our town centres.  […] setting out the essential ideas and likely future developments that aspiring planners and designers of homes and places need to know about and bear in mind for their work, [reflecting on] the foundations for contemporary practice.’ You can watch Ben give it some on the NLA website here. Great chat, lovely chap: listen, learn and share. Available on Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts and Amazon Music.   Thanks for listening. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Music credits: Bruno Gillick + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + aisforarchitecture.org Apple: podcasts.apple.com Spotify: open.spotify.com Google: podcasts.google.com Amazon: music.amazon.co.uk

In Episode 32 of A is for Architecture’s second season, Susannah Hagan talks about her book Revolution? Architecture and the Anthropocene, published by Lund Humphries in 2022.  Susannah is an emeritus professor of architecture at the University of Westminster, founder of R_E_D (Research into Environment + Design) at the Royal College of Art, and has been a leading light in the establishment of environmental design as a serious, measured discipline within architecture. Revolution? is the fourth book in a series Susannah has written, documenting the relationship of architecture to the natural environment, including Taking Shape: A New Contract Between Architecture and Nature (Routledge, 2000), Digitalia: Architecture and the Environmental, the Digital and the Avant-Garde (Routledge, 2008), and Ecological Urbanism: The Nature of the City (Routledge, 2015). The book deals with a peculiar difference – that of the wild success modernism in the twentieth century, contrasted to ecological architecture’s remarkable failure to impress upon the public its argument or ethics. For the publication, Susannah wrote ‘the particularities of [sustainable] architecture’s problem […] lie in its 20th century history and its self-perpetuating self-aggrandisement. What use is a profession of self-styled leaders who in the main have been, and still are, loitering at the back?’ That’s a good question, always. Have a sticky, see what you think. And share like you give a damn. Available on Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts and Amazon Music.   More on Susannah here (on Wikipedia!), on Research Gate here, and on R_E_D here. There’s a good article in the AR from 2015 called Ecological Urbanism, which she also penned. You can get the book at the link above off the Lund Humphries website.   Thanks for listening. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Music credits: Bruno Gillick + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + aisforarchitecture.org Apple: podcasts.apple.com Spotify: open.spotify.com Google: podcasts.google.com Amazon: music.amazon.co.uk

In Episode 31/2 of A is for Architecture, Torsten Schmiedeknecht and Jill Rudd discusses their recent book, Building Children’s Worlds: The Representation of Architecture and Modernity in Picturebooks, a collection of essays by various scholars, co-edited with Emma Hayward, and which was published by Routledge this year. Jill is Professor of English at the University of Liverpool and Torsten is Reader in Architecture at the Liverpool School of Architecture, University of Liverpool. (Emma is a secondary school English teacher and Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Liverpool). ‘The kinds of architectural worlds [children] are exposed to in picturebooks during their formative years may be assumed to influence how they regard such architecture as adults.’ How, then, has children’s literature sought to socialise young readers to the nature, values and stories of the modern epoch? In Building Children’s Worlds ‘scholars address questions such as: Is modern architecture used to construct specific narratives of childhood? Is it taken to support ‘negative’ narratives of alienation on the one hand and ‘positive’ narratives of happiness on the other? Do images of modern architecture support ideas of ‘community’? Reinforce ‘family values’? If so, what kinds of architecture, community and family? […] This book reveals what stories are told about modern architecture and shows how those stories affect future attitudes towards and expectations of the built environment.’ Big questions demand clever answers, so have a listen to the imaginative duo and see what you think. Sharing is caring, so do that too. Available on Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts and Amazon Music.   More on Jill and her work is on the University of Liverpool website here. Torsten is here and his LinkedIn is here. (Emma is on LinkedIn here.) You can get the book from Routledge here. Thanks for listening. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Music credits: Bruno Gillick + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + aisforarchitecture.org Apple: podcasts.apple.com Spotify: open.spotify.com Google: podcasts.google.com Amazon: music.amazon.co.uk