A is for Architecture Podcast

Professor Albena Yaneva discusses how the pandemic transformed architecture, urban design, and the spatial conventions of everyday life. They explore the impact on cities, research challenges, the concept of 'Dispositifs,' choreography in urban environments, the city as a laboratory, and the adaptations made by architects. The discussion raises questions about the future of cities and the conditions of architectural practice.

In Episode 29/2 of A is for Architecture, Professor Gary Boyd speaks on his book, Architecture and the Face of Coal: Mining and Modern Britain, published by Lund Humphries in December 2022. Gary is Professor of Architecture in the School of Natural and Built Environment, Queen’s University Belfast. Mining and the Face of Coal is one output of a Major Research Fellowship Gary got from the Leverhulme Trust in 2018, and it describes a powerful story of heavy industry and the life of coal and coal miners in the development of modern Britain, including the emancipation of working class communities through collective action, politics and representation, as well as via policy, public debate and corporate enterprise. Mining, as Gary says, occupied a pivotal position in society, which ‘meant that miners were treated seriously […] all industry was completely influenced by mining or completely dependent upon it, so mining became this thing [which had] leverage. And this leverage meant obviously that they demanded at times bigger wages, but it also meant they became recipients, sometimes after actively canvassing for it, of goods and services, and especially services to do with their lifestyle, and that includes ideas of hygiene, ideas, ultimately, of housing, and also caught cultural and social pursuits. This generates a series of architectural interventions.’ The story of the coal industry is a fascinating and, for all of us of a certain heritage, retained history, the decline of which marked a significant portion of our personal histories. Its architecture has vanished, more or less, so this is an important study, describing a recent archaeology, in a way, of an epoch-defining practice. Thus, this podcast and Gary’s book are worth a sticky, believe. Available on Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts and Amazon Music.   Gary can be found on the QUB website here. You can get the book 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

In Season 2, Episode 28 of A is for Architecture, Gordana Fontana Giusti discusses her 2013 book, Foucault for Architects, published by Routledge, as part of the Thinkers for Architects series. Gordana is Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at Kent School of Architecture & Planning, University of Kent, where she also serves as Deputy Head of School. Foucault for Architects ‘concentrates on a number of historical and theoretical issues often addressed by Foucault […] in order to examine and demonstrate their relevancy for architectural knowledge, its history and its practice’. In an AA Files 26 essay from 1993, Paul Hirst suggested Foucualt’s relevance to architecture lay in his breaking down ‘the barrier between the common-sense category of objects and that of discourse: words, explanations, programmes, etc., which are held to be about objects. In architecture this yields the stubborn and conclusive distinction between buildings as objects, and architectural theories, programmes and teaching that are about buildings. This installs a split between architecture and architectural discourse. The building is an object or non-discursive entity around which float the words of discourse.’ Listen to Prof Gordana, and get some answers. Available on Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts and Amazon Music.   Gordana is presenting her thinking on Foucault at an event titled Dialogue 1: Foucault/Merleau-Ponty/Latour as part of a Thinkers for Architecture programme run by the AHRA, on 24 to 27 April 2023 at Manchester, UK, alongside previous podcast guests Jonathan Hale and Albena Yaneva. You can get the book here (20% off in April, apparently), and find Gordana professionally here, on LinkedIn here, on Instagram here, and on Twitter 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

In Episode 27/ 2 of A is for Architecture Bryan Cantley speaks about his very extraordinary body of work, beautifully documented in Speculative Coolness: Architecture, Media, the Real, and the Virtual, published by Routledge earlier this month. Bryan is Professor of 3-Dimensional Design at the Department of Visual Arts at California State University, Fullerton, and founder/ director of Form:uLA, an experimental architecture, design, and graphic communication studio. As the blurb has it, ‘Cantley’s work offers a unique and critical insight into the emergence of a liminal territory that exists between the real and the virtual that mainstream architecture has yet to exploit.’  Speculative Coolness documents Bryan’s extraordinary, imaginative and alluring architectures, with essays by other leading theorists and writers discussing it import and impact. Aaron Betsky said eight years ago, ‘experimental architecture is a marginal phenomenon, pursued by a few brilliant, but isolated figures: Perry Kulper or Bryan Cantley come to mind’. No so marginal now, is it? Listen, share and subscribe to the show on Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts and Amazon Music.   Speculative Coolness is available on the Routledge website here. Bryan is to be found on the CSUF website here and on Instagram as both bcantl3y and speculativecoolness. His own website, bryancantley.com, features a 20% discount code for the book you’d be wise to use (till 30/4/23). Bryan’s previous book, Mechudzu: New Rhetorics for Architecture, published by Springer Verlag GmbH in 2011. Bryan will be speaking on Speculative Coolness at UCLA in May this year. 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 26 of A is for Architecture’s second season is a conversation with architect, urbbanist and writer Reinier de Graaf, partner at the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), about his recent book, architect, verb: The New Language of Building, published by Verso in February this year. In ten chapters, architect, verb covers much ground, from sustainability and beauty, to starchitecture and gentrification, and aims ‘to debunk myths projected onto architecture by the outside world’ […] Once a profession known for its manifestos, architecture finds itself increasingly forced to adopt ever-more extreme postures of virtue, held accountable by the world of finance, the social sciences or the medical sector.’ It’s a funny book, and provocative too, but fundamentally, as Reiner says in this episode, his passion and criticality is born out of a love for architecture and ‘a sincere love for the profession.’ Have a listen and share, and subscribe to the show.   You can find architect, verb: The New Language of Building on Verso’s website here, and Reinier on OMA’s website here. There’s a gloss on the book on OMA’s website here. I have long read Reinier’s work, and you might too: start with his previous book, Four Walls and a Roof: The Complex Nature of a Simple Profession, published by Harvard University Press in 2017. There’s an article on Dezeen from February that you might read too. 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 25/2 of A is for Architecture I spoke with Head of School and Chief Executive of the London School of Architecture, Neal Shasore and Jessica Kelly, Reader in Architectural & Design History at University of the Creative Arts (UCA) and (also) teacher at London Metropolitan University, about their edited anthology, Reconstruction: Architecture, Society and the Aftermath of the First World War, published by Bloomsbury in February this year. Our conversation addresses some of the overarching themes in the book, which features ‘[s]ixteen essays written by leading and emerging scholars [about] a period of reconstruction, fraught with the challenges of modernity and democratisation’, revealing ‘how the architectural developments of this period not only provided important foundations for what happened after 1945’, but also saw the emergence of new typologies, styles and practices responsive to a damaged but renewed - and global - society. Critical but ever sophisticated, this is a much needed shot of Edwardian elegance in the rippling Po-PoMo arm of this series. You can find Reconstruction of Bloomsbury’s website here, ready for your coin or plastic. Neal’s LSA profile is here, and his LinkedIn and Twitter are here and here and his Insta is here. There’s a video of Neal giving a lecture for the Architecture Foundation on his previous book, Designs on Democracy: Architecture & The Public In Interwar London on the YouTube here. Jessica’ UCA profile is here, here LinkedIn is here and her Twitter is 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

A is for Architecture’s Episode 24, Season 2, is a conversation with Patrick Lynch, founder and director of Lynch Architects, writer, scholar and guv’nor (with Claudia Lynch) of Canalside Press.  We spoke about a few of Patrick’s written works, and some of Lynch Architect’s recent built projects too, focusing the discussion around Patrick’s discussions of the ground of architecture.   Being-With/A Tacit Alliance: Architecture, Publishing, and the Poetic Reciprocity of Civic Culture in The Hybrid Practitioner Building, Teaching, Researching Architecture (2022), eds. C. Voet, E. Schreurs and H. Thomas, published by Leuven University Press. Situated Praxis, Prudence, and the Anonymity of Beauty: On Tension and Metaphor in the Civic Art of Neave Brown in Part of a City: The Work of Neave Brown Architect, (2022) eds. P. Lynch, C. Lynch and D. Porter, published by Canalside Press. Progress is a Myth, Change is the Reality: The Fossil Poetics of Robin Walker (2018) in Change is the Reality: The Work of Robin Walker Architect (2018), eds. P. Lynch and S. Walker, published by Canalside Press. Civic Ground: Rhythmic Spatiality and the Communicative Movement between Architecture, Sculpture and Site (2017), by Patrick Lynch, published by Artifice Books on Architecture. Our discussion covers a little of Patrick’s multifarious interests and concerns, and includes Neave Brown, urban change, housing, civility, context and theology, as well as The Zig Zag Building, Kings Gate, and n2 & Nova Place, all in London, and all quite recent. It’s all good. Have a sticky. You’ll find the texts we touch on at the links above, where you can buy them, or download them. Lynch Architect’s website is here and their Twitter is here, Patrick’s profile at London Met is here, his LinkedIn is here and his Instagram is 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

In episode 23, Season 2 of A is for Architecture, I spoke with UC San Diego professors, Fonna Forman and Teddy Cruz about their two recent books, Spatializing Justice: Building Blocks and Socializing Architecture: Top-Down / Bottom-Up, published by MIT Press in August 2022 and March 2023 respectively. Fonna and Teddy run Estudio Teddy Cruz + Fonna Forman, a ‘a research-based political and architectural practice in San Diego, who investigate ‘issues of informal urbanization, civic infrastructure and public culture […] Blurring conventional boundaries between theory and practice, and merging the fields of architecture and urbanism, political theory and urban policy, visual arts and public culture’ [leading] urban research agendas and civic/public interventions in the San Diego-Tijuana border region and beyond’. Fonna is Professor of Political Science and Teddy is Professor of Public Culture and Urbanism at UC San Diego, where they also co-direct the Centre on Global Justice and the X-Border Lab. Both books are well worth a read, and are full of thoughtful, practice-based insights and provocations, drawing on a rich, political interpretation of the spatial conditions of exclusion found in a very extreme condition. Spatializing Justice is ‘a practical handbook for confronting social and economic inequality and uneven urban growth in architectural and planning practice’. Socializing Architecture follows this, urging architects and urbanists ‘to design political and civic processes that mediate top-down and bottom-up urban resources, and to mobilize a new public imagination toward a more just and equitable urbanization.’ Big, important stuff, so be a diamond and have a listen. You’ll find Spatializing Justice and Socializing Architecture on the MIT Press website, linked above, where you can buy them. Estudio Teddy Cruz + Fonna Forman’s website is here, with more information on their work and practice to be found all over the internet; their Instagram is here, Fonna’s LinkedIn is here, Teddy’s UC San Diego profile is here, Fonna’s is 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

Season Two’s twenty-second episode features Kim Dovey, Professor and Chair of Architecture and Urban Design, Melbourne School of Design, University of Melbourne, speaking about his very wonderful body of work on informality, informal urbanism, place and placemaking. We discuss his forthcoming Atlas of Informal Settlement: Understanding Self-Organized Urban Design (Bloomsbury 2023, with, Matthijs van Oostrum, Tanzil Shafique, Ishita Chatterjee and Elek Pafka), Mapping Urbanities: Morphologies, Flows, Possibilities (Routledge 2018), and Becoming Places: Urbanism / Architecture / Identity / Power (Routledge 2010), and just one of his marvellous papers, Towards a morphogenesis of informal settlements (2020, Habitat International, with van Oostrum, Shafique, Chatterjee and Pafka). Kim is fantastic, of course, at describing the most common form of urban form and housing type of all: ‘In a formal urban design and planning process, the urban design and planning comes first, and then the architecture follows. In an informal process, in the most informal of informal settlements, the architecture comes first, or tends to come first. So the people just build buildings. And if you like the, the street network is then an emergent phenomenon that comes out of the whatever's whatever spaces are left after the buildings are produced. But then, there's a lot of processes, which are much more mixed on that as well.’ For more like that, listen and learn. You can get Mapping Urbanities andBecoming Places from the Routledge website here and here, and bookmark this link to the Bloomsbury website for August, when the Atlasdrops. Kim’s can be found on the Melbourne School of Design here, and on ResearchGate here. Kim co-leads the Informal Urbanism Research Hubtoo. 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 21, Season 2 of A is for Architecture I spoke with Maurice Mitchell and Bo Tang, respectively Professor and Reader of/ in Architecture, within the School of Art, Architecture and Design at London Metropolitan University, and together directors of Architecture of Rapid Change and Scarce Resources [A R C S R], an ‘an emergent, studio based, teaching and research area within the practice and academic discipline of architecture’. I got to hear about their 2017 book, Loose Fit City: The Contribution of Bottom-Up Architecture to Urban Design and Planning, published by Routledge, which is ‘about the ways in which city residents can learn through making to engage with the dynamic process of creating their own city. It looks at the nature and processes involved in loosely fitting together’. The idea of loose in the sense of [a] loose fit city, Bo suggests in our conversation, may be defined as ‘bringing together different intentions, or allowing them to come together in a way that more than one party is able to contribute to the conversation, to the decision making process, to have a voice across scale, across time to try and come to an understanding of shared matters of concern that may then lead to a civic assembly’. As before, lovely guests, a wonderful, inspiring book and proper, easy conversation. Listen, share, want, get. You can get Loose Fit City off the Routledge website here but also elsewhere online. Bo can be found on the London Met website here, and Maurice here. Bo is here on Twitter, and here on LinkedIn. There's a boss video of Maurice giving an online lecture for the Architecture Foundation on Laurie Baker and Balkrishna Doshi 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