A is for Architecture Podcast

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

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

In this engaging discussion, Patrick Lynch, the founder of Lynch Architects and a leading voice in civic architecture, shares his insights on the intersection of architecture, scholarship, and society. He delves into the idea of 'Civic Ground,' exploring how architecture interacts with civic life and public space. Lynch emphasizes the tactile experience of ground, the role of architects as civic activists, and the importance of ethical obligations in design. He also highlights innovative approaches to integrating urban landscapes with social needs.