A is for Architecture Podcast

In episode 25 of A is for Architecture, I speak with Albena Yaneva, Professor of Architectural Theory at the Manchester School of Architecture, University of Manchester, about her new book, Latour for Architects, published by Routledge at the end of March. In it, we discuss Albena’s reading and application of the work of the great sociologist, Bruno Latour’s and in turn, his reading of society, particularly his important concept of Actor-Network Theory, and his work’s application to the practice and production of architectural thinking. Latour’s work has great influence on contemporary practice, even if often under-played, particularly as practice life waxes networked and complex. Albena’s elegant and enlightening exposition is a timely interjection, then, perhaps helping architects understand themselves a wee bit better. I was introduced to Albena by Fran Ford, Senior Editor and Publisher (Architecture) for Routledge, who also sent me the book hot off the press. All thanks for that. Albena’s research/ academic profile can be seen here, and she is also available via Twitter. Latour for Architects can be purchased here, and Albena’s great lecture for McGill University - The New Ecology of Architectural Practice: An ANT Perspective on the Effects of Covid-19 – is definitely worth a butcher’s. Enjoy! + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Music credits: Bruno Gillick. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + aisforarchitecture.org Apple: podcasts.apple.com Spotify: open.spotify.com Google: podcasts.google.com

In episode 24 of #aisforarchitecture, I speak with Dean Hawkes, Emeritus Professor of Architectural Design at the Welsh School of Architecture, Cardiff University and emeritus fellow of Darwin College, University of Cambridge, about his 2022 book, The Architect and the Academy: Essays on Research and Environment, published by Routledge, and the second edition of his great work, The Environmental Imagination: Technics and Poetics of the Architectural Environment (2019) also by Routledge. We focus on the latter, naturally, and its thoughtful and quietly radical approach to interpreting the icons of modernism and their socio-environmental intelligence, and reflect on the possibilities and function of the academic architect (or the architect in academia…). I was introduced to Dean by his publishers, Routledge although I saw him speak at the Glasgow School of Art in 2014 (a talk you can watch here). Tickets for his forthcoming Daylight Talk, The sun never knew how great it is until it struck the side of a building, can be gotten here. You can see his CV here too. Dean is a wonderful communicator and an inspiring thinker and writer, and I know you’ll enjoy this discussion. Enjoy! + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Music credits: Bruno Gillick. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + aisforarchitecture.org Apple: podcasts.apple.com Spotify: open.spotify.com Google: podcasts.google.com

In Episode 23 of A is for Architecture, I got to speak with Neil Pinder, Head of Product Design and Architecture at Graveney School, Tooting, London. Elected Honorary Fellow of the RIBA this year, Honorary Professor at the Bartlett, UCL, and (STOP PRESS!), Fellow of the RSA, Neil has spent the last 25 plus years developing programmes for advancing design thinking for secondary school education, expanding the discipline’s reach into underrepresented communities and groups, supporting young learners to develop confidence in design and design thinking, and challenging the profession to promote diverse perspectives and values in its practices, education, communication and ethics. Neil is wonderfully inspiring, and very funny. His initiative Home Grown Plus+ is worth exploring, and he can be found here on Twitter and LinkedIn, and via the links below, too. London's Hidden Hero: Neil Pinder from New London Architecture Neil Pinder: Graveney School from Citizen Mag Day 37 – Neil Pinder from London Festival of Architecture Celebrated teacher Neil Pinder will talk about how to make design education more inclusive at Dezeen Day Enjoy! + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Music credits: Bruno Gillick. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + aisforarchitecture.org Apple: podcasts.apple.com Spotify: open.spotify.com Google: podcasts.google.com

In Episode 22 of A is for Architecture, I speak with architect, urban designer and anthropologist, Shira de Bourbon Parme, co-founder of ForeGrounds and member of the London Collective. Shira's background is as an architect, but through doctoral research in social anthropology, now works alongside developers, planners and architects to guide them in the production of sustainable urban spaces that are rooted in a close and sensitive reading of the social and material nature of places. I was introduced to Shira through another member of the London Collective, Bee Farrell, a food anthropologist, with whom I work. Shira holds a doctorate from the Future of Cities programme at the University of Oxford, for a thesis entitled How do master planners think? A sociomaterial inquiry (2018). Enjoy! + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Music credits: Bruno Gillick. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + aisforarchitecture.org Apple: podcasts.apple.com Spotify: open.spotify.com Google: podcasts.google.com

In Episode 21 of A is for Architecture, I speak with Jim Stockard, Lecturer in Urban Planning and Design at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. Jim had a long career as a principal with the Cambridge-based Stockard & Engler & Brigham, as well as serving as an housing advisor to the US government’s Department of Public and Assisted Housing, before joining the GSD. Among other things, Jim curated the Loeb Fellowship for sixteen years. We speak about some ideas from the lecture he gave at the end of his tenure of that - Affordable Housing: It's Just (A) Right, as well as a short piece he wrote for the TEDx blog, Why affordable housing needs to be a right, not a privilege. Enjoy! aisforarchitecture.org ++++++++++++++ Music credits: Bruno Gillick.

In Episode 20 of A is for Architecture, I speak with historian, writer and professor, Alan Powers, about modernist architecture, any new ways we must view that architectural movement, that embraces its multiplicity of realisations, producers and ideas. In architectural education we tend to fetishize the great figures of modernism, leading to an unfortunate narrowing of what modernism was and is. This has been at the expense of other designers operating during the same period, and responding to the same social, cultural, economic and technological forces, but in ways that diverged from the established identity of the movement.   Alan teaches at Kent School of Architecture and Planning, at the London School of Architecture and New York University, and is a trustee of the Twentieth Century Society. We spoke about The Lure of the Impure, published in A Magazine for Friends of RIBA Architecture, and 100 Buildings, 100 Years, published by Batsford and the Twentieth Century Society, and written with Tim Brittain-Catlin and Tom Dycoff. aisforarchitecture.org ++++++++++++++ Music credits: Bruno Gillick.

In Episode 19 of A is for Architecture, I speak with Professor Greg Keeffe of the School of Natural and Built Environment, Queens University Belfast, and currently visiting professor at Cornell, about sustainability, ecology and the city as an organism, and architecture as a tool of renewal and political resistance. The conversation builds on two of Greg’s recent pieces of work – Bin Burger, an exhibit displayed as part of the Design Museum’s recent exhibition, Waste Age: What can design do? , and Born, not Made. Designing the Productive City, written with Rob Roggema, a chapter in Designing Sustainable Cities, edited by Rob Roggema. I met Greg as a student when he taught the bioclimatic architecture unit at Manchester School of Architecture. He was a great teacher, and the fire he had then hasn’t dimmed so much. Sustainability in architecture is still a marginal reality, fixed in a consumeristic model, although the rhetoric has mainstreamed. Greg’s approach is radical, perhaps because it needs to be, in the face of a production system that is at best indifferent to the actual price of architecture. Greg’s QUB profile is here and his LinkedIn one is here. You can listen/ watch Greg talk online/ TU Delft on the Born, not Made chapter here. You can watch him do a TED X talk - Accelerating the decarbonisation of neighbourhoods - here. Greg can also be listened to speaking on the Slugger O’Toole podcast about How the pandemic is changing how we live. Happy listening. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Music credits: Bruno Gillick

In Episode 18 of A is for Architecture, I speak with Professor Ola Uduku, Head of the Liverpool School of Architecture, University of Liverpool. We speak about two of her books, Learning Spaces in Africa (Routledge, 2018) and Africa Beyond the Post-Colonial (Routledge 2017), a volume she co-edited with Alfred Zack Williams. We talk about the impact of modernity on indigenous modes of dwelling in Africa and ways architectural modernization been experienced there, colonialism and modern architecture's awkward relationship to it, and the ownership of modernity, as a paradigm, a project and an architectural expression. I met Ola when she was up in Scotland, our paths crossing on the architectural historiography scene, I think. Her work has become increasingly important to me as an educator, as more of my students investigate the modern architectural heritage and culture of Africa. The two books we spoke about are linked in the text above. Ola's academic profile can be viewed here and her Twitter profile is here. Happy listening! www.aisforarchitecture.org ++++++++++++++ Music credits: Bruno Gillick.

In Episode 17 of A is for Architecture, I speak with architect Professor Richard Brook of the Manchester School of Architecture, and creator and curator of the online archive Mainstream Modern. We talk about Manchester, its renewal and redevelopment in the postwar years, and the strategic, cultural and creative visions that underpinned its shift to a postindustrial city. I met Richard through a mutual friend, Bob Proctor, whilst working as Bob's research assistant on a project about postwar churches. Richard's encyclopaedic knowledge of the context and details of British modernism, particularly in the north of England, opened my eyes to a rich and largely ignored seam of ordinary and everyday architectural modernism, and the hopeful, utopian visions that underpinned it. Mainstream Modern: mainstreammodern.co.uk Manchester School of Architecture: rbrook  Instagram: @mainstream_modern  Happy listening! +++++++++++++++++ Music by Bruno Gillick. www.aisforarchitecture.org/ instagram/ twitter/ facebook

In Episode 16 of A is for Architecture, I speak with Johnny Rodger, Professor of Urban Literature in the Mackintosh School of Architecture at the Glasgow School of Art. We discuss his new book, Key Essays: Mapping the Contemporary in Literature and Culture, published by Routledge in 2021. The written essay has a key role in the education of architects and designers, so understanding its function is a worthwhile endeavour. Johnny addresses this, discussing the essay’s identity as a distinct literary form and its function as a critical practice and academic activity. We also touch on ideas of performativity, the capacity of language to effect change in the world, and the idea of ‘the contemporary’. I worked alongside Johnny when up in Glasgow at the School of Art, at an inflection point it now seems, in that fine place. It was good to have him there then, to teach me how to teach and to give me a foot up, which he did. He is a prolific writer, so seek out his other works, and see him lecture live if you can. For more on Johnny: w. gsa.ac.uk/johnny_rodger w. thedrouth.org Cheers. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Music credits: Bruno Gillick