A is for Architecture Podcast

Cultural historian Dr Robyne Calvert discusses her recent book, The Mack: Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the Glasgow School of Art in the 119th episode of A is for Architecture. Published by Yale University Press, the book is a detailed study of The Mackintosh Building, one of the great icons of modern architecture, and its reconstruction, engaging with a whole host of significant - and sometimes paradoxical - issues for design practice: conservation, reconstruction, authenticity, pastiche, social value. These are strange discussions, perhaps. As Robyne puts it: ‘my perspective of buildings is that there's this sense for some folk that they're these, […] fixed monuments. We think of buildings as these iconic things that don't change, and they're, they're symbols of, […] our cities and all of that kind of stuff, but actually, that's completely wrong. Buildings change almost more than anything. They change through our use. They change through our interaction. We damage them. We change, we alter them. We do all kinds of stuff. And they're meant to change. They're not fixed monuments at all. [...] no one would blink an eye at duplicating […] Macintosh chairs […] but you make a copy of a building, and it's like, what are you doing?’ A great book, the best subject, and a fantastic writer and speaker. Therefore, a top episode. Robyne was Mackintosh Research Fellow at Glasgow School of Art from 2015 to 2021. She can be found on X, LinkedIn and on her website. The Mack is linked above. Thanks for listening. +  Music credits: ⁠Bruno Gillick

⁠In Episode 117 of A is for Architecture’s landscape architect Richard J Weller, discusses his beautiful book, To the Ends of the Earth: A Grand Tour for the 21st Century, published by Birkhauser this year.  The book develops the historical practice of the Grand Tour – ‘an intellectual, cultural undertaking that was sort of a finishing school and an education for the aristocracy’ where, by travelling to the great sites of Antiquity, they would ‘buy art and take ideas and influences back home with them to England and model their gardens and their villas and their follies and their salons on the things that they had purchased and been influenced by’. Richard’s selection of 120 places ‘are emblematic of the contemporary global, planetary cultural conditions, [with text and drawings that delivers a ‘clear-eyed account of what these places are as a form of empirical evidence as to what we as a species have become in the Anthropocene.’ It's a fascinating book that touches on issues of aestheticization, the touristic gaze, virtuality and, possibly, a revived moral wanderlust. Richard is Professor Emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania’s Weitzman School of Design and Co-Founder, The Ian L. McHarg Center for Urbanism & Ecology.   Thanks for listening. +  Music credits: ⁠Bruno Gillick

A is for Architecture’s 116th episode features the architect, writer, public speaker, TED-talker and all round polymath, Michael Pawlyn, discussing Flourish: Design Paradigms for Our Planetary Emergency, which he co-wrote with urbanist, curator and writer, Sarah Ichioka and published with Triarchy Press in 2021. It’s a challenge, what Michael articulates: ‘What we suggest is that we - all of us - need to get better at distinguishing the maladapted frames and stories and metaphors, and articulate new, more regenerative ones. And I just want to caveat that ‘new’ in many cases, are newly appreciated worldviews, or mindsets, because many of these are examples of indigenous thinking that have endured for many 1000s of years, but were overlooked during the Industrial Age. And sometimes this is really quite uncomfortable, realizing that our existing worldviews are pretty seriously flawed.’  But it’s also an invitation, so have a listen and find out what. You can find Michael at his practice, Exploration and on Instagram. You can find the book at flourish-book.com, linked above.   Thanks for listening. +  Music credits: ⁠Bruno Gillick

⁠Episode 115 of A is for Architecture is a conversation with Sofia Singler, Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow and College Lecturer in Architecture at St John’s College, Cambridge. We discuss parts of her book, The Religious Architecture of Alvar, Aino and Elissa Aalto, which she published with Lund Humphries in 2023. Sofia says “my sense is that [Alvar Aalto] really valued religion and not just Lutheranism, and Finland, […] and specifically Christianity, as part of an unchanging European cultural tradition. And the attraction, the appeal, the value, the beauty of religion, and Christianity, in particular for him was that the message was always the same. And I suppose for that reason, the idea of renewing things and shaking things up and coming up with a new liturgy and a new building type felt a bit too radical for him, which is really interesting, given that, of course, he was quite radical himself as a designer. […] when it comes to religious projects, I think there was a degree of perhaps nervousness […] Out of a fear that perhaps these changes were too much and that they risked losing some of the cultural value of religion’. You can find Sofia on the Cambridge University website here, and the book is linked above.   Thanks for listening. +  Music credits: ⁠Bruno Gillick

⁠In Episode 114 of A is for Architecture Jane Rendell, Professor in Critical Spatial Practice at The Bartlett, UCL, discusses some aspects of her recently republished book, The Architecture of Psychoanalysis: Spaces of Transition, which came out with Bloomsbury in the spring. Jane says ‘I think what I'm more interested in is how architecture can allow us to think psychoanalysis differently, as well as allow us to look for things in psychoanalytic theory. For example, the spatial drawings of different psychic concepts like conscious, pre-conscious, unconscious or ego, Id, super ego. Freud uses these incredible drawings of these phenomena. So there are all sorts of spatial diagrams that by thinking architecturally one looks at in a different way […]. Architecture helps you think about psychoanalytic drawings, about spatial metaphors. […] But I think also, what becomes interesting is how one can start to think about the […] most architectural part of psychoanalysis [which] is probably the setting, the physical place in which that psychoanalytic relationship takes place.’ You can find Jane at her website here, and on the UCL website here. She is multi-located across the internet through her various activities.   Thanks for listening. +  Music credits: ⁠Bruno Gillick

⁠Episode 113 of A is for Architecture’s is a conversation with Cécile Brisac, founder of Atelier Brisac, a practice based in London and Paris, with a body of work produced since Atelier Brisac's founding in 2019, and previously with Brisac Gonzalez, and that includes the Museum of World Cultures, Gothenburg, Pajol Sports Centre, Paris, the Performing Arts Center, Aurillac, France and more recently housing at Lot 04A in Batignolles, Paris and Allée du Parc, Massy, France. Describing her practice’s work, Cécile says ‘we're doing buildings that are uplifting, that have a certain amount of clarity, that are, you know, welcoming, and based around the users [and] designed with a sense of care. […]  in parallel to that is working at the scale of the city […] If you think of the word elegance in the engineering field […] the definition is something like ‘finding a solution to a range of problems that may not be connected to begin with’. […] that's what we're doing in a way.’ An elegant expression of complex things. You can find Atelier Brisac on Instagram, and at atelierbrisac.com.   Thanks for listening. +  Music credits: ⁠Bruno Gillick

⁠A is for Architecture’s 112th episode is with the British architect, Tony Fretton. Previously founder and principal of Tony Fretton Architects, and more recently acting as a design consultant, and previously Chair of Architecture and Interiors at TU Delft, Tony’s work includes Westkaai, Residential Towers, Antwerp, The British Embassy, Warsaw, Art Museum, Fuglsang, Denmark, and the The Red House and the Camden Arts Centre, London. Speaking of his work on galleries, Tony says:  ‘I think it's much more subtle and much more interesting to make buildings which sometimes are impressive and visible, and sometimes […] very low visibility. That's much more interesting, much more intellectually satisfying. And how can you make somebody feel comfortable, without [them] even seeing you do it? That's the measure of a good host, a good person, that you let people see the work. […] In Furslang we made a series of rooms which are different in character: one is for temporary exhibitions, and the other for small scale works in gold frames, and then there was section on Danish Impressionism. But each of them shares a vocabulary but it's treated in slightly different ways so that as you go through the room, you see the art but in the periphery of your vision the room stimulates you’. Sums it up rather neatly. You can find Tony on Instagram, on at tonyfretton.com, too.   Thanks for listening. +  Music credits: ⁠Bruno Gillick

⁠Episode 111 of A is for Architecture⁠ is a conversation with Des Fitzgerald, Professor of Medical Humanities and Social Sciences at University College Cork, about his fairly recent and quite well-covered book, The City of Today is a Dying Thing: In Search of the Cities of Tomorrow, which he published this year with Faber & Faber. Green urbanism is undergirded by an expectation – a belief? - that it will deliver on modernism’s promises of emancipated, healthful lives. The City of Today contests this. As Des explains, ‘the book is really an attempt to start […] thinking critically about the growing trend towards green, traditional, small, human scale - I would even say 15 minute - cities [and] that kind of vision of the city is something we need to develop critical language for. […] there's a pretty close mapping between 19th century discourse of the cities effect on character or its capacity to degenerate particular sorts of character in a heritable way [...] and our own discourse about the relationship between particular shapes of buildings and mental health disorders.’ A little bit saucy and rather funny, man, book and podcast. You can find Des professionally at UCC and on X. Thanks for listening. +  Music credits: ⁠Bruno Gillick

⁠In Episode 110 of A is for Architecture⁠ Victoria Jane Marshall, senior lecturer in the Department of Architecture at the National University of , discusses themes and methods underpinning her recent book, Periurban Cartographies: Kolkata’s Ecologies and Settled Ruralities, which she published with Oro Editions in spring this year. As Victoria notes, an increasingly public concept, the periurban describe those parts of urban peripheries that are ‘generally imagined […] as “becoming urban” and generally, in doing so, it sort of erases the rural in the imagination - of it just being a zone which is on its way to becoming urban, like a transition zone’. Instead, Victoria proposes, thorough the lens of a deep mapping in Kolkata, Bengal, we might instead ‘look more flat, and more even, at everything that's going on, and, and not bifurcate, not separate urban and rural, and not separate society and nature, but look at how they're all entangled together.’ It's a beautiful book, and Victoria's a great talker, the mapping is wonderful, so listen to her, see the book, and get freshness. You can find Victoria professionally at her work and on LinkedIn. The book is linked above. Thanks for listening. +  Music credits: ⁠Bruno Gillick

⁠Episode 109 of A is for Architecture⁠ has architect, professor and writer, Charles Holland, discussing his new book, How to Enjoy Architecture: A Guide for Everyone, published by Yale University Press this year. As Charles says, How to Enjoy Architecture is ‘not a history of architecture, and it's definitely not a kind of polemic’. Rather, it ‘tries to open up architecture outside of a sort of standard linear history’ and is instead ‘a plea for more tolerance and pluralism, and for less condemnation […] it tries to say, there might be buildings that you don't like, but they might still be good. They might still be interesting. Just because they don't fit your tastes, that doesn't mean that they should be condemned in some way. So it tries to sort of make a plea for more interest and less condemning of things.’  A noble ideal. Have a listen and feel something. You can find Charles on his practice’s website, on Instagram and X. The book is linked above. Thanks for listening. +  Music credits: ⁠Bruno Gillick