A is for Architecture Podcast

Episode 20, Series 3 of A is for Architecture, is a discussion with Katie Lloyd Thomas, Professor of Architectural History and Theory at Newcastle University, about her 2021 book, Building Materials: Material Theory and the Architectural Specification, published by Bloomsbury. The book ‘offers a radical rethink of how materials, as they are constituted in architectural practice, are themselves constructed and […] uncovers [in the construction specification] a vast and neglected resource of architectural writing’. Katie can be found professionally here, and socially here. The Production Studies 2024 conference can be found here, and is still open for attendees. Available on Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts and Amazon Music.   Thanks for listening. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Music credits: Bruno Gillick + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

In Episode 19/3 of A is for Architecture, John Pawson speaks about his design education, work, ethos and practice. John is recognised as the preeminent minimalist architect of the age, with work including Calvin Klein shops, St John at Hackney Church (2020), the Abbey of Our Lady of Nový Dvůr, Czech Republic (2004) the Moritzkirche, Augsburg (2013) and the Sackler Crossing at Kew (2006). Last year, a new book was published on John’s work – John Pawson: Making Life Simpler, published by Phaidon, and written by Deyan Sudjic. His 1996 book, Minimum, was something like a phenomenon. You can find John on Instagram, and on his practice website. Available on Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, YouTube and Facebook . Thanks for listening. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Music credits: Bruno Gillick + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

Dana Cuff, Professor of Architecture and Urban Design, speaks about her book on architectures of spatial justice and the work of cityLAB. They discuss the importance of interdisciplinary approaches in addressing social justice, redefining design for spatial justice, making incremental moves in architecture, co-production in empowering communities, and engaging with history to understand broader context and preserve erased histories.

Episode 17/3 of ⁠A is for Architecture⁠, is a conversation with ⁠Rob Fiehn⁠, writer, communications consultant, Director of the ⁠London Society⁠ and Chair of the ⁠Museum of Architecture⁠, about the London Society’s 2023 London of the Future book, a collection of essays by experts from various disciplines – ‘engineering, urbanism, architecture, manufacturing, futurology, journalism and more’ – speculating on ‘how the metropolis might be governed, organized and designed in the years to come.’  London of the Future is a plush publication, as you would expect, full of smart ideas and lovely images. It follows 102 years on from the London Society’s original publication of the same name when, ‘under the editorship of the architect Sir Aston Webb [it] published a collection of essays […] some rather more futuristic than others.’ (Gilbert, D. (2004). London of the Future: The Metropolis Reimagined after the Great War. ⁠Journal of British Studies⁠). 2023’s edition is futuristic indeed, but not sci-fi. There are ideas that, without too much effort - or perhaps not any effort at all - may well come to pass. You can find the book on Merrell’s website here, and on the London Society website here. Rob professional alter ego is here, and he is on X here, LinkedIn here and Instagram too. 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 YouTube: youtube/channel

In Episode 16/3 of ⁠A is for Architecture⁠, I spoke with the architect Petra Marko, director of ⁠Marko & Placemakers⁠, creative director of visual communication company ⁠Milk⁠ and now Director of the ⁠Metropolitan Institute of Bratislava⁠, about her work, placemaking as an urban development approach and the role of temporary or meanwhile interventions as mechanisms for producing good, sustainable  urban spaces with clear identity. All this is beautifully described in her recent publication - and the stimulus for our conversation - Meanwhile City: How temporary interventions create welcoming places with a strong identity, published by ⁠Milk⁠ in 2022. Petra can be found can be found on the above websites, and on Instagram and LinkedIn. The book, Meanwhile City, can be found both via the Milk website to purchase, but also as a PDF to download here. Petra is a good speaker, so get set and listen. 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 15, Season 3 of  ⁠A is for Architecture⁠’s, Annette Fierro speaks about her book, Architectures of the Technopolis: Archigram and the British High Tech, published by ⁠Lund Humphries⁠ in November. High Tech has been the dominant style of British architecture for many decades, delivered in vast visions and buildings, in the work of acclaimed and revered designers like Richard Rodgers and Renzo Piano, Norman Foster, Nicholas Grimshaw and Terry Farrell, often in partnership with visionary engineers, particularly Ove Arup and Buro Happold. Growing off the back of a longstanding discourse, with roots in the utopic visions of early modernity, High Tech took its inspiration particularly from both the subversive, radical and audacious dream-worlds described in the design work of Cedric Price and Archigram, where the possibility of architecture-as-machine was deployed to deliver a civic, egalitarian, dramatic and joyful urban experience, one at once democratic and liberated, but also in the deep discontents in the failures of the dreich modernism of the postwar years. Annette can be found on the University of Pennsylvania’s Weitzman School of Design website here, where she serves as Associate Professor, on Instagram here, and on LinkedIn here. You can buy the book on the Lund Humphries website. Annette’s great, so have a listen. The book is well lush too. Available on Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music and YouTube. 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 14/3 of  ⁠A is for Architecture⁠’s, Rowan Moore speaks about his recent book, ⁠Property: The Myth the Built the World⁠, published by ⁠Faber & Faber⁠ this year. Rowan is the architecture critic at the Observer, and has previously published Why We Build (Picador/ Pan Macmillan, 2012), Anatomy of a Building (Little, Brown, 2014) and Slow Burn City: London in the Twenty-First Century (Picador/ Pan Macmillan, 2016). According to the publisher’s gloss, Property ‘asks how we have come to view our homes as investments – and […] offers hope for how things could be better, with reform that might enable the social wealth of property to be returned to society’.  One wonders, though, given modernity qua modernity, if this doesn’t amount to a petition for a new society. Rowan is here on Twitter, and his Observer profile is here. You can get Property online at the Faber & Faber website. Good, wholesome fun. Have a listen and see for yourself. 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 Youtube: youtube.studio

In the 13th episode of  A is for Architecture’s third series, I spoke with the remarkable architect and writer, Juhani Pallasmaa, former professor of architecture and dean at the Helsinki University of Technology, now incorporated as Aalto University. Pallasmaa’s work has been of huge importance to architects now active in the transformation of our towns and cities, with his description of a tactile, material and immanent embodiment visible in the work of almost all good, urban work now being built. His written work particularly stands, in a way, in counterpoint to the superficial and the visual, that occularcentric tendency born of late capitalist starcitecture, and the preferencing of the image over depth and the experiential. Central to our discussion were two of Pallasmaa’s great works – The Eyes of the Skin (John Wiley & Sons, 1996) and The Thinking Hand (John Wiley & Sons, 2009), both of which are worthy of continued study. You can listen to Jonathan Hale speak about Juhani’s inspiration, the phenomenologist philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, on A is for Architecture here. Before he and I recorded this episode, Juhani had received a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Paimio Sanatorium Foundation, at the Sanitorium itself, where he also gave a talk entitled "The Ethical Meaning of Architecture: The relational and existential essence of art". A joy and an undeserved privilege, getting to speak to a hero like this. 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 Series 3’s 12th episode of  A is for Architecture I spoke with architect, writer, and thinker Keller Easterling, Enid Storm Dwyer Professor and Director of the MED Program at Yale University, about her 2021 book, Medium Design: Knowing How to Work on the World, published by Verso. To quote James Graham in the Journal of Architectural Education, ‘Medium Design emerged into a world marked by […] a growing desire for change within the architectural profession. […] Is Medium Design the closing bracket of the 2010s in architectural theory, or a hinge between the “before” and the “after”’. It’s a good question, which Easterling’s book begins to dissect, recognising the language on which the discipline has grown dependent, proposing action in its stead. Medium Design: Knowing How to Work on the World is available on the Verso website – it’s quite affordable. Keller’s Yale profile is here, and her personal website here. You can watch Keller talk about the work at ETH Zurich in a lecture from a year ago here. Words, words, words, said sharp Hamlet. Well listen, and find out. 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 11, series 3 of A is for Architecture I spoke with architect Chris Dyson, principal of Chris Dyson Architects, and Dominic Bradbury, about his (their) new book, Chris Dyson Architects: Tradition and Modernity, published by Lund Humphries this year. Chris Dyson Architects’ practice has a reputation for sensitive modern work in historic contexts, which the book documents, describing in text and lovely images what the blurb says is the practice’s works’ ‘overriding sense of different elements – be they material, temporal or cultural – coming together into coherent wholes [making] architecture that feels old and new at the same time.’ Chris Dyson Architects: Tradition and Modernity is available on the Lund Humphries website here. Chris’ practice website is here, Instagram here, X here and LinkedIn here. There are a few nice bits online with Chris, such as this profile in Building Design here, and a couple of videos on YouTube - Architects at Home  and one on preserving and enhancing the heritage of The Goodsyard here. Dominic’s website is here; he has written a huge number of books on material culture, which are certainly worth a look. His Instagram is here, LinkedIn here, and X here. Old-new. What a fusion, as Jacques Lu Cont almost put 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