Scratching the Surface

David Godshall and Kasey Toomey are partners at Terremoto, a landscape architecture design studio based in Los Angeles and the Bay Area. Founded by Godshall and Alain Peauroi, Terremoto creates gardens that blend material exploration and conceptual ideas that seek to do right by the land while also acknowledging the laborer, the wildlife, and Indigenous communities on whose land they now live and...

Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby use design as a medium to interrogate our relationship to reality. They are the authors of multiple books, including 2013’s Speculative Everything and 2025’s Not Here, Not Now. Until recently, they were professors of Design and Social Inquiry at The New School where they ran the Design Realities Lab. In this conversation, Jarrett talks with Dunne and Raby about how the...

Nick Foster is a futures designer and author of the new book Could Should Might Don’t: How We Think About The Future. Trained as an industrial designer, he has spent his career exploring the future for a range of companies, most recently as the Head of Design at Google X, where he led a team of designers, researchers, and prototypers in the company’s “moonshot factory.” In this conversation, Jarre...

Joel Towers is the president of The New School in New York City. Trained as an architect, President Towers joined the school in 2004, first as a faculty member and director of Sustainable Design and Urban Ecology and most recently as executive dean of Parsons School of Design from 2009 to 2019. In this conversation, Jarrett and President Towers talk about the state of higher education, the shiftin...

Lydia Kallipoliti is an architect, engineer, and scholar. She is an assistant professor at the Cooper Union School of Architecture, the author of the book The Architecture of Closed Worlds and is the co-curator of the 2022 Tallinn Architecture Biennale. In this conversation, Jarrett and Lydia talk about being an architect who doesn’t build, Lydia’s concept of ‘immersive scholarship’, and alternati...

Zak Kyes is the creative director and founder of Zak Group where he leads projects for cultural and commercial clients across scales and mediums. From 2006 to 2016, he was the art director of the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London and in 2007 he curated with Mark Owens Forms of Inquiry: The Architecture of Critical Graphic Design. In this episode, Jarrett and Zak talk about...

Katherine McCoy is a graphic designer and educator. From 1971 to 1995, she was the co-artist-in-residence with Michael McCoy of the pioneering design department at the Cranbook Academy of Art. With Mike, she is the co-author of Cranbrook Design: The New Discourse and continued to teach at a variety of schools around the world. In this conversation, Katherine and Jarrett talk about the state of gra...

Adrian Lahoud is an architect, urban designer, researcher, and the dean of the School of Architecture at the Royal College of Art. Previously he was director of the MA program at the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths and a research fellow at Forensic Architecture. In this conversation, Jarrett and Adrian talk about the intersection of decolonization and decarbonization, architecture a...

Peter Mendelsund is a graphic designer, writer, and musician. Until recently he was the associate art director at Alfred A. Knopf where he designed book covers for everyone from James Joyce to Franz Kafka, Stieg Larsson and Simone De Beauvoir. In 2014, he published What We See When We Read and Cover and will publish his first novel, Same Same, next year. In this conversation, Peter and I talk abou...

Sarah Whiting is an architect, writer, editor, and the current dean of Harvard GSD. She is a design principal and co-founder of WW Architecture and from 2010 to 2019, she served as the dean of Rice University's School of Architecture. Her interdisciplinary research focuses on architecture's relationship with politics, economics, and society. Her writing has appeared in a range of publications from...

Hans Ulrich Obrist is a a curator, critic, and art historian. He’s the artistic director of the Serpentine Galleries in London and the author of many books, including Ways of Curating, A Brief History of Curating, and Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Curating But Were Afraid to Ask. In this wide-ranging conversation, Jarrett and Hans talk about the role of conversation and interviews in...

Sarah Ichioka is an urbanist, strategist, curator, and writer. She’s the author, with Michael Pawlyn, of Flourish: Design Paradigms for our Planetary Emergency and the founder of Desire Lines, a disciplinary studio that helps places, communities, and organizations chart paths toward thriving futures. In this conversation, Jarrett and Sarah talk about moving beyond sustainability towards regenerati...

Matt Owens is co-founder and Chief Design and Innovation Officer at Athletics, a brand studio based in Brooklyn, and author of the book, A Visible Distance: Craft, Creativity, and the Business of Design. A graduate of Cranbrook’s Graphic Design Program, he previously worked as an art director for Methodfive, founded a small design studio, One9nine, and self-published the Flash-experimental design...

Lara Lesmes and Fredrik Hellberg are the founders of Space Popular, an architecture studio that explores relationships between media and the built environment through research, design, and artworks. They are also professors at the Institute of Architecture at the University of Applied Arts Vienna where they run the Architectural Design Studio 2. In this conversation, Jarrett talks with Lara and Fr...

Julian Bleecker is a researcher, designer, engineer, and entrepreneur. He runs Near Future Laboratory, a platform and consultancy focused on design fiction. He is the author of Design Fiction: A Short Essay on Design, Science, Fact, and Fiction and co-author of The Manual of Design Fiction, among other titles. In this conversation, Jarrett and Julian talk about the origins of design fiction, how h...

Mike Pepi is a critic and technologist who writes about art, culture, and technology. He is the author of the new book, Against Platforms: Surviving Digital Utopia, which is both a work of technology criticism and an analysis of how we talk about Silicon Valley. His other writing has appeared in Frieze, e-flux, Artforum, and The Brooklyn Rail. In this conversation, Jarrett and Mike talk about the...

Elizabeth Diller is a partner and co-founder of Diller Scofidio + Renfro where she’s worked on a range of buildings including New York’s The Shed, the Highline, and an expansion of MoMA. Since 1981, the studio’s practices has spanned architecture, urban design, installation art, multi-media performance, digital media, and print, all of which is featured in their new monograph Architecture, Not Arc...

Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin are the founders of Formafantasma, a research-driven design studio based in Milan and Rotterdam that investigates the ecological, historical, political, and social forces shaping the discipline of design. In this conversation, Jarrett talks with Andrea and Simone about the role of research in their studio, moving between critical investigations and commercial c...

Nicolay Boyadjiev is an architect and creative director based between Copenhagen, Sofia and Mexico City. He is the Director of the Practice Lab at re:arc institute, where he oversees research, strategy and new explorations prototyping alternatives models for philanthropy in architecture. Previously, he was Co-Director of Strelka Institute’s influential design-research program in Moscow. In this co...

Jack Murphy is the executive editor of The Architect’s Newspaper. He studied architecture at MIT and Rice University and previously edited PLAT Journal and Cite, the publication of the Rice Design Alliance. In this episode, Jarrett and Jack talk about the history of The Architect’s Newspaper, the value of printed publications, and the relationship between design practice and design publishing. Lin...

Gregory Wessner is the Executive Director of the National Academy of Design, the New York-based non-profit founded in 1825 that promotes art and architecture in America through exhibition, education, and research. Before joining the National Academy, Gregory served as executive director of Open House New York, and in a variety of roles at the Architectural League of New York. In this episode, Jarr...

Noemi Biasetton is a design researcher, writer, and editor whose work focuses on design cultures and visual representation within the social and political dimension. She is the author of Superstorm: Design and Politics in the Age of Information, which was published earlier this year. In this episode, Jarrett and Noemi reflect on the design and media of the 2024 election, the changing roles of desi...

Federica Sofia Zambeletti is an architect, researcher, and storyteller. She’s the founder and managing director of KoozArch, a digital platform and research studio that explores architecture beyond the limits of the build form, which she founded in 2014 while she was a student at the Architectural Association. In this conversation, Jarrett and Federica talk about the origins and evolution of KoozA...

Petra Blaisse is the founder of Inside Outside, an Amsterdam-based design studio that focuses on textiles, interior design, gardens, and landscapes. Known for her long-running collaborations with OMA, Petra began her career in 1978 at the Stedelijk Museum in the department of Applied Arts. A new book on the studio’s work, Art Applied, was released earlier this year. In this conversation, Jarrett a...

Lesley-Ann Noel is a designer, researcher, and educator. She’s the author of Design Social Change and a co-editor of The Black Experience in Design. Earlier this year, Lesley-Ann was appointed the dean of design at OCAD University and she previously taught at North Carolina State University, Tulane University, Stanford University, and the University of the West Indies. In this conversation, Jarret...