Architecture Masters

Listen in Apple Podcasts In 2017 I setup the Architecture Masters podcast, which later became the podcast for the London Festival of Architecture. The podcast ran for over three years. There were relatively few architecture podcasts around at the time. But despite the name, it was never really intended to be a podcast about architecture. I was more interested in the people behind the architecture....

For this episode of Architecture Masters we’re joined by Frank Anatole, Principal Architect at Network Rail. Network Rail oversees a vast network of built environment infrastructure across the UK including over 2,500 stations, 30,000 bridges and tunnels, as well as countless maintenance depots, signal boxes and other infrastructure buildings that all too often go unseen. Frank and his team don’t g...

On the programme today we’re joined by Dale Sinclair, Director of Innovation for the global infrastructure consultancy Aecom. Over the years much of Dale’s work has focused on the future of the architecture profession, and much of our conversation today involves future gazing. Dale grew up in Edinburgh and went on to study architecture at the Mackintosh School of Architecture in Glasgow. I first m...

On the programme this week we’re joined by Sheng-Yuan Huang founder of Fieldoffice Architects. Sheng-Yuan was born in Taipai and initially studied architecture at Tunghai University in Taichung – Taiwan’s second city – where he graduated in 1986. Taiwan – officially the Republic of China – was governed under Martial Law until 1987, which marked the start of a transition to more democratic freedoms...

On the programme this week we’re joined by Sofie De Caigny, Director of VAi, the Flanders Architecture Institute. The VAi is based in Antwerp – across two buildings – with gallery space and public programmes taking place in the International Arts Campus deSingel. As well as their extensive public programme, every two years the institute produces the Flanders Architecture Review, a major publicatio...

For the eleventh episode of Architecture Masters at Home, we’re joined by Giovanna Borasi, Director of the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal. Giovanna joined the CCA in 2005 as the Curator for Contemporary Architecture, going on to become Chief Curator in 2014 and then Director of the Centre at the beginning of this year. Having first trained as an architect in Milan, in her […]

On this week’s Architecture Masters at Home we’re joined by Roger Hawkins, co-founder of Hawkins\Brown. Russel Brown and Roger Hawkins founded the firm in 1988 after having worked together at Rock Townsend in the 1980s. The two partners started the firm with an initial determination, as they saw it, not to get trapped working on smaller residential projects. The strategy paid off. The firm is [&#8...

For the ninth episode of the LFA’s Architecture Masters at Home, we’re joined by Ellie Stathaki, Architecture Editor at Wallpaper* Magazine. Wallpaper* Magazine was founded in 1996 and quickly became one of the world’s most influential international lifestyle titles. Wallpaper* – with tagline “the stuff that refines you” covers design and architecture, fashion, travel, art, and lifestyle in its ow...

For the eighth episode of Architecture Masters at Home, we’re joined by Laura King, Director at Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates in London. Over the last few weeks many of us have been getting used to the new normal of remote working. But for many global architecture firms like KPF, working on international projects with clients and design teams based across the world, remote working – […]

For our seventh episode of Architecture Masters at Home we’re joined by the artist-designer Yinka Ilori – described by The Financial Times as one of the world’s most in demand designers. Born in London, much of his work references his West African heritage. Yinka established his studio in 2017 with a loan from the Prince’s Trust, producing up-cycled furniture that were as much furniture as [&#8230...

For the sixth episode of Architecture Masters at Home, we’re joined by Maria Louise Long, Senior Associate at Chris Dyson Architects. Maria Louise Long. Image courtesy of the practice. Maria Louise grew up in South West Ireland and went on to study architecture at the Scott Sutherland School of Architecture in Aberdeen before moving to London some 10 years ago in search of work during […]

For the fifth episode of Architecture Masters at Home, we’re joined by Peter Murray and Nick McKeogh. Like many organisations trying to adapt to these challenging and quickly changing circumstances, at the LFA we’ve naturally been re-examining our core purpose and thinking about how we can continue to support the profession and the wider city. The LFA was founded by Peter Murray in 2004, and [&#82...

In Episode 4 of Architecture Masters at Home we’re joined by the Managing Editor of the Architects’ Journal, Will Hurst. Founded in 1895, the AJ remains the journal of record for the architecture profession in the UK. We talk about the role of a Managing Editor, about producing an entire issue from home, and balancing the resources of investigative journalism with running a profitable magazine. [&...

For the third episode of Architecture Masters at Home we’re joined by Steven Harding, founder of Goodfellow Communications. Goodfellow run the press and PR for the LFA, helping the festival and our partners reach new audiences, both during the festival and throughout the year. Tamsie and Owen talk to Steven about the importance of good communications in architecture, starting your own business fro...

Welcome to the second episode of our new format podcast – Architecture Masters at Home. In this episode LFA Director Tamsie Thomson and LFA Deputy Director Owen Wainhouse discuss this year’s festival theme of ‘power’ and how it relates to architecture – particularly in our new world of working from home. Every year the London Festival of Architecture takes a different theme to inspire its […...

From our homes to yours. Welcome to our new format festival podcast – ‘Architecture Masters at Home’. Whilst we all get accustomed to working from home, we wanted to bring you some insight from the festival and our key partners as we look at how the wider architecture sector adapts to working in different ways – and spending much more time at home. This is […]

On the programme this week is the designer Paul Priestman. Paul started his business designing the packaging for Boots’ Number 7 cosmetics. Some 30 years later PriestmanGoode, the firm he started along with Nigel Goode, has become the go-to firm responsible for designing many of the seats, aircraft cabins, carriages, berths, beds, hotel rooms and spaces we inhabit when we travel. Paul Priestman. I...

On the programme this week our guest is Patrik Schumacher, Principal of Zaha Hadid Architects. When Patrik joined the practice in 1988, Zaha Hadid had just four other employees, based out of a couple of rooms in a converted Victorian school on Bowling Green Lane in Clerkenwell. Patrik Schumacher. Image courtesy of the practice. And the practice had no built work to its name, but […]

Our guest this week is Deborah Saunt, co-founder of the architecture practice DSDHA. Deborah was born in Australia but moved as a child to the UK via a brief stint in Kenya. It was in Scotland that she first studied architecture at Edinburgh College of Art. She later studied via a scholarship at the University of Kansas in the USA, and then at Cambridge University […]

On the programme this week our guest is Hattie Hartman, Sustainability Editor at the Architects’ Journal. The Architects’ Journal was founded in 1895 as The Builder’s Journal and Architectural Record, before being taking its current name in 1919. Some 100 years later the journal still remains one of the profession’s most respected and widely read publications. But our guest didn’t start out as a j...

Our guest this week is the architect Piers Gough CBE. Piers was born in Brighton in the south of England and in 1965 began his studies at the Architectural Association in London – studying under Peter Cook (of Archigram frame) and Elia Zenghelis (who when on to co-found the Office of Metropolitan Architecture). It was at the AA that Piers studied with Nick Campbell, Roger […]

On the programme this week we speak to Peter Clegg and Keith Bradley, Partners at Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios. In 1978 Peter Clegg and Richard Feilden founded their practice as Feilden Clegg Design in Bath in the west of England. Keith Bradley subsequently joined the practice in 1987. It wasn’t until 1998 – some 20 years after their founding – that the practice opened a […]

Our guest this week is the managing director of the architectural recruitment firm Adrem. Del Hossain was born and grew up in Manchester before moving to London to study architecture – first at London South Bank University and then at the Bartlett School of Architecture. After working at a number of practices including Orms and Foster + Partners he left to briefly setup his own […]

Our guest this week is the architect Kirsten Lees, Managing Partner at Grimshaw Architects. Kirsten was elected as the London studio’s first female Managing Partner in May 2018. In a somewhat unique arrangement Grimshaw’s Managing Partner is elected by the studio’s nine Partners for a three year term, renewable once, helping to balance renewal and stability in the practice’s senior leadership. Kir...

Our guest this week is the architect Jonathan Darke. Jonathan was born to British Parents in Pennsylvania in the USA. His father’s work as a Civil Engineer led him and the family to move extensively throughout his childhood, living amongst other places in Iran and Pakistan. Later, back in the UK, Jonathan studied architecture at the University of Brighton and then at London Metropolitan University...