Scratching the Surface

Ashley Mendelsohn is an architecture curator, educator, and multidisciplinary designer focused on engaging and strengthening communities by demystifying the barriers to access and understanding. From 2015 to 2020, she was the Assistant Curator of Architecture and Digital Initiatives at the Guggenheim Museum and previously founded the 40 Kirkland Gallery at Harvard GSD. In this episode, Jarrett and...

Nina Valerie Kolowratnik is an architect, researcher, and PhD candidate at the Human Rights Centre at Ghent University. Her research focuses on indigenous people’s knowledge in human rights courts, migration, and notational systems. She’s the author of the book The Language of Secret Proof: Indigenous Truth and Representation. In this episode, Jarrett and Nina talk about architecture education and...

Julia Watson is a designer, activist, leading expert on indigenous technologies. She’s the author of Lo—TEK: Design for Radical Indigenism, teaches in the design programs at Harvard and Columbia, and runs Julia Watson Studio, an experimental landscape and urban design studio. In this conversation, recorded live at the 2020 AIGA Design Conference, Jarrett and Julia talk about what we can learn from...

Daniel Barber is an Associate Professor of Architecture and Chair of the Graduate Group in Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design. His research focuses on architecture and climate change, both historic and contemporary. He is the author, most recently, of Modern architecture and Climate: Design before Air Conditioning . In this episode, Jarrett and Daniel t...

Denis Weil is the dean of IIT Institute of Design in Chicago. After studying chemical engineering, Denis has worked across every sector of the design industry, from product design to marketing, including leading design and innovation at McDonald’s, studying civic design at Harvard, and serving as an innovation fellow for Bloomberg Philanthropies. In this wide-ranging conversation, Jarrett and Deni...

Martha Thorne is the Dean of IE School of Architecture and Design and the executive director of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, a latter of which she’s held since 2005 and will be stepping down from next month. Previously she was Associate Curator of Architecture at the Art Institute of Chicago. In this episode, Jarrett and Martha talk about the expanding definitions of architecture, the intersec...

Robert Wiesenberger is a curator and historian of modern and contemporary art, design, and architecture. He is currently the Associate Curator of Special Projects at The Clark Art Institute and on the faculty at Williams Graduate Program in Art History. He previously was a curatorial fellow at the Harvard Art Museum where he worked with the Bauhaus collection and co-authored, with David Reinfurt,...

Jarrett Earnest is an artist and writer. His book, What It Means To Write About Art: Interviews with Art Critics, was released in 2018 and features longform interviews with art writers, historians, theorists, and critics. Jarrett’s writing has appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, The Village Voice, Vulture, and The Los Angeles Review of Books. In this episode, the Jarretts talk about the strange similar...

Spencer Bailey is a writer, editor, and journalist. He is the co-founder of the media company The Slowdown and the author of the book In Memory of: Designing Contemporary Memorials. He’s also editor-at-large for Phaidon, contributing editor at Town and Country and was previously the editor-in-chief at Surface. In this episode, Jarrett and Spencer talk about the design of memorials, how he started...

Janet Abrams is a writer, editor, journalist, and artist. Her new book, Daddy Wouldn’t Buy Me a Bauhaus: Profiles in Architecture and Design, collects her profiles of designers like Rem Koolhaas, Frank Gehry, Muriel Cooper, and Paul Rand from her time writing for Blueprint and I.D. magazine. In this episode, Jarrett and Janet reflect on the design writing of the late eighties, talk about the art o...

Alice Grandoit, Nu Goteh, and Marquise Stillwell are the co-founders of Deem, a new journal that positions design as a social practice. Their first issue, Design for Dignity, features a range of stories, interviews, and profiles of practitioners both inside and outside design. In this conversation, Jarrett talks with them about Deem’s goals, opening up design to more people, and how publishing a p...

Nikil Saval is a writer, editor, activist, and the newly elected Pennsylvania state senator. He was previously a co-editor of n+1 and wrote about design, architecture, and urbanism for The New Yorker and The New York Times. In this episode, recorded right before the election, Jarrett and Nikil talk about the intersection of design and politics, how writing and editing are similar to legislating, a...

Alicia Cheng is a founding partner of the New York design studio MGMT and the author of the book This Is What Democracy Looked Like: A Visual History of the Printed Ballot. She previously worked as a designer for Method, was a co-design director at the Cooper Hewitt, and is currently an external critic for the MFA program at RISD. In this episode, Jarrett and Alicia talk about how the design of ba...

Kyle Chayka writes about art, technology, design, and the systems that shape culture. His first book, The Longing for Less, is a cultural history of minimalism that looks at minimalist movements in art, music, and philosophy. In this episode, Jarrett and Kyle talk about how minimalism often obscures complex systems, how all culture writing is also design writing, and the role of structure in his w...

Annelys de Vet is a Belgium-based designer, educator and researcher. From 2009 to 2019, she was the the director of the design program at the Sandberg Instituut and is the editor of Design Dedication a new book collecting the work and thinking during her tenure. Now she’s leading a new masters program on Disarming Design that is committed to design practices in situations of oppression. In this ep...

Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli is an architect, urbanist, teacher and is the curator of the Russian Pavilion for the 2020 Venice Architecture Biennale. He worked at OMA from 2007 to 2020, and became partner in 2014. Earlier this year, he established 2050+ his own multidisciplinary studio operating at the intersections of design, technology, politics, and the environment. In this conversation, Jarre...

Paul Andersen and Paul Preissner are the curators of the American Pavilion for the 2020 Venice Architecture Biennale. Their project, American Framing draws attention to both the most influential and overlooked contributions to architecture: wood framing. They previously have collaborated on a variety of architecture and curatorial projects together. Additionally, Andersen is the principal of Denve...

Danielle Aubert is a graphic designer, educator, writer, and political organizer. She’s the author of, most recently, The Detroit Printing Co-Op: The Politics of the Joys of Printing and an Associate Professor in Graphic Design at Wayne State University. In this episode, Jarrett and Danielle talk about the Detroit Printing Co-op and expanding design history, the politics of graphic design, and whe...

Maryam Fanni and Sara Kaaman, are two thirds of the design collective MMS, along with Matilda Flodmark, collaborating since 2012 on investigations and writings on visual culture, graphic design, and historiography from feminist perspectives. MMS recently published Natural Enemies of Books: A Messy History of Women in Printing and Typography . In this episode, Jarrett is joined by Maryam and Sara t...

Dr. Bon Ku is an emergency room physician, assistant dean for Health and Design and director of the Health Design Lab at Jefferson University. He’s also the co-author, with Ellen Lupton, of the new book Health Design Thinking. In this conversation, Jarrett and Bon talk about the intersection of design and healthcare, how COVID-19 exposes the faults in our healthcare system, and how medical school...

Eric Heiman is a designer, writer, and educator. He’s principal and co-founder of Volume, a San Francisco-based design studio, Associate Professor of Graphic Design at CCA, and has written for Emigre, Design Observer, Eye and other publications. In this conversation, Jarrett and Eric talk about how graphic design in San Francisco has changed, the gaps between education and practice, and the role o...

Deanna Van Buren is an architect, activist, and the design director and co-founder of Designing Justice + Designing Spaces, an architecture and real estate development non-profit working to end mass incarceration by building infrastructure that attacks its root causes: poverty, racism, unequal access to resources, and the criminal justice system itself. In this conversation, Deanna and Jarrett tal...

Paul Thompson is the Vice-Chancellor of the Royal College of Art. Before this, he was the director of the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum and the director of the Design Museum in London. In this conversation, Jarrett and Paul talk about his background in comparative literature and how that’s influenced his career in design and administration, learning on the job, and how expanding definitions of desig...

Winka Dubbeldam is an architect and educator. She’s the principal of Archi-Tectonics, the research-based architecture firm she founded in 1994 and is the chair of the architecture program and a professor of practice at the University of Pennsylvania. In this conversation, Winka and Jarrett talk about her interest in philosophy, how research shapes her work as both a designer and teacher, and the i...

Denise Gonzales Crisp is a graphic designer, educator, and writer. She’s a professor of Graphic Design and director of graduate programs for Graphic Design at North Carolina State University. Her writing has appeared in Eye, Emigre, Design Observer, Design and Culture, and Items Magazine. In this episode, Denise and Jarrett talk about the differences between her writing and design processes, desig...