A is for Architecture Podcast

In Episode 133 of A is for Architecture, I speak with architect, academic, and writer Lorens Holm .  We explore the fascinating intersection of architecture, psychoanalysis, and the public realm, themes Lorens addresses in his book, Reading Architecture with Freud and Lacan: Shadowing the Public Realm , (Routledge 2023) where Holm examines how Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalytic theory can illumi...

On Episode 132 of A is for Architecture  I spoke with architect and architectural historian John Stewart, to discuss the intersections of art, architecture and society through his recent book, British Architectural Sculpture: 1851–1951 , published by Lund Humphries earlier this year.   British Architectural Sculpture: 1851-1951  explores a century of architectural sculpture in the UK, highlighting...

For Episode 131 of A is for Architecture  I was joined by Professor Sue Brownill , an expert in urban planning and the development of London Docklands to discuss her advocacy, research and writing. As the author of Developing London’s Docklands: Another Great Planning Disaster? (1990, SAGE Publications), Sue delves into the complex history of the Docklands' transformation and the socio-economic co...

On Episode 130 of A is for Architecture , Tom Morton, architect and principal of Arc Architects , an architecture practice based in Fife, Scotland, discusses his and Becky Little’s innovative Earthbound Orkney project, a creative practice which seeks to redefine our connection to the natural world through art, design and community engagement in Orkney. In this episode, Tom shares his vision for Ea...

⁠On Episode 129 of A is for Architecture , Dr Beth Weinstein, Associate Professor of Architecture and at the University of Arizona, discusses her recent book, Architecture and Choreography: Collaborations in Dance, Space and Time , published by Routledge in March 2024. As Beth says, recounting her awareness of this subject, ‘I think that that encounter as a 20 something year old was the first mome...

In Episode 128 of the A is for Architecture podcast, architect, journalist and scholar Austin Williams discusses his work and practice, and his ongoing Future Cities Project , specifically the Five Critical Essays series.  Austin says ‘the idea behind [The Future Cities Project/ Five Critical Essays] was just to say that [architectural] debates are fairly stagnant, or unidirectional, or one track’...

Dr Tanzil Shafique discusses his forthcoming book, City of Desire: An Urban Biography of the Largest Slum in Bangladesh , on Episode 127 of A is for Architecture .  Published by Bloomsbury, and out in November, City of Desire describes ‘Karail, the largest informal settlement in Bangladesh [and] the production of informal urbanism through a brand-new approach rooted in deep ethnography and spatial...

In Episode 126 of A is for Architecture , Gabriel Esquivel, director of the T4T Lab, speaks about  Design Technology and Digital Production: An Architecture Anthology , which he edited, and was published by Routledge in 2023. The book ‘engages and deploys a variety of discourses, topics, criteria, pedagogies, and technologies, including some of today’s most influential architects, practitioners, a...

Episode 125 of A is for Architecture is a conversation with historian Dr Jessica Kelly, Reader in Design and Architectural History at London Metropolitan University. We discuss her 2022 book, No More Giants: J.M. Richards, Modernism and The Architectural Review , published by Manchester University Press. It’s an interesting story, one that mirrors the development of the profession, and perhaps eve...

⁠On Episode 124 of A is for Architecture Graham Haughton and Iain White tell me about their excellent book, Why Plan? Theory for Practitioners , published by Lund Humphries in 2019. On the reason for theory for planning, Graham suggests: ‘ to a certain extent, theories sometimes can make reality. […] you could argue that some of Patsy Healy's work around collaborative and communicative plannin...

Episode 123 of A is for Architecture is a discussion with Henrik Schoenefeldt , Professor of Sustainable Architecture at the School of Architecture, Design & Planning, University of Kent, about his research into the work and influence of the Scottish physician David Boswell Reid on the environmental design underpinning Barry and Pugin’s Palace of Westminster, London, UK. Initially an AHRC-fund...

In this episode of A is for Architecture, Dell Upton, Professor Emeritus of Architecture, UC Berkeley and Professor and Chair of Art History at UCLA , speaks about his book, American Architecture: A Thematic History , published by Oxford University Press in 2019. To the question, What is American architecture? Dell suggests ‘That is a very long and vexed question, not only with American architectu...

The title of this year’s Design History Society Annual Conference is Border Control: Excursion, Incursion and Exclusion and for this episode of A is for Architecture, three of the conference’s convenors, Dr Jessica Kelly, Professor Victoria Kelley and Professor Cat Rossi, took a bit of time to talk about it with me.  The conference blurb states: ‘Whether geopolitical, human and non-human, or digit...

Professor Nigel Cross is the podcasts' 120th guest, Emeritus Professor of Design Studies at the Open University, design researcher who played a pivotal role in establishing design as an academic discipline, Editor in Chief of the journal Design Studies between 1984-2017, developing the concept of design thinking along the way. We speak about the second edition of his book, Design Thinking: Und...

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 sometime...

⁠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 trave...

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...

⁠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 [A...

⁠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,...

⁠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 re...

⁠ 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 Hous...

⁠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 ?...

⁠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 periurb...

⁠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...

⁠ A is for Architecture’s ⁠  108th episode is a conversation with urban designer and President of the Congress for the New Urbanism , Mallory B.E. Baches.  With roots in the works of Jane Jacobs and Lewis Mumford, and later through Leon Krier and Christopher Alexander, the CNU was founded in 1993 as a ‘planning and development approach based on the principles of how cities and towns had been built...