A is for Architecture Podcast

⁠ A is for Architecture’s ⁠  108th episode is a conversation with the architect Sam Jacob, principal of Sam Jacob Studio and Professor and head of Architectural Design Studio 3 in the Institute of Architecture (I oA) at the University of Applied Arts Vienna . Formerly founding director of FAT with Charles Holland and Sean Griffiths, Sam’s work includes exceptional buildings and adaptations, exhibi...

Episode 107 of  ⁠ A is for Architecture ⁠  is a discussion with Tim Ingold , Emeritus Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen about  Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture , published by Routledge in 2013.  Acts of making, as the blurb puts it, ‘creates knowledge, builds environments and transforms lives.’ The book reflects ‘on what it means to create things...

In Episode 106 of  ⁠ A is for Architecture ⁠  Sabina Andron talks about her book Urban Surfaces, Graffiti, and the Right to the City , which she published with Routledge this year.  The book discusses ‘the surfacescapes of our cities […] as material, visual, and legal territories [and] includes a critical history of graffiti and street art as contested surface discourses’ arguing for ‘surfaces as...

Episode 105 of  ⁠ A is for Architecture ⁠  is with Pier Vittorio Aureli , writer and educator, and founder and principal of Dogma , the much-acclaimed architecture and research group founded in 2002 by Pier Vittorio and Martino Tattara. We talk about Pier Vittorio's 2023 book, Architecture and Abstraction , published by MIT Press. Architecture and Abstraction , so the gloss has it, ‘argues for...

In Episode 104 of A is for Architecture , is a conversation with Paul Watt about his 2021 book, Estate Regeneration and Its Discontents: Public Housing, Place and Inequality in London , published by Bristol University Press in 2021. We discuss the story of council-supplied housing, and its transformation through various governments – not just Maggie’s Conservatives – from a common asset and social...

In Episode 103 of A is for Architecture , Aaron Betsky discusses his recent book The Monster Leviathan: Anarchitecture , published by MIT Press in January this year. Until recently Professor in the School of Architecture and Design at Virginia Tech, and with previous roles as the President of the School of Architecture at Taliesin, director of the Cincinnati Art Museum and the Netherlands Architec...

In Episode 102 of A is for Architecture , Nimi Attanayake and Tim O'Callaghan , founders and principals of nimtim architects , talk about their work, practice and the social role of the practice/s of architects and our architecture. Their body of work is very lovely, but it’s not just this, having a richness born of a dynamic ethicality. The question then is, is the fruit of good ethics good a...

In Episode 101 of A is for Architecture , Sophia Psarra,  Professor of Architecture and Spatial Design , the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, discusses some of her recent book,  Parliament Buildings: The Architecture of Politics in Europe , which she co-edited with Uta Staiger and Claudia Sternberg, and published in 2023. ‘Parliament Buildings brings together architecture, history, art histor...

In this, the 100 th episode of A is for Architecture  and the thirty-something in Series 3, Matthew Fuller speaks about his and Eyal Weizman’s 2021 book, Investigative Aesthetics: Conflicts and Commons in the Politics of Truth , published with Verso, which ‘draws on theories of knowledge, ecology and technology [to evaluate] the methods of citizen counter-forensics, micro-history...

Episode n/3 of A is for Architecture  is a conversation with Ashton Hamm , founding principal of uxo architects , a cooperative practice based in California, USA. Building on some themes and ideas in Ashton’s recent book, Practice Practice   (Oro Editions 2023), we discuss the what, why, where and how of cooperative, worker-owned practice. This is an American tale, of course, because each cooperat...

Episode 30ish/3 of A is for Architecture  is a conversation with Catherine Ingraham, writer and scholar, about Architecture’s Theory , part of MIT Press’ Writing Architecture Series.  As the publisher’s spiel has it, ‘architecture as a thinking profession materializes theory in the form of built work that always carries symbolic loads’. But can there even be architecture without theory?  Catherine...

Episode 29/3 of A is for Architecture  is a conversation with Professor Neelkanth Chhaya , architect and scholar, and former Dean of the Faculty of Architecture, CEPT, Ahmadabad, Gujarat. We discuss India, notions of modernism (and postmodernism) in postcolonial contexts, indigeneity and identity, and the meaning of the/ a ‘vernacular’ in a globalising culture, as well as time, language, poetry, f...

In Episode 28/3 of A is for Architecture , architect, curator and educator Laurence Lord speaks about his practice AP+E , which he founded with Jeffrey Bolhuis , and their civically-minded work in Ireland and Holland, his work at the 2023 Venice Biennial’s The Laboratory of the Future   show , as Assistant to the Curator, Exhibition Design, and lecturer at Queen’s University Belfast. Laurence can...

In Episode 27, Series 3 of A is for Architecture , Frank Jacobus and Brian M Kelly discuss their recent book, Artificial Intelligent Architecture: New Paradigms in Architectural Practice and Production , published by ORO Editions in 2023. The book discusses the ‘impact of artificial intelligence in the discipline of architecture [through the] mass adoption of highly accessible machine learni...

In Episode 26/ 3 of A is for Architecture , Loretta Lees and Elanor Warwick speak about their book, Defensible Space on the Move: Mobilisation in English Housing Policy and Practice , published with Wiley in 2022. We discuss a few of its themes, including the emergence of the concept in America with Oscar Newman and others, its transference to Britain and its articulation and deployment by geograp...

Series 3, Episode 25 of A is for Architecture ’s  is a conversation with social and architectural historian, Ken Worpole, discussing his life and work, and focusing on the new edition of his book  Modern Hospice Design: The Architecture of Palliative and Social Care , published by Routledge this year. As the gloss puts it, ‘At its core [the book is] a public discussion of a philosophy of design fo...

Episode 23/3 of A is for Architecture  is a conversation with Mark Jarzombek about his recent book, Architecture Constructed: Notes on a Discipline , published by Bloomsbury in 2023. The book presents ‘the long-suppressed conflict between […] between those who design, and those who build. [Jarzombek] reveals architecture to be a troubled, interconnected realm, incomplete and unstable, where labor,...

In Episode 22 of Series 3 of A is for Architecture , architectural historian, Swati Chattopadhyay discusses her 2023 book, Small Spaces: Recasting the Architecture of Empire , published by Bloomsbury. ‘With the focus of history so often on the large scale - global trade networks, vast regions, and architectures of power and domination - Small Spaces shows instead how we need to rethink this aura o...

In Episode 21/3 of A is for Architecture , filmmaker and architectural photographer Jim Stephenson discusses his work, his method and his inspirations. Jim and Sofia Smith are currently exhibiting their work ‘The Architect has Left the Building’ at The Farrell Centre , Newcastle – an immersive film installation that explores ‘how people use buildings and spaces once the architect‘s work has finish...

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 c...

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 yea...

In Season 3, Episode 18 of ⁠ A is for Architecture ⁠ Dana Cuff speaks about her recent book, ⁠ Architectures of Spatial Justice⁠ , published by MIT Press last year. Dana is Professor of Architecture and Urban Design, and founding director of cityLAB, both at the University of California, Los Angeles. Architectures of Spatial Justice ‘examines ethically driven practices that break with professional...

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’ –...

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, sustaina...

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...