Night White Skies

Molly Wright Steenson is a designer, author, professor, and international speaker whose work focuses on the intersection of architecture, design, and artificial intelligence. She is the author of Architectural Intelligence: How Designers and Architects Created the Digital Landscape (MIT Press, 2017), which tells the radical history of AI's impact on design and architecture and how it poured the fo...

Christopher Schaberg received his Ph. D. from the University of California, Davis, where he specialized in twentieth-century American literature and critical theory. At Loyola, Dr. Schaberg teaches courses on contemporary literature and nonfiction, cultural studies, and environmental theory. He also teaches a first-year seminar on airports in American literature and culture. He is the author of th...

Liam Young is an Australian born architect who operates in the spaces between design, fiction and futures. He is founder of the think tank Tomorrows Thoughts Today, a group whose work explores the possibilities of fantastic, speculative and imaginary urbanisms. Building his design fictions from the realities of present, Young also co-runs the Unknown Fields Division, a nomadic research studio that...

The United States in 1930's experienced what is referred to as the dust bowl in which a combination of poor farming and business practices caused massive wind erosion called 'black blizzards' that resulted in many farmers abandoning their farms in states of Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska and beyond, just as the Great Depression was underway. The research story here is about one of the initiatives from...

Ricardo de Ostos creates speculative fictions that envision architectural projects in shifting environmental and cultural contexts. He lives, works and teaches in London at both, the Architectural Association and The Bartlett School of Architecture. He is the co-director of NaJa & deOstos studio and co-author of 'The Hanging Cemetery of Baghdad' (Springer Wien/New York, 2006) 'Ambiguous Spaces' (P...

Sara M. Watson is a writer and technology critic. She is an affiliate with the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, and a writer in residence at Digital Asia Hub. Sara writes and speaks about emerging issues in the intersection of technology, culture, and society. She advocates for a constructive approach to technology criticism that not only critiques, but also off...

This week is a conversation with Marcelyn Gow. Marcelyn is an architect and principle of Servo Los Angeles, She received her Architecture degrees from Architectural Association in London, Columbia University and her Doctorite from the ETH Zurich. Her Doctoral dissertation was called ' Invisible Environment: Art, Architecture and a Systems Aesthetic' which explored the relationship between aestheti...

Tom Wiscombe is Principal of Tom Wiscombe Architecture which is currently planning the Main Museum of Los Angeles Art with Developer Tom Gilmore in Downtown LA. As well as the West Hollywood Belltower on Sunset Blvd in Los Angeles. Wiscombe is Chair of the B.Arch Program at SCI-Arc, where he has taught for over 10 years.  Previously to all this, Tom worked for Coop Himmelb(l)au, where he was Chief...

Madeline Schwartzman is a New York City writer, filmmaker and architect whose work explores human narratives and the human sensorium through social art, book writing, curating and video making. Her two books 'See Yourself Sensing: Redefining Human Perception (Black Dog Publishing, London, 2011)—and Her forthcoming book See Yourself X: Human Futures Expanded (Black Dog September 2017) explores the...

Sophia Roosth is the Frederick S. Danziger Associate Professor in the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University. We discuss her book 'Synthetic, How Life Got Made'.

Gareth Damian Martin is the creator and editor of Heterotopias, a project focusing on the spaces and architecture of virtual worlds. Heterotopias is both a digital zine and website, hosting studies and visual essays that dissect spaces of play, exploration, violence and ideology.

Kevin Warwick's research areas include artificial intelligence, robotics and biomedical engineering. Kevin Warwick is Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) at Coventry University. Prior to that he was Professor of Cybernetics at The University of Reading, England. 

Oliver Morton is The Economist's briefings editor. Before coming to The Economist as energy and environment editor in 2009, he was the chief news and features editor of Nature, the international scientific journal. He is the author of 'The Planet Remade, How Geoengineering Could Change the World', "Eating the Sun: How Plants Power the Planet", a study of photosynthesis, its meanings and its implic...

Jesse LeCavalier is a designer, writer, and educator whose work explores the architectural and urban implications of contemporary logistics. He is assistant professor of architecture at the New Jersey School of Architecture at NJIT and author of  The Rule of Logistics: Walmart and the Architecture of Fulfillment  (University of Minnesota Press, 2016). LeCavalier was a recipient of the New Faculty...

On this episode we discuss the architect Cedric Price and the influence of his work and strategies today. Molly Wright Steenson is a designer, writer, and international speaker whose work focuses on the intersection of design, architecture, and artificial intelligence. She is the author of the forthcoming book Architectural Intelligence: How Designers and Architects Created the Digital Landscape (...

David Biello is an award-winning journalist who has been reporting on the environment and energy since 1999. He is currently the science curator for TED Talks and a contributing editor at  Scientific American , where he has been writing since 2005. He also contributes frequently to the  Los Angeles Review of Books ,  Yale e360 ,  Nautilus , and  Aeon,  among other publications. Biello hosts the on...

Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg is a designer, artist and writer, developing experimental approaches to imagine new roles and ideals for design. Designing objects, workshops, writing and curating, Daisy investigates design's aesthetic and ethical futures with collaborators around the world including scientists, engineers, artists, designers, social scientists, galleries and industry.  The Dream of Better...

Philippe Rahm is a Swiss architect, principal in the office of Philippe Rahm architectes, based in Paris, France. His work, which extends the field of architecture from the physiological to the meteorological, has received an international audience in the context of sustainability. 

James Hughes is a bioethicist and sociologist. He's the Executive Director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, and author of Citizen Cyborg: Why Democratic Societies Must Respond to the Redesigned Human of the Future .' He holds a doctorate in sociology from the University of Chicago, where he also taught bioethics at the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics.

Darran Anderson is the author of  Imaginary Cities  (Influx Press/University of Chicago Press) and the forthcoming  Tidewrack  (Vintage/Farrar, Straus and Giroux). He has also written the forthcoming e-book  In Defence of Expressionist Architecture  for   Machine Books. He has written on the intersection of architecture and politics, technology, culture and futurism for the likes of The Guardian,...

David Gissen is the author of books, essays, exhibitions and experimental writings and projects about environments, landscapes, cities, and buildings from our time and the historical past. David is Professor of Architecture and Visual and Critical Studies at the California College of the Arts, a visiting professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Columbia University, and a visiting...

Geoff Manaugh is the founder and author of the BLDGBLOG website. Manaugh is a former editor at Dwell magazine, former Editor-in-Chief at Gizmodo, and a contributing editor at Wired UK.   Manaugh is the editor of  Landscape Futures: Instruments, Devices and Architectural Inventions.  Most recently, he is the author of the book 'A Burglars Guide to the City' which is being adapted for television by...

"Is Climate an Architectural Design Problem?" Albert Pope is the Gus Sessions Wortham Professor of Architecture. He teaches in the school's Undergraduate and Graduate Program and is currently the director of the school's Present/Future program.  Professor Pope holds degrees from SCI-Arc and Princeton, and taught at Yale University and SCI-Arc before coming to Rice. His design work has received num...

Bradley Cantrell is a landscape architect and scholar whose work focuses on the role of computation and media in environmental and ecological design. Professor Cantrell received his BSLA from the University of Kentucky and his MLA from the Harvard Graduate School of Design. He has held academic appointments at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, The Rhode Island School of Design, and the Louisi...

Episode 009 is a brief and belated introduction about the 'Night White Skies' podcast discussing the shows ambitions and guests going forward.