Superurbanism

Farshid Moussavi is the co-ordinator of the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy this year, the first architect to perform the task since Eva Jiřičná in 2013. Tim spoke to Farshid about her key curatorial decisions and to Stephanie MacDonald about her contribution to the annual arts jamboree.

Rem Koolhaas, principal of OMA, won the Pritzker Prize in 2000. His work Delirious New York is one of the best books written about architecture and cities. The Seattle Central Library and Casa da Musica in Porto are two of the great buildings of the early 21st century. Tim spoke to him about two recent exhibitions.

Tim talks bricks, nation building and temporary architecture with Marina Tabassum, the architect of this year’s Serpentine Pavilion. Born in Dhaka, Bangladesh in 1969, Tabassum was listed in TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in 2024. Her Bait Ur Rouf Mosque in Dhaka won the Aga Khan Award in 2016.

Tiffany Jenkins is author of Strangers and Intimates: The Rise and Fall of Private Life, published by Picador. “Always interesting, always well written and always provocative," said David Aaronovitch in The Observer. She has also just been made a trustee of the British Museum. Tim spoke to her about the need for the public and the private.

The Superurbanism News Review is back from the Venice Architecture Biennale. The super soaraway architecture podcast hears from curator Carlo Ratti on his vision for the event and then addresses how things turned out. Tim is joined by Vicky Richardson, former Architecture Curator at the Royal Academy to talk through the early reviews and give their own assessment.

Owen Hopkins is a British architectural historian and curator who is now the Director of the Farrell Centre in Newcastle. He is also one of four curators of the British Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale. Tim explored the dual perspective his positions grant him and the state of architectural exhibitions today.

Annabelle Selldorf is a German-born architect based in New York City known for her refined, modernist aesthetic. She recently completed the renovation of the Frick Collection in New York. Tim spoke to her though about the controversial reordering of the National Gallery’s Sainsbury Wing by Venturi Scott Brown.

Tom Emerson founded 6a architects with Stephanie Macdonald in 2001, completing the MK Gallery in 2019 and the South London Gallery in 2021. He has just published his first book Dirty Old River, a collection of essays that he discussed with Tim.

Tim talks to Samantha Hardingham about Cedric Price, subject of an exhibition touring UK architectural schools currently. Samantha, former director of the Architectural Association and academic director of the London School of Architecture, not only worked for Price but edited his collected works.

Jonathan Glancey, former architecture editor at The Guardian and, more recently, author and inhabitant of Venice, has just published the book Operation Bowler. It is the story of one of the forgotten episodes of World War II during which the Allies bombed La Serenissima. Tim talks to Jonathan about cities, destruction and Venice’s modernity.

In a recent paper, Patrik Schumacher, principal of Zaha Hadid Architects, declared the End of Architecture, terminated he says by petty politicking. Tim Abrahams spoke to him about the decline of schools, the sustainability agenda and what he would like to spend his time talking about if it wasn’t for woke.

Welcome to the Superurbanism News Review: a compendium and critique of the big stories that are dominating architecture and the associated professions this quarter. Giving her insight this episode is Vicky Richardson, the former editor of Blueprint and Head of Architecture and Drue Heinz Curator at the Royal Academy. We talk Aga Khan, wiggly roads and soft power.

Nicolas Fayad founded East architecture studio with Charles Kettaneh in 2015. Based in Lebanon and now the United Arab Emirates, the practice won the Aga Khan Award for Architecture for their refurbishment of an Oscar Niemeyer pavilion in Tripoli in 2022. Tim spoke to them in Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, at the opening of their temporary prayer space at the Islamic Arts Biennale.

Tim talks to the architect and don of the Milan design world Stefano Boeri who is celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Bosco Verticale; a pioneering high-rise planted with 17,000 trees, shrubs and plants, completed in his home city. Boeri also outlines his plans for the 2025 Milan Triennale of which he is president.

Sir Peter Cook is a Royal Academician and RIBA Gold Medal holder. And yet his fame rests on his work with avant garde architecture collective Archigram and he continues to champion formally extravagant architecture that lives today on the margins. Tim talks to him about putting ideas out there and his beef with Kenneth Frampton.

Matthias Sauerbruch and Louisa Hutton have built some of the most striking modern buildings in Europe. On the occasion of an exhibition of their work at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin alongside work from an astonishing archive featuring work by Scharoun, the Taut Brothers and many others, Tim spoke to them about their work and the history that forms it.

Tim talks to James Capper, an artist and speculative engineer who makes boats that walk and robots that paint: machines that ask us what machines are really for. His latest work Monitor is an itinerant, walking workshop for Ukraine which emerged from a residency in Kiev and is currently on exhibit, in the form of prototypes and drawings, at the Royal Academy in London.

How do you design a roller coaster? What was it like on the North Sea oil rigs in the 1980s? What did you learn in the steel yards? Hanif Kara, recipient of this year’s Soane Medal led the engineering on the Peckham Library by Will Alsop, the Phaeno Science Centre by Zaha Hadid Architects amongst many others, Tim though is interested in where Hanif came from as much as where he got to.

Tim talks to Selina Anttinen, founding partner of Anttinen Oiva Architects with her husband Vesa Oiva. So successful have the practice been in their native Helsinki, from designing the main library of the University of Helsinki in 2008 to leading the reimagining of the city’s central harbour with the Katoleina Pier project, finished this year, you may not have heard of them. Until now.

Few architecture critics have had the impact of Kenneth Frampton. His Modern Architecture: a Critical History is a masterpiece; his essay on Critical Regionalism, one of the most influential pieces of writing on architecture of the twentieth century. He talks to Tim about his latest collection of essays Architecture and the Public World, published by Bloomsbury.

Paul Robbrecht founded Robbrecht en Daem with his wife Hilde Daem in 1975. Their son Johannes joined in 2002. This family-led practice is one of the most important in Europe, helping transform Belgium into one of the richest architectural cultures in the world. He talks to Tim about his father, his favourite sculptor and Egypt.

Kengo Kuma is a mercurial architect, who works with natural forms and historical structures with an avant-garde sensibility. Tim talks to the usually taciturn Japanese maestro about the horrors of Metabolism, what he calls the philosophy of the detail and the affinities between Portugal and Japan.

To celebrate the London Festival of Architecture’s 20th anniversary Tim met Edwin Heathcote, the Financial Times architecture critic, in a small podcast booth built underneath the Lloyd’s building in London. Designed by Urban Radicals, the booth was the perfect place to talk about public space in London and Eddy’s book, On the Street: In-Between Architecture published by HENI.

Job Floris was an editor of the pioneering, always interesting OASE Journal for Architecture from 2008 until 2018. He is also an architect: one half of the Rotterdam-based practice Monadnock which he founded in the naughties with Sandor Naus. For reasons that Tim explores with Job, Monadnock’s work sits uneasily in their home city although it is popular elsewhere in the Netherlands and in Germany.

Bijoy Jain lives in Mumbai; the city of his birth. Tim talked to him about his world famous practice Studio Mumbai which sits between the world of art, craft and architecture and is staffed by skilled craftsmen, technicians and draughtsmen, who design and build each project themselves. He reflects on architecture as dance and his time living and working in London.