Unfrozen

Tucked away in a hollow some 20 miles south of Atlanta, theTown of Trilith contains multitudes: possibly North America’s largest purpose-built film and television production studio, a steak/cigar bar, bucolic surrounds, “loft”-style living and cornhole games on an ersatz main street – everything, surely, somebody would want out of a hometown. But who? Kyle Holtan reports. -- Music: “Elevator,” by...

Over the past 20 years, Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani has taken the question, “what, and who is the city for?” directly to the streets of Prospect Heights in Brooklyn and Mosswood in Oakland, asking locals to take her to the places that matter to them. A visual urbanist, co-founder of the interdisciplinary studio Buscada , and widely exhibited photographer, Bendiner-Viani holds a doctorate in environme...

Between, and sometimes within, the boundaries of nation-states are thousands of liminal zones which are neither here nor there, and their rules are different from those of the countries in which they are physically located. Author Atossa Araxia Abrahamian calls this “ The Hidden Globe ,” and chronicles the in-between places where money, art, luxurygoods, and stateless prisoners spend time in limbo...

Amidst the unprecedented destruction wrought by the multiple fires that swept across Southern California in January 2025, there are opportunities, and causes for optimism that we can build back, better than before. Among these is the prospective role of prefabricated construction, which can be 30 to 50 percent faster than traditional methods. Steve Glenn, CEO of Plant Prefab , shares his thoughts...

The inauguration of the 47th president of the United States takes place on January 20. What are the implications of Trump 2.0 on the built environment, design and cities? Inspired by the eponymous, omnibus crucible of dread in the New York Review of Architecture, we huddled with the best and brightest design critics we know, Kate Wagner ( The Nation / McMansion Hell ) and Zach Mortice (Bloomberg C...

Dan and Greg recap Unfrozen in 2024 and look ahead to 2025. -- Show Notes: Intro/Outro: “I Still Wear the Uniform,” by The Cooper Vane - Our Spotify Wrapped Stats for 2024 - AndrewAndrew - That time in 2005 when Greg wrote that podcasts would never amount to anything. If you find it, send us the link! --- TOP EPISODES OF 2024: - Top episode of 2024 was also the top episode of 2023: Show Me the Bod...

Mankind’s quest for verticality has an underexplored dimension: the queasy feeling of vertigo many experience when close to the edge of a sheer drop. Davide Deriu , Reader in Architectural History and Theory at the University of Westminster, London, has taken on the relative lack of research into the subject with an interdisciplinary approach, captured in his book On Balance: Architecture and Vert...

Dan and Greg recap the highs and lows of the first full year of Unfrozen – 33 episodes – and look ahead to 2023. Did you know? You don’t have to catch the stars as they fall. You can listen to any episode from our web site , or on your favorite podcast platform, at any time! Intro/Outro: “ Our Lips are Sealed ,” by The Go-Go’s Discussed: - A high number of episodes devoted to Peter Rees, the forme...

Pulitzer Prize–winning architecture critic Blair Kamin has long informed and delighted readers with his illuminating commentary. Kamin’s newest collection, Who Is the City For?, does more than gather fifty-five of his most notable Chicago Tribune columns from the past decade: it pairs his words with striking new images by photographer and architecture critic Lee Bey, Kamin’s former rival at the Ch...

Cities that produce only underwear, blue jeans and extras in domestic films are among the fascinating objects of study in Typological Drift: Emerging Cities in China by Shiqiao Li and Esther Lorenz. Journey with Unfrozen and Shiqiao Li to reveal the surprising urban realities of China that escape normative urban theories, with several stops along the way in philosophy and linguistics. Typological...

Michael Eliason is an architect and founder of Larch Lab , a studio focused on prefabricated, decarbonized, climate-adaptive, low-energy buildings and livable ecodistricts. Eliason, based in Seattle, had a transformative experience while living in Germany – the American residential model could be greatly improved by adopting some of the principles of Baugruppen – self-developed co-housing, without...

Hanif Kara is a civil and structural engineer and professor in practice at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design and the co-founder of AKT II, a 350-person engineering practice based in London. The firm won the Stirling Award for Peckham Library in 2000 (with (Will Alsop), the Sainsbury Laboratory in 2012 (with Stanton Williams), and the Bloomberg European Headquarters in 2018 (with Foste...

Unfrozen interviews Peter Wynne Rees , Professor of Places and City Planning, The Bartlett School of Planning, University College London, who was previously City Planning Officer for the City of  London, from 1985 to 2014. He is a founding member and director  (1990-2022) of the British Council for Offices and received their  President’s Award in 2003 for “presiding over one of the most extensive...

Patrick MacLeamy was the CEO of HOK from 2003 to 2017, capping off a 50-year career at the venerable firm responsible for the National Air and Space Museum, Moscone Center, and Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, and is credited with creating "The MacLeamy Curve," a touchstone of business guidance for the built environment. In his semi-retirement, he is a founder and chairman of buildingSMART...

Daniel Kaven is the author of Architecture of Normal: The Colonization of the American Landscape , a book that views the built environment through the lens of successive developments in transportation. An architect and visual artist hailing from Albuquerque, now calling Portland home, Kaven takes on suburbanization, flying cars, and why “Generation Z needs to get out in the streets and be really p...

Chicago is a famed architecture town, but the road has not always been smooth. Hear from the editor and author, respectively, of two recently released guides – Laurie Petersen for the AIA Guide to Chicago and Vladimir Belogolovsky for the DOM Architectural Guide Chicago , discourse on Postmodernist icons like the Thompson (future Google?) Center and Harold Washington Library, and muse on what came...

Dan’s recent consecration of the world’s tallest timber building; Greg’s new gigs, and hotels to stay at while making them happen; the third space in a post-COVID world; update on the Durbin Renewal scandal in Chicago, and a preview of upcoming guests. Intro/Outro: Super Sex by Morphine Tall Timber: Ascent , Milwaukee Rocket & Tigerli , Winterthur, Switzerland Atlassian Central , Sydney Greg’s...

Marina Otero , head of the Social Design Masters Program at Design Academy Eindhoven, Netherlands, is the winner of the Harvard Graduate School of Design's 2022 Wheelwright Prize . Her study, Future Storage: Architectures to Host the Metaverse, will examine new architecture paradigms for storing data, and how reimagining digital infrastructures could meet the unprecedented demands facing the world...

Think of Tokyo less as a “chaotic” than as an “emergent” city. This means spontaneous, self-organizing aspects create order from the bottom up. That kind of emergence can be, if not designed, then facilitated. Unfrozen interviews Jorge Almazan , Associate Professor, Department of System Design Engineering, Keio University, and author of “ Emergent Tokyo: Designing the Spontaneous City .” Intro: Wo...

For a truly philosophical take on the role of the architect in the post-truth era, Unfrozen interviews Richard Francis-Jones , author of Truth and Lies in Architecture . Intro: “ Telling Lies ,” by David Bowie Discussed: Architecture’s ambiguous relationship to truth. The criteria that make a building worthy of love. How can architecture bring us closer to nature? Architecture is “never neutral no...

Unfrozen interviews Stefan Al , author, Supertall , founder, Stefan Al Architects, designer of Canton Tower, Guangzhou with Information Based Architecture (IBA). Intro/Outro: “ History Rhymes ,” by Empty City Squares Discussed: Technology: The role of technologies: concrete, elevators, air conditioning and dampers Society: Culture, social preferences, zoning, aesthetics The succession of events th...

Greg reports from Houston, where he and Richard Florida had some stage-sharing to do. Dan recounts a jaunt to the Canadian Riviera and Pacific Northwest, where mass timber is on the rise. Then on to demolitions, what’s on the bookshelf, future guests, future guesses…. -- -- Intro: “ Livin’ on the Edge (of Houston) ,” by Reverend Horton Heat Discussed: Richard Florida 's slightly altered new jam: L...

Meet Changsub Lee , a 14-year-old in South Korea who has been designing skyscrapers since he was eight. He's already a celebrity in the tall building world. Ivy League schools of architecture, prepare yourselves now. The recording is a bit soft, but if you crank him up, he's got a lot to say. Intro/Outro: " Skyscrapers ," by OKGO Discussed: New Songdo City Incheon Tower Infinity (Crystal Top) Towe...

Two toy visions of Los Angeles describe two very different future visions: One vision wants you to play with its toys – and would be offended if  you didn’t – the other most assuredly does not. It is strictly  off-limits, and is meant to be admired from a distance. One says “don’t  touch;” the other practically grabs your hand and pulls you into the grid. Intro/Outro: "Metropolis," by Kraftwerk Or...

Original story: Unfrozen 1.0, Sept. 3, 2012 A profile of two metallic sculptures by two design firms in Los Angeles: "A Loose Horizon," by LAYER, at the Pasadena Museum of California Art , and " Bloom ," by DO|SU , at Materials & Applications . Intro / Outro: " Metal Machine Music ," by Lou Reed