Archinect Sessions

The LA Forum for Architecture and Urban Design has offered a critical look at the city of Los Angeles since the late 80's. The nonprofit has been providing public programming, exhibitions, and publications through its ever-shifting board of directors and volunteer contributors. To celebrate this 30-year milestone, the Forum has carefully selected a collection of pieces published from its origin to today, and has published these in a book under the themes of Experiments, Detours, Hunches, and Santa Anas. Today, Los Angeles is a major architectural and urban player, but for decades the city was dismissed suburban and centerless. In republishing three decades of material on architecture and design in Los Angeles, the LA Forum Reader reclaims and reconsiders the city’s architectural and discursive histories. It establishes, or reestablishes, a textual context for critical experimentation and urban investigation. This anthological volume includes essays, interviews, and reproductions of publications that have long

Last Wednesday, on the eve of the AIA National Convention, I had the pleasure of talking with Miguel McKelvey, co-founder of WeWork.  The conversation was held in Midtown, in the Project 6 by AF showroom to an invited crowd of 75 architects. The event was co-hosted by Project 6 by AF and Designer Pages, and sponsored by Graff, Julien, Geberit, Kaldewei and Wetstyle.  For those of you unfamiliar, WeWork is a co-working startup currently valued at somewhere between $20B to $35B, with almost 400 locations scattered around the world in 69 cities. While WeWork wasn’t the first company to enter the coworking space, they approached it in a very different way, focusing on creating physical environments that connected with workers and business owners, while crafting a culture of super-dedicated members.  Miguel McKelvey, one of two co-founders, is an architect by education, with a brief work history in the field that includes an active role in the design and buildout of American Apparel's disruptive retail stores in t

This week we announced the release of our latest issue of our print journal, Ed, with the theme “Architecture of Disaster”. For today’s show I’m talking with Nicholas Korody, Ed’s editor-in-chief, to discuss this latest release. Nicholas talks about the conception of the theme and shares some of his favorite pieces. We finish the conversation with a hint at Nicholas’s forthcoming Venice Architecture Biennale coverage.

This week Ken, Donna and I are joined by architect and writer Esther Sperber to discuss the very real and serious issue of mental health in architecture. Esther owns Studio ST Architects, a small practice in New York City, and frequently writes about mental health, with a specific focus on psychoanalysis and it’s relationship to architecture.  Creative fields, especially those with long hours and high stress levels, are often rife with mental health issues. Anxiety, depression, sleeplessness, chemical abuse... these are just a few of the indicators common in architecture. If you’re not suffering from any of these, you’re likely working around people that are. On today’s show we barely scratch the surface of this extremely complex subject. Our conversation ranges from learning to listen and empathize, to simple daily strategies for coping with mental health issues of your own and those around you, to more addressing more serious problems including chemical imbalances and professional treatment.  

This week Ken, Donna and I talk about some topics in recent architecture news, along with a little discussion about dealing with criticism. 

This week we have Mike Eliason on the podcast, Seattle-based Project Manager at Patano Studio  and proponent of Passivhaus, Baugruppen , and a car-free cycling life. Long-time Archinectors may recognize him by his username holzbox, OP to a forum favorite minimal details . 

On this week's show we are trying out something new by inviting on guest hosts to take over the mics. Our guest hosts today, Mitch McEwen and Marc Miller, are familiar figures to regular listeners of this podcast and readers of Archinect.   Mitch is the principal of McEwen Studio, co-founder of the studio collective, A(n) Office, and an Assistant Professor at Princeton University’s School of Architecture. Mitch's writing can be found on her Archinect blog Another Architecture. She has also been a guest on previous episodes of Archinect Sessions Equity, Secrets and Relevancy of AIA; 1 Year After #NotMyAIA, Twilight Zoning: What 100 years of zoning hath wrought, and Another year, Another Architecture. Marc is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture at Penn State University, in addition to being a regular voice of reason and intelligence in our discussion forum and comments section. Marc previously joined us on the podcast to discuss HUD and Zaha Hadid Architects in HUD-winked: Ben Car

This week we release a relatively spontaneous , and completely silly, look at news and features recently published on Archinect. We also turn Ken's famous last 2 questions, "What are you reading and listening to" onto ourselves. 

On this episode of Archinect Sessions, Paul travels to Minneapolis to join Ken in a conversation with Julie Snow and Matt Kreilich of Snow Kreilich Architects, winner of the 2018 AIA Architecture Firm Award. 

This week, we are joined by Nicholas Korody, the Editor-in-Chief of Archinect's new print project Ed, and Ethel Baraona Pohl, co-founder of Barcelona-based architecture publisher dpr-barcelona. We discuss the increasingly-niche industry of architectural print publishing, and the evolving value it offers as digital media continues to thrive. We also provide a little behind-the-scenes look at the conception and development of Ed. Interested in seeing your work in print? Ed is currently seeking submissions for our next issue on "Disaster". Bracket, a publication project Archinect co-publishes with Infranetlab, is seeking submissions for the upcoming release "On Sharing".

This week, for our last show of the year, Donna, Ken and Paul share highlights from their favorite episodes of the year. It wasn't an easy task, as the year was filled with some brilliant guests and engaging conversations. Let us know, in the comments, what your favorite moments were from this year. We're also looking for listener requests for upcoming shows... who do you want us to invite on the show as guests? What do you want us to talk about more? What do you want us to talk about less? Should we add music to the show?

This week, Donna and Ken are joined by Indianapolis Architect and ARE Sketches author, Lora Teagarden. Lora is an architect with RATIO Architects and L^2 Design. This week on the podcast, we'll be discussing three news items from the website. First up is the controversy around the proposal for the "Tallest Building in Portland" by the architecture firm William Kaven. Second, is the Op-Ed on "Boring Architecture" by LA Times Architecture Critic, Christopher Hawthorne. Last is a provocative interview with OMA partner, Reinier de Graaf, by the folks at Failed Architecture called, "Architecture is in a State of Denial". Listen to episode 113 of Archinect Sessions, “Architecture - Tools of Capital: Iconic, Boring, and for the Happy Few”. ARE Sketches Blue Ocean Strategy Book 1 - Outlander Series Influential Mind - Tali Sharot Song Exploder No Is Not Enough

This week we're devoting our episode to the anniversary of the 2016 election of Donald J. Drumpf, the statement by the AIA CEO Robert Ivy, and the subsequent dissent born out of the hashtag #NotMyAIA. We look to what has changed, and what hasn't; as it relates to the profession, activism and education, and what does the future portend. Joining me today are Katherine Darnstadt, founder and principal at Chicago-based Latent Design, V. Mitch McEwen, founder and principal at Brooklyn-based A(n) Office, principal of McEwen Studio, and assistant professor at Princeton School of Architecture, and Rosa T. Sheng, AIA LEED AP BD C, principal at SmithGroupJJR, AIASF President Elect - 2018 Board.   #NotMyAIA   Equity by Design [EQxD]   Archileaks

This week we're releasing a special, in-between, episode of Archinect Sessions. In this show we’re sharing some conversations recorded by Ken and Donna from Exhibit Columbus, while visiting a selection of installations and local architectural masterpieces. Exhibit Columbus describes itself as an “annual exploration of architecture, art, design, and community created to celebrate Columbus’ extraordinary design heritage.” This inaugural exhibition opened on August 26th, and will continue until November 26th. We’ve covered Exhibit Columbus many times on on Archinect, including episodes 83, 94 and 103 of Archinect Sessions. 

To describe John Cary simply as an author would be a disservice. John is a unique individual in the world of architecture. For 20 years, since he was a student, he has been on a non-stop mission to make the world a more just place with the power of good architecture and design. On this week's show Ken and I talk to John about his career arc, thus far, from fighting for the rights of interns and architects as the Vice President of the AIAS, to his new book Design for Good: A New Era of Architecture for Everyone, published by Island Press.

This week we talk with Jonathan Massey, the new Dean at the University of Michigan's Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. We talk about his approach to architectural education and his previous roles at Syracuse and the California College of the Arts, where he finished his deanship this year. We also discuss the world of architectural publishing as it relates to his work with Aggregate. 

On this week's show we talk to Kogonada, the writer and director of the critically-acclaimed film Columbus, and Kyle Bergman, founder of the Architecture & Design Film Festival. Our conversation with Kogonada touches on his inspirations and video-essay work prior to this spectacular debut feature-length film (currently 98% on Rotten Tomatoes!), his experience growing up in an midwest immigrant household and his passion for bringing architecture to film. Kyle Bergman, who is also a practicing architect, shares his backstory behind the Architecture & Design Film Festival, and tells us about some of the very exciting new films that will be screening at the upcoming festivals in Whitefish, Montana in September and NYC in November.

This week we're joined by Inga Saffron, the Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer. If you haven't read her latest piece on Henry Wilcots, the relatively unknown architect responsible for finishing Louis Kahn's masterpiece in Dhaka, go read it now. We talk with Inga about her experience meeting with Wilcots, architecture criticism pre and post-internet, Philadelphia and more.

This week we're joined with Anthony Morey, LA-based theorist, designer, educator, writer, and curator. Readers of Archinect will probably recognize his name from his curatorial work with the exciting annual architecture show "One Night Stand", and his relatively new series on Archinect “Cross-Talk”.

Recently, Archinect teamed up with Bureau Spectacular for the Arroyo Seco Weekend festival. Jimenez Lai and Joanna Grant designed a pavilion for the event, while Archinect's Paul Petrunia and Nicholas Korody held a series of interviews within it. Conversations focused on temporary architecture, installations, festival design and planning, and the festival's host city of Pasadena, CA, the results of which can be listened to below. We'd like to thank the Goldenvoice team, and in particular Raffi Lehrher, for recognizing the importance of architecture and urban issues, their interest in engaging the community, and inviting us to take part in this inaugural event.