Archinect Sessions

If you couldn't join us during our first-ever live-podcasting series, "Next Up", held at Jai & Jai Gallery in Los Angeles' Chinatown and at the opening weekend of the Chicago Architecture Biennial, then good news – you can still listen to the over four hours of live interviews we recorded. Leading up to the premiere of Archinect Sessions' second season on Thursday, November 5, we'll be releasing them as individual "Mini-Sessions". We'll also be launching another brand new podcast soon. You can listen to past Mini-Sessions here. So please enjoy our fourth Next Up Mini-Session, an interview with Anna Neimark and Andrew Atwood of First Office. M

After accumulating over four hours of live interviews from our first-ever live-podcasting series, "Next Up", held at Jai & Jai Gallery in Los Angeles' Chinatown and at the opening weekend of the Chicago Architecture Biennial, we're now letting them go, one by one. Leading up to the premiere of Archinect Sessions' second season on Thursday, November 5, we'll be releasing them as "Mini-Sessions". We'll also be launching another brand new podcast soon. Without further ado, please enjoy our third Next Up Mini-Session, a panel discussion with Claus Benjamin Freyinger, Andrew Kovacs and Jimenez Lai. We'll be sharing more Mini-Sessions in the coming days, and remember to subscribe to Archinect Sessions to not miss an episode! You can listen to past Mini-Sessions here. Listen to our "Next Up" panel discussion with Claus Benjamin Freyinger, Andrew Kovacs and Jimenez Lai.

After we wrapped our first live-podcasting series, "Next Up", held at Jai & Jai Gallery in Los Angeles' Chinatown and at the opening weekend of the Chicago Architecture Biennial, we had over four hours of live interviews to release. Now, we're letting them loose as "Mini-Sessions", leading up to the premiere of Archinect Sessions' second season on Thursday, November 5. We'll also be launching a brand new podcast soon, so keep your eyes and ears open.

Archinect recently wrapped its first live-podcasting series, "Next Up", held at Jai & Jai Gallery in Los Angeles' Chinatown and at the opening weekend of the Chicago Architecture Biennial. Now, we're releasing those 4+ hours of "Next Up" interviews as "Mini-Sessions", leading up to the premiere of Archinect Sessions' second season on Thursday, November 5. We'll also be launching a brand new podcast soon, so keep your eyes and ears open. Without further ado, please enjoy our first Next Up Mini-Session, an interview with John Southern of Urban Operations. We'll be sharing more Mini-Sessions in the coming days, and remember to subscribe to Archinect Sessions to not miss an episode!

Thom Mayne and Eui-Sung Yi join us to discuss their recently published book, Haiti Now – a herculean resource on post-disaster urbanism in Haiti, published by their urban think tank, the NOW Institute. The rest of this episode takes a look back at the first forty episodes of Archinect Sessions, as we wrap up season one. Each new episode has expanded, and sharpened, our idea of what the podcast can and should be. We've spoken with some pretty heavy hitters, including Denise Scott Brown, Kevin Roche, Patrik Schumacher, Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, Bjarke Ingels, Thomas Heatherwick, Christopher Hawthorne and Michael Rotondi, as well as some up and comers, like Andrés Jaque (winner of MoMA's 2015 YAP), Jimenez Lai, and Nicolas Moreau and Hiroko Kusunoki (winners of the Guggenheim Helsinki competition). It's been a blast, but moving forward, we want to tighten up, dig deeper and move the proverbial furniture around. We'll start up season two in the coming weeks, but while we're on hiatus, we'd love to get your

We're very excited to have Denise Scott Brown on this episode, to share some family history behind the Vanna Venturi house – the house that her husband and collaborator, Robert Venturi, built for his mother in 1965, and helped set a new tone for 20th century architectural history. The house is now for sale, listed at $1.75M. Also joining us on this week's episode is Katherine Darnstadt of Latent Design in Chicago. A native Chicagoan who trained and practices as an architect there, Katherine shares her reflections on building a practice and connecting to a city. We met Katherine back in May at the AIA National Convention, and have been itching to have her on the podcast since. We also touch on the bonkers news item that is Japan canceling the Zaha Hadid designs for its Olympic Stadium in Tokyo, citing overwhelming construction costs. And finally, we're nearing the end – of Archinect Sessions' first season. This episode is our second to last, and after #40 we'll be taking a short break, then returning with a r

This week on the podcast: Gehry's design for the Eisenhower memorial is finally approved, Zaha Hadid's Olympic Stadium in Tokyo gets cut-and-pasted into some very Japanese situations, and Peter Zellner, Principal and Design Lead of AECOM's architecture division, and founder of Zellnerplus, sits down for a chat.

Our episode this week revolves around Paris – city of lights, riots, artists and cheese-shaped skyscrapers (or at least, those are the bits were talking about). As part of a nationwide strike against UberPop, the cheapest Uber-affiliate in France, taxi drivers in Paris launched a riotous protest on June 25, terrorizing Uber drivers and generally disrupting Parisians in transit (and Courtney Love). Contention (albeit the nonviolent kind) also arose in response to Herzog & de Meuron's new Tour Triangle skyscraper, which Paris officials approved on June 30. It will be the city's first skyscraper since the much-maligned Tour Montparnasse was built in 1973, precipitating a height limit on new buildings (that has since been relaxed). Critics are unhappy about the Triangle's intrusion onto the Parisian skyline, and its inhospitable-looking atmosphere on the street level. Paul also shares his conversation with Guggenheim Helsinki winners Nicolas Moreau and Hiroko Kusunoki, following up on our discussion of their

This week, we dip into the swamp of whether so-called "poor doors" (separate entrances for affordable and market-rate housing tenants) are discriminatory, highlighting discussion points made in the wake of New York's decision to make them illegal. We also follow up on the investigation into a balcony collapse in Berkeley, California that led to six deaths, and ask Brian Newman, Archinect Sessions' Legal Correspondent, what legal recourse is possible for everyone involved. Virtual built environment wizards Thomas Hirschmann and Anthony Murray, founders of documentation and preservation firm The Third Fate, also join us for an interview. Their work seeks to document, preserve and activate the built environment through virtual realities.

Lots of summer blockbuster news to discuss on this week's podcast. The winner of the Helsinki Guggenheim competition was announced (a young husband-wife firm from Paris took the cake), SelgasCano's "psychedelic chrysalis" Serpentine Pavilion opened, and Andres Jaque's COSMO for MoMA PS1's "Warm Up" began its water cycle. And while not quite blockbusting, in what could easily be the premise for a Vincent Price flick, residents of the blighted Robin Hood Gardens dared Lord Rogers to spend a night in their quarters. Special guests Quilian Riano and Peggy Deamer of The Architecture Lobby join our news discussion this week, dropping their excellent and incisive commentary on ethical practice into every topic. We are collaborating with the Lobby to measure satisfaction with work-life balance in architecture – take the 3-question survey here.

Easily the biggest news of last week, and probably of this year, was the unveiling of BIG's design for 2WTC. For a project of such status, on such a highly charged site, representation must be handled with expert care – so to dig a bit deeper into the splashy video introducing 2WTC, we spoke with Nick Taylor, co-founder of Squint/Opera and director of the BIG video. We cover Squint/Opera's historied relationship with architects and how creative vision is managed across many powerful stakeholders. Paul and Amelia also sat down with McShane Murnane, architecture director and co-founder of Project M Plus, a husband-wife creative studio out of Los Angeles' Silver Lake. Often viewed as a case-study for gentrification in LA, Silver Lake has established a highly specific aesthetic within the Californian sensibility, that has its pros and cons – we speak with Murnane about how he's dealt with issues of developmental displacement head-on. And in the news, we discuss how Tadao Ando is faring amidst serious health conce

This week, we devote the majority of our show to a discussion with Patrik Schumacher, about celebrity and the insularity of critical discourse in architecture. The idea of the "starchitect" is onerous to pretty much everybody in architecture, but that hasn't stopped us from using it. It's a popular media fabrication that, by becoming a potent cultural meme in its own right (thanks, Gehry), has derailed significant portions of architecture discourse into the murky realm of identity politics – the aesthetics and politics of a built object becoming an inextricable part of their designer's character. Schumacher's Parametricism may be an antidote to that. We discuss Schumacher's recent op-ed on these subjects, in the hope that keeping the discussion going will flush out something useful (or even flush away the "starchitect" concept entirely). In the news, we touch on BIG's design for Two World Trade Center displacing Foster's, the resignation of five Cooper Union trustees (including Daniel Libeskind), and the scan

Dead malls and ghost boxes haunt this week's episode, featuring special guest and longtime 'Nector, Nam Henderson. Whether you're mourning or reveling in the dwindling population of the American mall, their lifeless carcasses on the economic and urban landscape are starting to stink, and we have to deal with them somehow. With Nam as our spirit guide through the lost souls of dead malls, we discuss their future potentials within the suburban/urban environment, and grapple with their (perhaps bygone) social significance. Nam also joins us for our discussion of very much alive-and-kicking news, including BIG taking over from Norman Foster as the designer for Two World Trade Center, and the ongoing student protests at Cooper Union. We also touch on the controversy surrounding CoContest, an Italian website for crowdsourcing design work, and its potentials for new models of architectural employment.

Inadvertently, this episode is all about food – where it comes from, where we eat it, and how it shapes national identity. Our discussion on food and design starts in Los Angeles, where Norm's Restaurant recently received "historic and cultural" landmark status, and a tamale-shaped building strives for the same (just one of LA's many proud programmatic architectures). Shifting east, we extol the multi-uses and virtues of Waffle House, and praise the Waffle House index. This dovetailed across the Atlantic into our interview with James Biber of Biber Architects about his design for the US Pavilion at the Milan EXPO, entitled "American Food 2.0: United to Feed the Planet". We ask him about balancing corporate and national identities in food, and what it's like having the US State Department as a client. 

The Sessions co-hosts met all together for the first time in the meatspace last week, making the pilgrimage to Atlanta, Georgia for the AIA National Convention. Immersed in the tens of thousands of attendees for three days, we met an impressive array of professionals across the architectural board, and dove deep into how the AIA sees itself and architecture today. This week's episode is entirely devoted to happenings at the Convention, including NCARB's resolution of the intern-titling debate, Bill Clinton's keynote speech, Donna's talk on nontraditional practice, the debut of the second video in AIA's Look Up campaign (featuring blind architect Chris Downey), and Ken's role as a delegate voting in the AIA's Business Session.

Prior to his artist talk at the Hammer Museum last week, nearing the culmination of his massively successful "Provocations" show, Thomas Heatherwick spoke with Paul and Amelia about his firm's personality and design approach. We discuss his interview on this week's single-focus episode, touching on his diverse project list, his "doubting Thomas" identity, and his attitudes towards "franchised" architecture. If you're in Los Angeles, "Provocations" will be at the Hammer Museum through May 24. To hear more about the exhibition, listen to our conversation with curator Brooke Hodge, featured on "Three Funerals and a Curator".

When he was a kid, Ned Cramer, editor in chief of Architect, wanted to be the first architect-pope. After enrolling in architecture school and weighing his papal options, he decided to do neither, focusing instead on writing and publishing for the profession. He's now the brains behind media firm Hanley Wood's Architect Group, serving as group editorial director for Architect, Architectural Lighting, Residential Architect, EcoStructure, EcoHome, EcoBuilding Pulse and MetalMag. We spoke with Cramer about his career path and the state of architecture media, and the role of Architect as the AIA's official publication. Cramer and the whole Sessions' crew will be at the AIA National Convention next week; keep an eye (and ear) out for us if you'll be there!

Last Saturday, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck Kathmandu, precipitating catastrophic destruction throughout Nepal and a death toll currently marked at more than 5,000. Reports have been very bleak, with citizens taking to living outside in public spaces, fearful of more damage from aftershocks. Aid and relief efforts are slowly beginning to appear, but basic necessities such as food, water and shelter are still desperately needed. In the face of such large-scale damage to buildings and infrastructure, architects have a professional imperative to consider their role (from near or far) in reconstruction and relief efforts. At the same time, assistance must take the long-view – for survivors, the worst part of such disasters may not have the immediate event, but the trauma and tedium of the long return to normal. On this episode, Rajan Karmachaya, a Nepalese architect in Kathmandu, spoke with us about what it's like in Kathmandu now, and what architects can (or shouldn't) do to help. Rajan has been active in t

This week on the podcast, Paul shares an interview he did in Lima with Sebastián Bravo, a local architect and maker of award-winning pisco. Studying and practicing architecture in a city with a very fresh history of terrorism and ongoing political corruption is no easy feat, and the rapidly urbanized/urbanizing city makes practicing all the more challenging, but Bravo is up to the challenge. We also briefly discuss a recent workshop Paul attended with the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, which took a close look at why enrollment rates at architecture schools are falling, and the stereotypical misunderstandings of what skills high schoolers need to study architecture. In the news, we consider what it means for George Lucas to be building affordable housing in Marin County, whether metal really can move by itself, and briefly look to the deluge of Whitney Museum reviews.

Thanks to Patrik Schumacher, this week's episode is mostly about criticism. We respond to a polemic/rant left by Schumacher on his Facebook page, "In Defense of Stars and Icons", and consider not simply his argument, but its presentation – how publishing these ideas on a personal Facebook page ultimately says more about celebrity and criticism than Schumacher's exorbitant word count can. In the end, we applaud Schumacher – not for his argument necessarily, but for the act of posting such. Now, more than ever in the saturated critical sphere of new media, the medium is the message. We also finish up the interview Amelia did with Pritzker Prize winner Kevin Roche, and hear his thoughts on sprawl and the undeniable human instinct to gather. Roche is a quiet heavyweight in architecture, amassing an incredible extent of work across multiple eras of architectural history, all without paying any heed to "starchitecture", in any form. If you haven't heard part one of the interview, get caught up in Episode #24. And s