The A is for Architecture Podcast’s latest episode is a discussion with the architect, writer, teacher and broadcaster, Piers Taylor. It is Piers’ second time on the show, but rather than his practice, this time we discuss his freshly minted book, Learning from the Local: Designing responsively for people, climate and culture, published by RIBA Publishing last month.

In Learning from the Local, Piers presents global examples of low-carbon, context-responsive architecture. In arguing for a post-global architecture, examining geology, waste, ecology, self-build and community engagement, the book proposes a sort-of vernacular. We talk this, Oz, practice, good practice and a very elegant proposal for what Piers calls restless innovation. 

Quieten down why don’t you and have a solid listen.

Piers is Professor of Knowledge Exchange in Architecture at UWE and director of Invisible Studio, (which posts on Instagram), and he’s so all over the internet he literally has a Wikipedia page. The book is linked above.

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Music credits: ⁠Bruno Gillick 

Image credit: The Rural Studio (Haybale House) by Timothy Hursley. 

In the latest episode of the A is for Architecture Podcast Jeana Ripple, Chair and Vincent & Eleanor Shea Professor in the School of Architecture at the University of Virginia, joined me to discuss her recent book, Type V City: Codifying Material Inequity in Urban America, published by the University of Texas Press in August this year.

 In Type V city, Jeana describes how building codes or regulations in the USA have shaped urban landscapes. Specifically, Jeana explores how the construction of light, combustible wood-frame buildings – known as Type V construction - have codified inequities in social, economic, environmental and health outcomes for residents. We discuss this idea – the entrenchment of ethics in the materials of building making – but also that where the technology is restricted, in the exacerbation of labour inequalities. 

Materials, huh? Who’d have thought it? Well, you will, if you listen to (and read) Jeana.

The book is linked above. Jenna can be found at work and on LinkedIn.

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Music credits: ⁠Bruno Gillick 

The A is for Architecture Podcast’s newest episode is a conversation with North American scholars, social scientist Patrick Lynn Rivers and design historian Kai Wood Mah, about their book, Situated Practices in Architecture and Politics, published by Dalhousie Architectural Press in 2024.

In our conversation, Patrick and Kai speak of the importance of situated learning and practice, which involves architects engaging with communities to co-create knowledge as a mode not just of transforming spaces and making things, but as an ethnographic means of seeing things through the eyes of communities. Situated practices, they argue, force a necessary politicisation of design thinking, and are as such essential for architects to adapt to post-colonial challenges and contribute to global change.

Patrick is professor at SAIC in Chicago, has a personal website here, and can be found on LinkedIn and Insta. Kai is Associate Professor in the McEwan School of Architecture at the Laurentian University, Canada and also has a website. Both Patrick and Kai co-direct the design research practice a.field. The book is linked above.

Much to ponder, so little time. Get to it!

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Music credits: ⁠Bruno Gillick 

Image credit: Pilgrimage to Biete Gabriel-Rufael by Robert Wilson. 

In the latest episode of the A is for Architecture Podcast Amsterdam-based architect Hans van der Heijden discuss themes of his design work and writing. Founder of Hans van der Heijden Architects, a practice which track context through deep research realised in, as I see it, a sort-of fitting architecture.

Hans and I connected over a mutual interest in the pursuit of the/ a common city. Our conversation centres on Hans’ book, The Residential Palazzo (Het woonpalazzo) in Design Research, Education and Practice, published this year by HvdHA which, along with the built work Hans speaks of, raises important questions. How must we build, given all the things, to accommodate the lineage of a common culture and place? And why do we still, even after all, fail to do so? What drives contemporary urban incoherence? And how might we arrest this? 

The answer, of course, is study, observation, seeing and hearing. It’s an architecture Hans proposes that is ground in attentiveness and, I would say, generosity. Through the careful study of the city and its parts, and by designing in concord with the city’s fabric as is, and the people who actually live and work there, architects can, in Hans’ words, ‘develop a sort of reservoir of a priori knowledge which […] lends you a kind of professional integrity.’

Strong medicine indeed.

Hans van der Heijden Architects are to be found here. Hans is on Instagram here.  

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Music credits: ⁠Bruno Gillick 

In this episode of the A is for Architecture Podcast the journalist, writer and Deputy Editor at Inside Housing, Peter Apps discusses his very recent book, Homesick: How Housing Broke London and How to Fix It, published by One World Publications in September this year.

Peter became something of a big noise when he won the Orwell Prize for Political Writing in 2023 for his book, Show Me the Bodies: How We Let Grenfell Happen, also published with Oneworld. In that, Peter’s account exposed the systemic failures, negligence and cost-cutting in construction and regulation that led to the preventable 2017 Grenfell Tower fire. In Homesick, and sort-of by extension, Peter examines London's housing crisis, details how skyrocketing costs, inequality, and policy failures have made homes unaffordable, and proposes solutions to address another systemic issues towards housing justice.

Listen to Peter, read his books and think on’t. It’s time.

Thanks to Peter for the time, effort and conversation. Thanks to Margot at One World for the PDF of the book and images. The book is linked above; Peter can be found on Substack, LinkedIn and X.

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Music credits: ⁠Bruno Gillick 

Image credit: Trevor Patt (2015) Creative Commons Licence off Flickr: Robin Hood Gardens, London. Allison and Peter Smithson, 1972

In the A is for Architecture Podcast’s latest episode, Stefano Boeri - architect, urban planner, Professor of Urban Planning at Milan Polytechnic, President of the Future of the City Foundation and former editor of Domus (among some other things…) - joined to speak about his upbringing and education in Milan and Venice, his influences, mentors and inspirations, and the development of his design thinking and practice, Stefano Boeri Architetti. Now a leading voice in European – and more recently global – architecture, Professor Boeri’s work presents us with a new and beguiling vision, one that combines modern urban lifestyles with a genuine concern for nature, habitat and the co-living of species in the contemporary city.

Stefano Boeri Architetti are perhaps best known for their pioneering work integrating vegetation and sustainability into urban architecture, most famously in the Bosco Verticale in Milan (2009-14) —as well as visionary research, writing and planning on biodiversity, urban forestry and the future of cities. 

As I hear it, running through Stefano’s work is a deep interest in the notion of plurality, networks and coalescence. It’s a transcendental vision, in the final analysis, one which seeks to elevate architecture, to make it important, instrumental and effective. 

Beyond the image – and few contemporary architects have captured the zeitgeist as well as Stefano Boeri Architetti – is a deep knowledge, great sensitivity and a fundamental optimism, that through and with architecture, we can make good change happen.

So, worth a listen.

Stefano can be found almost universally online. His practice and academic positions are linked above, and he can be met at Instagram; his practice are on LinkedIn. 

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Music credits: ⁠Bruno Gillick 

Image credits: 1/ Boeri Studio - Vertical Forest, Photographer: Dimitar Harizanov (2020); 2/ Stefano Boeri, Curator, Photographer: Laila Pozzo ©Michelangelo Foundation

In the newest episode of the A is for Architecture Podcast, I got to speak to Derek Jones and James Benedict Brown, two of five scholars responsible for the very recently published Studio Properties: A Field Guide to Design Education, published by Bloomsbury this year and also available as an open access publication on the Bloomsbury website. 

Alongside Elizabeth Boling, James Corazzo, Colin M. Gray and Nicole Lotz, James and Derek have written a book to help clarify the operation of the design studio in education. Repositioning ‘studio’ not as a monolithic entity but as a landscape made up of many interlocking properties, each of which has a character that can be encouraged or diminished to build better design thinking and culture. 

James, Derek and I discuss a few of these properties, where they can be seen, how they operate, how educators might interpret them and intervene in them to build better designers.

Clever chaps, clever book. Have a sticky and see.

James is Associate Professor of Architecture at Umeå School of Architecture and is on LinkedIn; Derek is Senior Lecturer in Design at The Open University and can be found on LinkedIn. The book is linked above and also on the Studio Properties website, where all the things can be found.

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Music credits: ⁠Bruno Gillick 

For the latest episode of the A is for Architecture Podcast, I spoke to architectural historian, writer and curator, Sir Charles Saumarez Smith CBE about his forthcoming book, John Vanbrugh: The Drama of Architecture, which is due out with Lund Humphries in November this year. 

Sir John Vanbrugh (1664–1726) was an English dramatist turned architect, best known for designing Castle Howard and Blenheim Palace, two of the most ambitious Baroque buildings in Britain. A member of the Whig elite and the Kit-Cat Club, Vanbrugh’s work can be read through the social forms of his times but, as Sir John suggests, more importantly in the context of his unique theatrical imagination as it was revealed through his collaborations with professional architects, like Nicholas Hawksmoor. Mocked in his own life, Vanbrugh is now celebrated as one of England’s most original and daring architects.

Sir Charles was chief executive of the Royal Academy of Arts (2007-2018), director of the National Gallery (2002 – 2007) and before that, director of the National Portrait Gallery (1994 – 2002). He can, as such, be found everywhere online. You may seek him on LinkedIn and his personal website. The book is linked above.

In our own time we are #blessed with #Heatherwick. 

But back then, they had #Vanbrugh.

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Music credits: ⁠Bruno Gillick 

For this week’s episode of the A is for Architecture Podcast, I spoke to Berlin-based writer, architect and activist Anna Kostreva who, with Alex Head, leads Plural Studio, ‘a studio for critical inquiry, publishing and architectural design’. We met to talk about Anna’s novel, Seeing Fire | Seeing Meadows, which she published in 2023.

Seeing Fire | Seeing Meadows uses architecture – and an architect narrator - as a way to explore the growing digitisation of everyday urban and spatial life. We talk about this, about the book’s imperative but also about writing, [science] fiction and drawing as a routes to a sort-of triangulated and more shrewd understanding of the world around us.

Seeing Fire is linked above. Anna can be found at Plural Studio here, on Instagram here and on LinkedIn here.

Have a listen: see things differently.

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Music credits: ⁠Bruno Gillick 

In Episode 167 of the A is for Architecture Podcast, Holly Smith, historian and Research Fellow at/ in St John’s College, University of Cambridge, discuss bits of her forthcoming book, Up in the Air: A History of High Rise Britain, which is out with Verso towards the end of October this year.

In Up in the Air, Holly charts the story of Britain’s multistorey council housing—from the post-war construction of estates like Sheffield’s Park Hill to the modern battles to defend them. In the face of the much-publicised failures of high-rise housing to produce the utopian social logics that underpinned them - and punctuated by disaster and explicit tragedy, as at Grenfell - that defence has seemed largely a forlorn one. But were Britain’s high-rise estates really architectural failures? Or were they rather sites where welfare-state ideals were built, contested, and reimagined, as enduring battlegrounds for housing justice?

Holly can be found at work here, on Instagram and X. The book is linked above.

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Music credits: ⁠Bruno Gillick 

Image credit: © Bishopsgate Archive/Tower Blocks UK