In A is for Architecture’s Episode 10/3 Katrin Bohn and André Viljoen – architects, academics and activists – speak about their work on urban agriculture, specifically the idea’s they developed in CPULs Continuous Productive Urban Landscapes: Designing Urban Agriculture for Sustainable Cities, published by Elsiever in 2005, developed and represented in Second Nature Urban Agriculture: Designing Productive Cities, published by Routledge in 2014, and which won the 2015 RIBA President's Award for Outstanding University-located Research.

CPULs are part of Bohn and Viljoen’s proposal for ‘a resilient urban entity […] that enables sustainable urban food systems for the pleasure of its individual citizens and the benefits of environment, economy, culture and society as a whole.’ It’s pretty wild as an idea, and a provocation (perhaps), but it might also be the future, one of universal rights to good food, clean air, open space and healthy, collective, vigorous physical labour in the metropolis. And that’s before you even get to work.

You can find Bohn & Viljoen’s practice website here where there are links to many useful resources, and links to CPULs is here and Second Nature is here. Andre’s profile at University of Brighton is here, and Katrin’s here. They also linger marginally in the socialmediasphere: you can find Andre on LinkedIn, and Katrin on LinkedIn, too.

Yummy cities for the win.

Available on Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts and Amazon Music.

Thanks for listening.

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

Music credits: Bruno Gillick

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

aisforarchitecture.org

Apple: podcasts.apple.com

Spotify: open.spotify.com

Google: podcasts.google.com

Amazon: music.amazon.co.uk

Episode 9/3 of A is for Architecture is a conversation with the architect, artist, writer and teacher, Tom de Paor, ‘one of Ireland’s foremost architects’. We speak about a lot of things, but spend most time thinking about his work Desert/ Dysart, documented beautifully in a book with Peter Maybury, published by Gall Editions as part of Maybury and Paul Clarke’s Notations collection, and due for a significant feature in A+U next spring, and also the Pálás Cinema, Galway, which opened in 2018.

Tom’s work is extensive and highly considered, and includes the National Sculpture Factory Cork (1998), Clontarf Pumpstation and landscape (2007), the Druid Theatre, Galway (2009), and a number of submissions to the Venice Architecture Biennale since the inaugural Irish pavilion he designed, the widely celebrated work N3 – ‘a martyrium in peat’. In 2022 dePaor staged the exhibition ‘i see Earth: building and ground: 1991–2021’, curated by Nathalie Weadick, reviewed in The Times here.

You might find Desert for sale via Peter Maybury’s website, although the print run was small, so I doubt it. There’s a good review of it – and the series – on Maybury’s website by Michael McGarry writing in Perspective magazine. Tom’s practice website is here and Dysart’s emergence is documented on Instagram as

Power springs up, as Hannah Arendt said. So does Tom.

Available on Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts and Amazon Music.

Thanks for listening.

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

Music credits: Bruno Gillick

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

aisforarchitecture.org

Apple: podcasts.apple.com

Spotify: open.spotify.com

Google: podcasts.google.com

Amazon: music.amazon.co.uk

A is for Architecture’s Episode 8, Series 3, is a conversation with a trio of great scholars, Tahl Kaminer, Leonard Ma and Helen Runting, about their recent book, Urbanizing Suburbia: Hyper-Gentrification, the Financialization of Housing and the Remaking of the Outer European City, published by Jovis in July this year.

Addressing the ongoing exodus from the inner city apparent across the world and the appropriation of the suburbs by new communities, the book examines ‘the relationship between three current processes underway in global cities: the hyper-gentrification of inner cities, the financialization of housing, and the structural changes occurring in the suburbs […] using the examples of four key global European cities: Amsterdam, Berlin, London, and Stockholm.’

You can find the book on the Jovis website here. Tahl’s Welsh School of Architecture profile is here, Helen’s Malmö University profile can be found here, and she’s on Insta and X too. Her practice, Secretary Office for Architecture, is worth a look. Leonard can be found at the Estonian Academy of Arts here, and on Drawing Matter here.

Knowledge is power, so listen and learn, and grow in power.

Available on Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts and Amazon Music.

Thanks for listening.

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

Music credits: Bruno Gillick

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

aisforarchitecture.org

Apple: podcasts.apple.com

Spotify: open.spotify.com

Google: podcasts.google.com

Amazon: music.amazon.co.uk

Episode 7/ 3 of A is for Architecture, is a conversation with writer, photographer and teacher Paul Dobraszczyk, about his book, Animal Architecture: Beasts, Buildings and Us, published by Reaktion Books in March this year.

Animal Architecture ‘considers many different animals, opening up new ways of thinking about architecture and the more-than-human [and] asks what we might require in order to design with animals and become more attuned to the other lifeforms that already use our structures’. That’s what the blurb says, anyway.

You can find Paul on X here, Instagram here and at his website here. The book is on the Reaktion website, and you can watch Paul talk about it with UNSW’s Dr Siobhan O'Sullivan on her Knowing Animals podcast on YouTube. Very recently Paul wrote on The Conversation about another pathological effect of big, shiny glass buildings – bird killing. Ah, modernity, you little wonder.

Worth a sticky beak, I reckon.

Available on Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts and Amazon Music.

Thanks for listening.

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

Music credits: Bruno Gillick

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

aisforarchitecture.org

Apple: podcasts.apple.com

Spotify: open.spotify.com

Google: podcasts.google.com

Amazon: music.amazon.co.uk