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.