Florian Summa and Anne Femmer are founding directors of the Leipzig based Summacumfemmer and guest professors at the University of the Arts in Berlin.

The practice's built work includes San Riemo (2020), a co-operative housing development in Munich designed with Büro Juliane Greb. Summa and Femmer were co-curators of Open for Maintenance, the German contribution to the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale.

“[Teaching architecture] doesn’t work when you don’t have real problems, and so this is the strategy we find most useful for us right now: leave the university, leave the institution and go to the problems directly. This prevents you from just talking and mapping and analyzing things, and having the whole thing just remain a conversation within the institution. What we liked about the Venice project was that the most successful projects were the ones that went directly to the workshop – thinking while making.” – SCF

*Join Florian and Anne at this year's Architecture Foundation Summer School (11-15 September). To learn more and register, click here.*

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Minsuk Cho is a Korean architect and designer of this year's Serpentine Pavilion.

"We have a demanding role as architects, and I think movies are a good comparison: it’s always so polarising – there are serious directors, versus blockbuster directors – but there is a way of doing both."

Show notes:

• Eun-Me Ahn - Korean Choreographer 
• Cities on the Move - exhibition curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and You Hanrou
• Jang Young-Gyu - Korean musician and composer responsible for the 2024 Serpentine Pavilion’s sound installation 
• Heman Chong and archivist Renée Staal - collaborators on the 2024 Pavilion’s “Library of Unread Books” 
• Won Buddhism Wonnam Temple by MASS Studies 
• Madang, traditional Korean courtyard
• References: Bruno Taut & Buckminster Fuller 
• 2006 Serpentine Pavilion by Rem Koolhaas with Cecil Balmond 
• 2010 Shanghai Expo Pavilion by MASS Studies
• Crow's Eye View: The Korean Peninsula – 2014 Venice Biennale Korean Pavilion co-curated by Minsuk Cho 
• Gottfried Semper’s Four Elements of Architecture (1851)
• Eduard Glissant - Philosopher and poet from Martinique 
• OM Ungers’ 1978 essay on Berlin’s Green Archipelago 
• Bong Joon-ho - Korean director (Host, Ok-ja, Parasite)
• Park Chan-wook - Korean director (Old Boy, the Handmaiden, Decision to Leave)

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This week, AF Trustee Shumi Bose moderates a discussion on the state of architectural education with panellists Adrian Lahoud (Dean, School of Architecture at the Royal College of Art), Kester Rattenbury (former Professor of Architecture at the University of Westminster), and Neal Shasore (Head of the London School of Architecture). The event was recorded in front of a live audience on 1 February 2023 at Benk and Bo in Aldgate, London.

An upcoming live panel, titled "The Rights of the Architectural Worker" takes place on the evening of Tuesday 25 June at the Barbican Centre, with speakers Bob Allies (Allies and Morrison) Charlie Edmonds (Future Architects Front) and Jane Issler Hall (Assemble), as well as members of the Section of Architectural Workers. For more information and to book your tickets, follow this link.

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This special episode of Scaffold features a brief interview with the Austrian architect Herman Czech conducted by David Kohn in advance of Czech's 10.05.2024 Architecture Foundation lecture. The interview was recorded at Kohn's recently completed Smart's Place project in Covent garden for Baylight Properties.

Czech's lecture coincided with a major retrospective of his work, Approximate Line of Action, that has been staged by FJK3 Contemporary Art Space in Vienna.

Special thanks this week to Crispin Kelly / Baylight Properties for their support.

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Takaharu and Yui Tezuka founded Tezuka Architects in 1994 and are best known for their experimental designs for schools and kindergartens, chief among them the Fuji School in Tokyo. They are currently fundraising to build a new orphanage and school in India called the Jhamtse Gatsal Learning Centre.

Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. 

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Phineas Harper develops cultural programmes that engage broad audiences with architecture and design. A regular contributor to The Guardian and former Chief Executive of Open City, their career spans criticism, curation, education, youth engagement, journalism and sculpture.

"I see my work as always having an eye on some other change that is about making a better built environment […] and that’s why I admire architects so much, because they have the patience and the care to see a project through. I think there’s a lot the we in the critical, curatorial, discursive world have to learn from architects in that regard.”

Phin's exhibition "Cascades" is on now until 1 June at San Mei Gallery

Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. 

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This episode originally aired in April 2022; Scaffold will be back with a new episode next week.

Asif Khan is a designer of buildings, landscapes, exhibitions and installations.

“It’s helpful sometimes to think that architecture is made up. All of this cannon, all of this writing, all of this schooling […] let’s just imagine it’s a religion of some sort that you’re operating within, but before that religion there were other religions, and so it’s about stepping outside of that world and seeing what else is possible.”

Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. 

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Fernanda Eberstadt is a New York born writer living in Europe. She has published five novels and two books of non-fiction, the latest of which is BITE YOUR FRIENDS: STORIES OF THE BODY MILITANT.

"Art lies in the cracks, the deep tremors, the dysfunctions, in the gap between our own broken capabilities and the unpoliced world we’re hoping to create" – FE

Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. 

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Cristina Gamboa is a co-founder of the Barcalona-based architecture cooperative Lacol.

"We are constantly fighting with budgets, and are often left with what is absolutely necessary – a “pure” architecture. […] When the manzanas [Cerda’s urban grid for Barcelona] were built without architects this lead to a homogeneity, or even genericness, that we are comfortable with, maybe because of its lack of a specific aesthetic narrative."

Episode References: 

John Habraken – frameworks of mass support

Lucien Kroll

Frei Otto

Francesc Rius – Coll De Portell Housing

Alfons Soldevila – Casa Mas Ram

Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. 

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Takero Shimazaki is director of the London-based practice t–sa, which he co-founded with Yuli Toh in 1996.

"You can’t control everything as an architect. You can’t dictate everything – that’s not the point. Instead it’s quite exciting to be liberating, to let things be in a way. I'm interested in the discrepancies that exist between imagined ideals and the realities of tolerance and conflict. In these kinds of chaotic and raw situations, how does architecture survive?" 

Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. 

Download the London Architecture Guide App via the App Store or Google Play

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