Unfrozen

Intro/Outro: “Getting Better,” by Shed Seven

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Discussed:

People

• David Gottfried: guest; co-founder of USGBC, founder of WorldGBC (Wikipedia; Regen360)
• Mitch Albom: author of Tuesdays with Morrie, Gottfried's model for the book's dialogue format (Wikipedia)
• Zenobia: third-century queen of Palmyra, namesake of Gottfried's AI thinking partner (Wikipedia)
• Bryan Boyer: co-author of Chain Drain; Taubman College, University of Michigan 
• William McDonough: architect and Cradle to Cradle co-author, cited as a blurber of Regen 360 (mcdonough.com) 
• Frank Duffy: DEGW co-founder and past RIBA president (Wikipedia; RIBA obituary)
• Art Gensler: founder of Gensler and a Gottfried mentor (Wikipedia)
• Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal: 2021 Pritzker laureates known for "never demolish" transformation (Harvard GSD lecture) 
• Patrick Bellew: founder of Atelier Ten; 2023 CTBUH Fazlur R. Khan Lifetime Achievement Award (CVU profile; Atelier Ten announcement)

Books and media

• Regen360: An Operating System for a Regenerative Earth, David Gottfried (regen360.net)
• Explosion Green, David Gottfried's previous book (Wikipedia author page)
• Tuesdays with Morrie, Mitch Albom (Wikipedia)
• Unfrozen 129: Chain Drain, with Bryan Boyer and Greg Lindsay (episode)
• Unfrozen 131: Chatting with Barbarians, with Alexandros Washburn (episode)
• Chain Drain: Why the Built Environment Struggles to Learn and How to Fix It, Boyer and Lindsay, 2026 (chaindrain.netlify.app)

Companies and organizations

• U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) (usgbc.org)
• World Green Building Council (WorldGBC) (worldgbc.org)
• USGBC California and Arup: California Wildfire Rebuilding Guide after the 2025 Los Angeles fires (Architect magazine; 2026 update) 
• Gensler (gensler.com) 
• Blue Planet Systems: synthetic limestone aggregate made from captured CO2, a likely match for the carbon-negative concrete sample Gottfried shows (technology)
• Atelier Ten (atelierten.com)
• Rivian R2: cited as an example of published vehicle life cycle data (rivian.com)
• AI tools named: ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, and Gemini
• Council on Vertical Urbanism (CVU), formerly CTBUH (verticalurbanism.org)

Standards, codes, and rating systems

• LEED (usgbc.org/leed)
• LEED v5: carbon assessment prerequisite and whole building life cycle assessment (One Click LCA overview; LEEDuser NC-v5 MRc2)
• BREEAM (breeam.com) 
• Green Star, Green Building Council of Australia (gbca.org.au)
• WELL Building Standard (wellcertified.com)
• Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) and life cycle assessment (LCA)
• Paris Agreement and COP climate conferences (UNFCCC)

Policy and finance

• PACE financing (Property Assessed Clean Energy) (U.S. Department of Energy)
• Nevada Green Building Tax Abatement and CityCenter, Las Vegas (state project list; Las Vegas Sun)
• Arlington County, Virginia, Green Building Incentive Policy: bonus density (FAR) for LEED (Arlington County)
• San Francisco priority permitting for LEED Gold (SF Environment)
• CTBUH 2023 International Conference, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, Humanizing High Density (see Atelier Ten announcement above)

Intro: “Miss the Start, Miss the End,” by Sparks

Interstitial: “She Blinded Me with Science,” by Thomas Dolby

Outro: “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” by Rodgers & Hammerstein, performed by the Liverpool FC Supporters Choir

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Discussed:

People

• Michael Webb (architecture writer, co-author) — Wallpaper* contributor page
• Thomas Aujero Small (co-author; music critic) — ORO Editions author bio via ACC Art Books
• Elizabeth Valmont (Arup, Americas Technical Services Leader) — Arup staff profile
• Charles and Ray Eames — Eames Office / Eames Foundation
• Richard Neutra (architect, Strathmore Apartments) — Wikipedia
• Charles Garnier (architect, Paris Opera) — Wikipedia
• Hans Scharoun (Berlin Philharmonie architect) — Wikipedia
• Alvar Aalto (Essen opera house architect) — Wikipedia
• Herzog & de Meuron (Elbphilharmonie) — Official site
• Snøhetta (Oslo Opera House) — Official site
• Peter Haimerl (architect, Konzerthaus Blaibach) — ArchDaily project profile
• Thomas E. Bauer (baritone, Blaibach initiator) — Ignant interview
• Willy Brandt (Mayor of West Berlin, Deutsche Oper inauguration) — Wikipedia
• Walter T. Grondzik (co-author, MEEB) — Wiley author page
• Mark Schiller (USC, glare research on Disney Hall) — USC School of Architecture faculty
• Sam Pellman (chime tuning, Tower of Voices) — ENR profile of the project
• Paul Murdoch (architect, Flight 93 National Memorial) — Paul Murdoch Architects

Books

• Michael Webb & Thomas Aujero Small, Music and Architecture in Harmony: Opera Houses and Concert Halls of Europe (ORO Editions, 2026) — Publisher/distributor listing
• Walter T. Grondzik, Alison G. Kwok et al., Mechanical and Electrical Equipment for Buildings ("MEEB") — Wiley product page

Buildings & Venues

• Strathmore Apartments, Westwood, LA (Richard Neutra, 1937; former Eames residence) — Confluence lecture background
• Estates Theatre, Prague (Don Giovanni premiere) — Wikipedia
• Palais Garnier (Paris Opera) — Wikipedia
• Deutsche Oper Berlin — Official site
• Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Berlin — Official site
• Berlin Philharmonie (Scharoun, 1963) — Official site
• Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg — Official site
• Oslo Opera House — Official site
• Teatro di San Carlo, Naples — Official site
• Blaibach Concert Hall 
• Bayreuth Festspielhaus — Wikipedia
• Grand Théâtre de Bordeaux (1780) — Wikipedia
• Musikverein, Vienna — Official site
• La Scala, Milan — Official site
• Walt Disney Concert Hall, LA — Official site
• Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center, Athens (Renzo Piano) — Official site
• LA Memorial Coliseum — Official site
• Flight 93 National Memorial / Tower of Voices — National Park Service page

Institutions & Organizations

• Arup (engineering firm) — Arup SoundLab (R) overview
• University of Southern California, School of Architecture — Official site
• Cranbrook Academy of Art (Eames connection) — Official site
• American Film Institute — Official site
• National Park Service — Official site
• New York MTA / Second Avenue Subway — MTA project page
• Society of Building Science Educators 
  • — Official site
  • — 2005 Conference Award Recipients

Music & Opera Works Mentioned

• Mozart, Don Giovanni — Wikipedia
• Richard Strauss, Elektra — Wikipedia
• Wagner, Das Rheingold (Ring cycle) — Wikipedia
• Andrew Lloyd Webber, The Phantom of the Opera — Official site

Other Items of Interest

Intro/Outro: “Barbarian,” by The Darkness

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Discussed:

Alexandros Washburn (author, Chatting with Barbarians)

Chatting with Barbarians (book site)

Greg Lindsay (co-host, urbanist/journalist)

Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan

The Ephebic Oath of the Athenians

P(doom)

Yuval Noah Harari

Yann LeCun
M2 to M1 Learning (Autonomous Machine Learning)

Isovis vs Isocline

AMI / Advanced Machine Intelligence (LeCun's startup)

Mark Zuckerberg

Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic

Stuart Russell (AI researcher, UC Berkeley)

Aristotle

OpenAI

Hugging Face

Meta

Anthropic ("Claudville")

METR (the "meter" AI-safety research org)

Dwarkesh Patel

Waymo

Ford Motor Company

NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration)

New York University

Stevens Institute of Technology

CivicVirtue.ai (Washburn's alignment lab), where you can find MetaGotham

LEAP (Riyadh tech conference)

Robert Moses

Winston Churchill

Timothy "Speed" Levitch

Bennett Miller (director)

The Cruise (1998 film)

Moneyball (2011 film)

Geoffrey West (Santa Fe Institute)

Scale, by Geoffrey West (book)

Santa Fe Institute

Constantinople / Istanbul

Tokyo

Manhattan grid (1811 Commissioners' Plan)

Riyadh

Philadelphia

Erie Canal

Empire State Building

Syracuse University

Washington, D.C. (L'Enfant Plan)

Intro/Outro: “The Housebuilding Song,” by David Ferguson

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Discussed:

People

Ned Resnikoff (guest) — Resnikoff Consulting · Public Comment newsletter

Greg Lindsay (co-host) — greglindsay.org

Dan Safarik (co-host) — LinkedIn

Christopher Cabaldon, California State Senator, former mayor of West Sacramento — Senate biography · Wikipedia

Gabriel (Gabe) Metcalf, Head of Planning, California Forever; former CEO of SPUR — California Forever profile · The Planning Report interview

Zohran Mamdani, Mayor of New York City — Office of the Mayor · Wikipedia

Marc Andreessen — a16z profile

Scott Wiener, author of SB 79 — sd11.senate.ca.gov

Organizations, companies, and government bodies

Ned Resnikoff Consulting — resnikoffconsulting.com

NYC Mayor's Office of Mass Engagement — establishing announcement

California Forever — californiaforever.com

SPUR (San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association) — spur.org

Blackstone — blackstone.com

Cornell Tech — tech.cornell.edu

Metro, Portland's regional government — oregonmetro.gov

Atlanta Regional Commission — atlantaregional.org

Town of Atherton, California — ci.atherton.ca.us

City of San Jose — sanjoseca.gov

County of Los Angeles — lacounty.gov

Legislation and policy programs

California SB 79, Abundant & Affordable Homes Near Transit Act — bill text · California YIMBY summary

Road to Housing Act — U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs

New York City "City of Yes" zoning reforms — NYC Department of City Planning

ULURP (Uniform Land Use Review Procedure) — NYC Planning overview

California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) — Governor's Office of Land Use and Climate Innovation

Publications

Build or Die: How America Is Suffocating Its Cities and What to Do About It, by Ned Resnikoff (Princeton University Press, December 8, 2026) — publisher page

Emergent Tokyo: Designing the Spontaneous City, by Jorge Almazan, Joe McReynolds, Naoki Saito and Studiolab — Oro Editions (see Unfrozen 31, “Emergent Tokyo,” for more).

CRE Daily — credaily.com

Places and building typologies

Amerikamura district, Osaka (site of the zakkyo-building cocktail bar) — Osaka Info

Tokyo Metropolitan Government — metro.tokyo.lg.jp

City of Sacramento — cityofsacramento.gov

City of Austin, Texas — austintexas.gov

City of Portland, Oregon — portland.gov

Intro/Outro: "Balls," by Sparks

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Discussed:

• “Photography: The Middle Class Medium”
• Family Propaganda Portraits
• Photo-Marxism
• Bruce Weber
• Susan Sontag
• Cindy Sherman
• Walker Evans
• Loriel Beltran
• Marvin Heiferman
• Jose Antonio Navarette
• “Avedon Smiles” > Richard Avedon: Nastassja Kinski and the Serpent
• Brene Brown 
• Weegee
• Alfred Dupont Building, downtown Miami
• Allappattah > “Wynwood West”

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“Navigating through the excuses became part of the performance.”

“The image is more important than the reality it captures.”

“You are poking at people who can squish you.”

“Is taking a picture a crime?”

“I erase myself into these interiors.”

“I left with all the conceptual goodies I could fathom.”

“Interior decorating choices like a bad mixtape…With all of the resources at your disposal, this was your choice?”

“Buildings will eventually be like a Mr. Potato Head, with interchangeable parts.”

“Documenting architecture and fine art, I can map the gentrification that has happened in the last few years.”

Intro/Outro: “The Chain,” by Fleetwood Mac

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Discussed:

People

• Bryan Boyer — co-author; Taubman College, University of Michigan (transcript: "Taubin College")
• Greg Lindsay — co-author; U of T School of Cities
• Frank Duffy — DEGW co-founder, past RIBA president; RIBA obituary
• Stewart Brand — How Buildings Learn, source of the shearing-layers framing
• Bobby Fijan — co-founder, The American Housing Corporation
• KP Reddy — founder/CEO, Zero RFI; ex-Gehry Technologies 
• Boon Sheridan — permitting tech lead, EPIC 
• Jon Buerge — president, Urban Villages 
• Jeanne Gang — Studio Gang 
• Joanna Frank — Center for Active Design 
• Federico Negro — CEO, Canoa
• Astro Teller — X, the Moonshot Factory
• Masayoshi Son — SoftBank Group 
• Adam Neumann — WeWork co-founder 
• David Graeber — Bullshit Jobs 
• Austan Goolsbee — Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago
• George Romney — HUD Secretary behind Operation Breakthrough

Companies & organizations

• Anori — company site / X project page; spun out of Alphabet's X with $26M led by Prologis and Builders 
• Consigli AS + AECOM — AEC Magazine on the acquisition; Norwegian AI start-up acquired for roughly $390M 
• Zero RFI — zero-rfi.com; backed by General Catalyst, built on its Foundation Zero intelligence layer 
• The American Housing Corporation — americanhousing.com / Fast Company profile
• Urban Villages — urban-villages.com
• Studio Gang — studiogang.com
• SHoP Architects (Chris Sharples) — shoparc.com
• Gensler — gensler.com
• Autodesk / Revit — autodesk.com/products/revit
• Katerra — Wikipedia; raised more than $2 billion before going out of business 
• WeWork — Wikipedia
• EliseAI — eliseai.com (transcript: "Elise AI")
• Canoa — canoa.com
• EPIC (Environmental Policy Innovation Center) — policyinnovation.org
• Permitting Tech — permittingtech.com
• AvalonBay + Equity Residential → Vivmark Residential — Commercial Observer; more than 180,000 rental apartments, ~$71B enterprise value 
• JPMorganChase / 270 Park Avenue — project page
• Bilt Rewards — biltrewards.com
• PCBC — pcbc.com
• Council for Quality Growth — councilforqualitygrowth.org

Papers, reports & standards

• Chain Drain: Why the Built Environment Struggles to Learn and How to Fix It — chaindrain.netlify.app; Boyer & Lindsay (2026), University of Michigan white paper built on dozens of AECO-sector interviews 
• 2026 Permitting Technology Landscape Report — permittingtech.com; inventory of 305+ permitting technologies
• Construction Disconnected: The High Cost of Poor Data and Miscommunication – Autodesk / FMI, 2018
• Fitwel — fitwel.org
• LEED — usgbc.org/leed
• WELL Building Standard — wellcertified.com
• Toyota Production System — Wikipedia · Six Sigma — Wikipedia
• Operation Breakthrough — HUD User archive

Policy

• 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act (H.R. 6644) — Congress.gov; reduces barriers to building and targets institutional single-family buyers 
• NYC Local Law 97 — nyc.gov
• CEQ Permitting Innovation Center — permitting.innovation.gov

Cultural references

• Hooli, from HBO's Silicon Valley — Wikipedia
• Fucked Company — Wikipedia

Intro/Outro: “Spacelab,” by Kraftwerk

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Interviewees:

Greg Lemke, PhD, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Salk Institute

Ryan Rosen, Friendly Futures

John Galante, President, AE Ventures

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Discussed:

People

Louis Kahn — architect of the Salk Institute

Greg Lemke — distinguished professor emeritus, Salk Institute

Tony Hunter — Salk professor; discovered tyrosine phosphorylation

Jonas Salk — founder of the Salk Institute

Eero Saarinen — architect of Bell Labs Holmdel and IBM Yorktown 

William Pereira — architect of Geisel Library and master planner of UC Irvine

Walter Netsch — SOM architect of Northwestern's University Library

Dawn Clark Netsch — Illinois legislator and comptroller; Walter Netsch's wife

Frank Gehry — architect; designed Facebook/Meta's MPK20 campus

Mark Zuckerberg — co-founder and CEO, Meta

Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss) — namesake of UC San Diego's Geisel Library

Cormac McCarthy — novelist, author of The Road; longtime Santa Fe Institute fellow

Bruno Latour — sociologist of science; co-author of Laboratory Life

Steve Woolgar — co-author with Latour of Laboratory Life

Christian Catalini — MIT economist; research on lab proximity and collaboration

Eric Klinenberg — NYU sociologist; author of Palaces for the People

Jan Gehl — Danish urbanist

William H. Whyte — urbanist behind the Street Life Project

Ryan K. Rosen — founder and creative director, Friendly Futures

Aaron Hurst — founder and CEO, U.S. Chamber of Connection

John Galante — president and founder, AE Ventures

Bryan Boyer — University of Michigan; co-author of Chain Drain ("Brian" in the transcript)

Kelly Alvarez Doran — co-founder, Ha/f Climate Design; formerly MASS Design Group

Buildings, Campuses & Places

Salk Institute for Biological Studies — La Jolla, CA

Salk Institute architecture — history and design of the Kahn campus

UC San Diego — University of California, San Diego

Geisel Library — UC San Diego

UC Irvine — William Pereira's radial campus plan

Torrey Pines Mesa — San Diego's research and biotech corridor

La Jolla — San Diego community

Bell Works (former Bell Labs Holmdel) — Saarinen's Holmdel research campus, now adaptively reused

IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center — Yorktown Heights, NY

Santa Fe Institute — complexity research institute

Northwestern University Library — Walter Netsch's brutalist library

Jussieu Campus — Sorbonne University, Paris

Meta MPK20 — Frank Gehry-designed Menlo Park office

The RaDD (Research and Development District) — IQHQ's downtown San Diego waterfront life-science campus

Gaylord Pacific Resort — Chula Vista, CA

Wild Mile — floating eco-park on the Chicago River

La Jolla Tennis Club — public tennis club, La Jolla

Companies, Organizations & Events

Friendly Futures — Ryan Rosen's social-architecture and neighborhood-games practice

AE Ventures — John Galante's hosted-event company

Builder Innovator — AE Ventures' content platform and summit series

Urban Rivers — Chicago nonprofit behind the Wild Mile

U.S. Chamber of Connection — Aaron Hurst's civic-connection nonprofit

IQHQ — life-science real estate developer

Alexandria Real Estate Equities — life-science REIT and lab campus developer

Scripps Research — La Jolla biomedical research institute

Scripps Institution of Oceanography — UC San Diego

MASS Design Group — nonprofit architecture practice

Ha/f Climate Design — Kelly Alvarez Doran's embodied-carbon consultancy

Zonda — housing market research firm

Future Place — Zonda/BUILDER master-planned community conference

PCBC — Pacific Coast Builders Conference

California Building Industry Association — CBIA

Downtown Denver Partnership — downtown Denver business improvement organization

Mortgage Bankers Association — MBA

White House Council of Economic Advisers — CEA

Bilt Rewards — rent-payment rewards platform

WeWork — flexible workspace operator

Los Angeles Dodgers — MLB franchise

Los Angeles Rams — NFL franchise

Insulating Concrete Forms (ICF) — Insulating Concrete Forms Manufacturers Association

Otter.ai — transcription service used for this recording

Publications, Papers & Works Cited

Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts — Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar (Princeton University Press)

Chain Drain: Why the Built Environment Struggles to Learn and How to Fix It — Bryan Boyer and Greg Lindsay, University of Michigan white paper

Palaces for the People — Eric Klinenberg on social infrastructure

The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces — William H. Whyte, Project for Public Spaces

The Purpose Economy — Aaron Hurst

Aerotropolis: The Way We'll Live Next — John D. Kasarda and Greg Lindsay

Road to Housing Act of 2025 — U.S. Senate Banking Committee housing legislation

Conquest of the Planet of the Apes — 1972 film shot partly at UC Irvine

Intro/Outro: “Fixing a Hole,” by The Beatles

Discussed:

The Other Housing Crisis: Ending the Deterioration and Loss of Affordable Homes. Todd Swanstrom, A.T. Harrison & Alan Mallach, eds., Princeton University Press, 2026

The American Housing Survey

Housing filtering theory

Place Matters: Metropolitics for the 21st Century by Peter Dreier, John Mollenkopf, Todd Swanstrom

MBA White Paper: Demographic Trends Could Reshape Future Housing Demand

Raj Chetty, et. al: “The Effects of Exposure to Better Neighborhoods on Children: New Evidence from the Moving to Opportunity Project,” Harvard, 2016

Matthew Desmond + Eviction Lab

Measuring and Understanding Home Repair Costs: A National Typology of Households, Philadelphia Federal Reserve, 2019

UMSL’s Home Repair Toolkit

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Intro/Outro: “Big Road,” by Jon Spencer Blues Explosion

Discussed:

Transportation and the Shape of Cities

Christoph Spieler

Mandi Chapa

David Copeland Laredo

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Trains, Buses, People: an Opinionated Atlas of US and Canadian Transit

American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) Green Book

NACTO (National Association of City Transportation Officials) 

Previously visited transportation design fairylands: 
- Copenhagen (Unfrozen 56: Urban Block Cities)
- Amsterdam (Unfrozen 84: Movement)

Dallas Street Design Manual

Woonerfs

Intro/Outro: “Roscoe,” by Midlake

Andrew James Gregor

Roscoe

Blue Dog Construction

Embarcadero Center

John Portman

Hyatt Regency San Francisco

The Clift Hotel’s Redwood Room

The Tenderloin

“Hostile” architecture

Interboro Partners: The Arsenal of Inclusion and Exclusion

San Francisco’s “doom loop”

Kansas City, MO’s “Zero KC” initiative

Invisible People Instagram channel

Mary Leakey

Urbz’s interventions in Mumbai and elsewhere (see Unfrozen 115, “Homegrown Cities”)

Patrick Fealey’s “The Invisible Man,” Esquire, 14 November 2024

Rebuilding Together East Bay Network

HOPE (Homeless Outreach Population Estimate) NYC