Unfrozen

Vishaan Chakrabarti is the founder and creative director of the Practice for Architecture and Urbanism (PAU), and the author of "The Architecture of Urbanity." He has worn many hats - in development, architecture, government and academia, and brings this experience to bear in his public advocacy work.

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Intro: "Rebel Rebel" by David Bowie

Show Notes:

- The "Joy" Thing with Tim Walz

- Obama > Biden Infrastructure Bill

- Is it really Rural vs Urban, or Suburban vs Everyone Else? Is it Rurbanity?

- UC Berkeley analysis of carbon footprints of cities vs rural vs suburban

- The mortgage interest tax deduction

- The Federal gas tax

- Out-migration from expensive to affordable cities - not the suburbs

- Railroad suburbs: Montclair and Maplewood NJ

- Carbon pricing

- Jane Jacobs' idea that cities formed around trade

- James C. Scott

- The Dawn of Everything, David Graeber & David Wengrow

- Alternate civilizational origin stories at the Venice Biennale

- The places we go on vacation all have lousy parking

- The energy source powering cars is not really the issue - it's the degree to which we design our cities around cars - or not

- Copenhagen - the urban planning Mecca - but where are the immigrants?

- InterOculus, PAU, Columbus, Indiana

- "Because they've been told their definition of excellence is to design spaceships to be built by slaves in the sand, that's what architects are off doing. And so of course they're not at the adult table influencing policy. We can't relegate ourselves to the kiddie table by talking about irrelevant things and then complain about the chicken nuggets."

- "We don't help everyday people visualize the power of policy change as well as we could."

- "I think we are at a moment where it is really, important for people who understand the physical world to sit down and be able to speak the language of government."

- "Designing policy is a form of design."

- New York Times collaboration with PAU = NYC = Not Your Car

- Gov. Kathy Hochul's cancellation of congestion pricing

- Robert Caro, The Power Broker - "The city's permanent government" - the "deep state" might actually be OK

- "New York, New York, New York," by Tom Dyja

- Accepting imperfection as a necessary democratic outcome - instead of going Roark on imperfection and blowing it up

- Uber's hiring of Bradley Tusk, Bloomberg's third mayoral campaign manager

- Alejandro Aravena - an architect literally being the architect of the new Chilean constitution

- Norman Foster - adviser to the United Nations on rebuilding Ukraine

- Book design by Michael Beirut and Britt Cobb at Pentagram

Outro: "Don't Worry About the Government," by Talking Heads

Madeline Ashby is a freelance futurist and author of Glass Houses, a near-future sci-fi thriller about creepy tech, creepier tech bros, and the woman who dares challenge both. The first Unfrozen interview with a novelist takes us on a journey to desert islands, bland design-hotel furniture, evil architecture tropes, and much more.

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Intro/Outro: "I am not a woman, I am a god," by Halsey

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Show Notes:

- Previous work:

- Strategic Foresight and Innovation Program - OCAD University

- The Old Dark House, 1932

- Institute for the Future - Age of Networked Matter

- Haunted Objects, Greg and Dana Newkirk

- Major inspo: Michael Mann movies

- The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

- Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex

- David Cronenberg's Brutalist Toronto

- Toshiya Ueno and "Cultural Odorlessness"

- Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross collaboration on Halsey's 2021 album "If I Can't Have Love, I Want Power."

- The tendency of AI to generate from the baseline average of all things on the internet - usually porn, maybe hentai

- "Domestic Violence," Madeline Ashby, Slate, 2018

- Samantha Bee - "Excuse Me, Do You Have a Moment to Talk About Canada?"

- Network states

- Augmented Cities, Cornell Tech

- The decline of dating apps and replacement by AI bot boyfriends and girlfriends / The fracking of human consciousness

- DARVO

- Movie version would almost certainly star Kristen Bell or Kristen Stewart

Salty Urbanism is a design manual to address sea level rise and climate change for urban areas in coastal zones. It is a concept that refers to the ways in which cities and urban areas will respond and adapt to rising sea levels and the accompanying increase in salinity of coastal and near-coastal land. This phenomenon is caused by a combination of factors, including global warming, sea-level rise, and human development along coastlines. Unfrozen interviews Jeffrey Huber, Principal, Brooks + Scarpa and Associate Professor, School of Architecture, Florida Atlantic University, about how the concept is applied in South Florida.

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Intro/Outro: "Waiting for the Flood," by Love and Rockets

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Today’s uncanny AI renderings are just the tip of the

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Intro/Outro: “Stuck in a Rut,” by The Darkness

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Discussed:

The Road to IDC: Writing guidelines for the use of

See also: “The Future of Generative AI in Architecture, Design and Engineering,” Cornell Tech

Key players:

-         Carole Wedge, Shepley Bulfinch

-         Bob Packard, ZGF

-         Brad Lukanic, Cannon Design

Other leading lights in the AI 4 AEC community:

Phillip Bernstein, Yale

Chris Minerva, Thornton Tomasetti

Greg Schluesner,
Executive Committee Secretary, IDC
Director of Design Technology, HOK

Volker Buscher,
Chief Data Officer, Data Leaders
Former Chief Data Officer, Arup

Fish & Richardson

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Is this the “anti-Autodesk”?

What does “after Autodesk” look like?

“Every line on the road is a political choice.”

Marco te Brömmelstroet, a.k.a. “The Cycling Professor,” is the chair of Urban Mobility Futures at the University of Amsterdam. His book Movement, with Thalia Verkade, takes a stance against myths and received wisdoms that surround popular thinking about the rights and place of cyclists and pedestrians, urban design, and traffic engineering. Parallel to the critique, he presents new ways of thinking about how, and why we move through the world, and at what speed.

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Intro/Outro: “My White Bicycle,” by Tomorrow

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In The City in the City, Amy Thomas offers

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Intro/Outro: “Money,” by Pink Floyd

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Discussed:

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o  This is London: Rees Remembrances

o  The City is Here for You to Use

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“Either you’re growing your materials or not. You’re getting

Lindsey Wikstrom is the Founding Principal of Mattaforma

Intro/Outro: “I Am a Tree,” by Guided by Voices

Chris Hytha and Mark Houser are collaborators on Highrises: Art Deco, a multimedia series chronicling the great skyscraper edifices of the roaring ‘20s. Photographed by drones and meticulously measured and researched, the series – a book, prints, website, mobile phone wallpaper and exhibition -- reveals fascinating details and stories of these distinctly American icons. Catch the in-person book talk on July 18 and the exhibition from May 31 to August 26 at the Chicago Architecture Center.

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Intro/Outro: “High Rise” by Ladytron

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Discussed:

MultiStories: 55 Antique Skyscrapers and the Business Tycoons Who Built Them

The DJI Air 2S Drone

Highrises Art Deco: 100 Spectacular Skyscrapers from the Roaring ‘20s to the Great Depression

Henry W. Oliver Building, Pittsburgh, D.H. Burnham, 1910

Nebraska State Capitol, Lincoln, Bertram Goodhue, 1932

Public Market > Modern Spirits Liquor Store, Tulsa, Gaylord Noftsger, 1930

Monadnock Building, Chicago, Burnham & Root, Holabird & Roche, 1891-1893

Eastern Columbia Building, Los Angeles, Claud Beelman, 1930

Mather Tower > Club Quarters Hotel, Chicago, Herbert Riddle, 1928

Union & Peoples National Bank > Jackson County Tower, Jackson, MI, Albert Kahn, 1929

Frick Building, Pittsburgh, D.H. Burnham, 1902

The Woolworth Building, New York, Cass Gilbert, 1913

Price Tower, Bartlesville, OK, Frank Lloyd Wright, 1956

Sterick Building, Memphis, Wyatt C Hendrick & Co, 1930

Industrial Trust Building, Providence, George Frederick Hall, Walker & Gillette, 1927

Guardian Building, Detroit, Donaldson & Meier; Smith, Hinchman & Grylls, 1929

Fisher Building, Detroit, Albert Kahn Associates; Graven & Mayger, 1928

Carbide & Carbon Building, Chicago, Burnham Brothers, 1929

Foshay Tower, Minneapolis, Hooper & Janusch; Magney & Tusler, 1929

Rand Tower, Minneapolis, Holabird & Root, 1929

Kansas City Power & Light Building, Kansas City, Hoit, Price & Barnes, 1931

In To the Ends of the Earth: A Grand Tour for the 21st Century, Richard Weller, Professor Emeritus and Co-Founder of the Ian L. McHarg Center for Urbanism & Ecology at the University of Pennsylvania, has condensed a sprawling subject into a compact field guide to 120 of the most significant 21st century objects, from bulldozers to Biosphere II. Call it dystopian, call it optimistic. Just don’t call it “anthroporn.”

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Intro/Outro: “Until the End of the World,” by U2

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Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology After the End of the World, by Timothy Morton

Utopias (and Utopia’s Evil Twins)

                  Welwyn Garden City

                  Chandigarh

                  Burning Man

                  EPCOT

                  Pruitt-Igoe

                  Walmart

Machines:

Bulldozers + polymetric nodules

Fish farms

Solar arrays

Sand motor + littoral drift

Tree-planting drones

Monsters:

                  Geo-engineering

The World Park Project / UN Convention on Biological Diversity

Y2Y

Banff Wildlife Crossings Project

The Atlas for the End of the World

Jason Barr is a professor of economics at Rutgers University Newark and one of the world's foremost experts on the economics of skyscrapers. His new book, out May 14, 2024, is Cities in the Sky: The Quest to Build the World’s Tallest Skyscrapers. In it, Barr takes a global view of why the quest to build up is as fierce as ever, and why skyscrapers remain so controversial. Join the Unfrozen interview with Barr, in which some record-breaking myths get busted.

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Intro/Outro: “Altitude Blues,” by Ladytron

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Discussed:

Mythbusting the Home Insurance Building

First Skyscrapers | Skyscraper Firsts Forum

LeRoy Buffington’s skyscraper patent

Mythbusting The Skyscraper Index

The Line

Jeddah Tower

Joel Garreau’s Edge City

Emaar’s real estate play at Burj Khalifa: Downtown Dubai

Legends Tower, Oklahoma City

Empire State Building

China’s “build it” economy

“Zero Gravity Living”

Nashville and Oracle

Detroit and Dan Gilbert

Newark renaissance

Center City District (Philadelphia) study: Downtowns

Karen Seto