Unfrozen

Dan and Greg return from podcast sabbatical to bring you tasty riffs and preview Unfrozen’s spring docket. You didn’t think you could get rid of us that easily, did you?

Intro/Outro: “I’m Alive,” by Electric Light Orchestra

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Discussed:

IIT MTBVU goes to Malaysia and Singapore

CTBUH 2023 Conference

Crescent City CA - site of a future megacity, and maybe tsunamis. A job for Climate Alpha

Vanity Fair - Horseshoe Theorists - network states, crypto communities

Economists believe architecture doesn’t matter

Trads vs mods

Human scale vs megaprojects - there are no natural norms of architecture

Singapore - the ultimate tabula rasa city:

Koolhaas, S, M, L, XL

The 7 peaks <> Devils Pool and Marina Bay Sands pool -- great, but you’ve got to see the employee dry cleaning operation at Marina Bay Sands

SIM City for Real

How do we disrupt Autodesk?

Who is the Carlos the Jackal behind Trump’s first policy proposal for 2024 campaign: Freedom Cities! With EVTOLS! = Bioshock Infinite

University of Notre Dame vs. a supertrad grad

Threatcasting and Micro-targeting with the Secret Service

Next up:

Nick Kaufmann, Spectra Cities and Andreea Ion Cojacaru, Numena

…and Venice Architecture Biennale - countdown to May

…tying it back to the Chicago Architecture Biennial

Intro: “The Statue Got Me High,” by They Might Be Giants

Discussed:

• “There is nothing in this world as invisible as a monument.” – Robert Musil
• The Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Washington DC, Maya Lin
• Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial, Washington DC, Frank Gehry
• National World War II Memorial, Washington DC, 
• Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Berlin, Peter Eisenman
• Monument vs monumental vs memorial
• The Bastille, Paris
• Mariana Griswold van Rensselaer
• National September 11 Memorial & Museum, New York City, Michael Arad 
• New Yorker cover, “Memorial Plaza,” 7-14 July 2014, Adrian Tomine
• Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn
• “Death, Grief and Mourning in Contemporary Britain,” – Geoffrey Gorer, 1965
• Sedlec Ossuary, Kutna Hora, Czech Republic
• “The Hour of Our Death” – Philippe Ariès, 1977
• Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris
• Brooklyn Strand, repurposing the Brooklyn War Memorial as a conduit to New York City’s park system
• Hyde Park Corner, London
• Monuments that “switch on” only when they’re blown up or taken down
  • Marian Columns
  • Georgia Guidestones
  • Robert E. Lee Monument, Richmond
  • White contractors wouldn’t remove Confederate statues. So a Black man did it.
• “Kickstarter urbanism” and the crowd-funded monument
• Denkmalkritik
• “The Great War and Modern Memory” – Paul Fussell
• The Grove, Los Angeles
• Texas State Capital Grounds, Austin
• Outro: “Monuments for a Dead Century,” by The Boo Radleys

Dan and Greg recap the highs and lows of the first full year of Unfrozen – 33 episodes – and look ahead to 2023.

Did you know? You don’t have to catch the stars as they fall. You can listen to any episode from our web site, or on your favorite podcast platform, at any time!

Intro/Outro: “Our Lips are Sealed,” by The Go-Go’s

Discussed:

- A high number of episodes devoted to Peter Rees, the former chief planner of the City of London

o Episode 37: The City is Here for You to Use

o Episode 22: The Engine Room, the City, and Color Commentary

o Episode 21: This is London: Rees Reminiscences

- Stats and demographics

- Fan fave episodes: tied for 125 plays each:

o Episode 32: Future Storage: From Mineral Extraction to Data Forestry (Marina Otero)

o Episode 31: Emergent Tokyo (Jorge Almazan)

- Greg’s favorites:

o Episode 13: What Fresh McMansion Hell is This? (Kate Wagner)

o Episode 26: Big Time (Patrick MacLeamy)

o Episode 27: A Skyscraper Superfan Aims High (Changsub Lee)

o Episode 34: Chicago: Two Guides, One Cast (Laurie Petersen, Vladimir Belogolovsky

o Episode 41: Imagine a City (Mark Vanhoenacker)

o Episode 43: Who is the City For? (Blair Kamin)

- Dan’s favorites:

o Episode 42: 1972: A Spatial Oddity (Noritaka Minami, Iker Gil)

- Guest & adventure pipeline for 2023

o Juan Miro, Miro Rivera Architects on windowless dormitories

o Andrew Shanken – author, The Everyday Life of Memorials

o Andmore Partners – Architects as Developers

o Dan in Hradec Kralove, Czechia

o Greg: The Metaverse Metropolis @ Cornell Tech Urban Hub

o What is the Figma of Autodesk?

o Zach Katz – Transform Your City

Dan and Greg recap the highs and lows of the first full year of Unfrozen – 33 episodes – and look ahead to 2023.

Did you know? You don’t have to catch the stars as they fall. You can listen to any episode from our web site, or on your favorite podcast platform, at any time!

Intro/Outro: “Our Lips are Sealed,” by The Go-Go’s

Discussed:

- A high number of episodes devoted to Peter Rees, the former chief planner of the City of London

o Episode 37: The City is Here for You to Use

o Episode 22: The Engine Room, the City, and Color Commentary

o Episode 21: This is London: Rees Reminiscences

- Stats and demographics

- Fan fave episodes: tied for 125 plays each:

o Episode 32: Future Storage: From Mineral Extraction to Data Forestry (Marina Otero)

o Episode 31: Emergent Tokyo (Jorge Almazan)

- Greg’s favorites:

o Episode 13: What Fresh McMansion Hell is This? (Kate Wagner)

o Episode 26: Big Time (Patrick MacLeamy)

o Episode 27: A Skyscraper Superfan Aims High (Changsub Lee)

o Episode 34: Chicago: Two Guides, One Cast (Laurie Petersen, Vladimir Belogolovsky

o Episode 41: Imagine a City (Mark Vanhoenacker)

o Episode 43: Who is the City For? (Blair Kamin)

- Dan’s favorites:

o Episode 42: 1972: A Spatial Oddity (Noritaka Minami, Iker Gil)

- Guest & adventure pipeline for 2023

o Juan Miro, Miro Rivera Architects on windowless dormitories

o Andrew Shanken – author, The Everyday Life of Memorials

o Andmore Partners – Architects as Developers

o Dan in Hradec Kralove, Czechia

o Greg: The Metaverse Metropolis @ Cornell Tech Urban Hub

o What is the Figma of Autodesk?

o Zach Katz – Transform Your City

Pulitzer Prize–winning architecture critic Blair Kamin has long informed and delighted readers with his illuminating commentary. Kamin’s newest collection, Who Is the City For?, does more than gather fifty-five of his most notable Chicago Tribune columns from the past decade: it pairs his words with striking new images by photographer and architecture critic Lee Bey, Kamin’s former rival at the Chicago Sun-Times. Listen to the Unfrozen interview with Kamin, and understand why “city planning is not a game of 2D checkers but of 3D chess.”

Intro/Outro: “Chicago” by Benny Goodman

Discussed:

INVEST South/West

Maurice Cox, Chicago Planning Commissioner

The pandemic’s effect on rapid urbanization

Spread of crime from poor to rich neighborhoods

The city’s not “out of control,” but it is in need of reinvention

Lower Manhattan’s adaptive reuse of older skyscrapers does present a template

Decentralization of the central business district, ex: McDonald’s HQ in the Fulton Market

Prospects for Lincoln Yards and The 78 – shades of Cityfront Center?

The Chicago Spire pit / 400 N Lake Shore Drive replacement project

DuSable Park and the Riverwalk

“We have to think of the city not as a 2D checkers game but a 3D chess game.”

Buffalo Bayou Park extension project, Houston

O’Hare Global Terminal

Chicago River Boathouses

AIA design competition for the next bungalow

Committee on Design

“Plop” architecture

1611 W Division  – look ma, no parking!

Red Line South extension

“There are those who say ‘who gets what’ is a tired trope of architectural criticism – let me vehemently disagree.”

Chicago as a participant in global economic and architectural design exchange

Chicago Architecture Biennial

The City that Works > The City that Plays

Investment of Chinese capital in St. Regis Tower

Cloud Gate

Crown Fountain

Intro/Outro:

“Space Oddity” by David Bowie

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Discussed:

• Japanese Metabolism
• 1960 Tokyo World Design Conference
• 1970 World’s Exposition, Osaka
• 1972 – Nakagin Capsule Tower book
• Kisho Kurokawa, architect of the Nakagin Capsule Tower
• Tomio Ohashi photos
• Tatsuyuki Maeda > Capsule Tower Preservation and Restoration Project > Nakagin Capsule Tower: The Last Record
• MAS Context Analog 2016
• Galen Pardee / Drawing Agency
• Kisho Kurokawa’s only building in the USA is in Chicago: the Illinois Center Sporting Club
• Marina City, one of Nakagin Capsule Tower’s inspirations

Intro/Outro: “Flying,” by The Beatles

Discussed:

• Calvino’s Invisible Cities
• Holiday Inn and Suites, Pittsfield, Mass.
• Empire State Plaza, Albany
• John Hancock Tower, 200 Clarendon, Boston
• James C Scott – Seeing Like a State

Aerotropolises, and/or airport terminals and fringes we like:

• The Circle, Zurich
• The Squaire, Frankfurt
• The Jewel, Changi, Singapore
• Harmondsworth Moor, Hillingdon, London – home of a barn built in 1426, which has a view of the Heathrow control tower
• AeroCity, Delhi
• Virgin Clubhouse, Heathrow
• Schiphol, Amsterdam
• Kastrup, Copenhagen
• Arlanda, Stockholm 
• Vancouver

Ways to make aviation fuel green, The Economist, 17 August 2022

Unfrozen interviews Mark Vanhoenacker, a commercial airline pilot and author of Imagine a City and Skyfaring. A regular contributor to the New York Times and the Financial Times, he was trained as a historian and started in business before beginning flight training in 2001. He now flies the Boeing 787 Dreamliner from London to cities around the world.

Intro/Outro: “Flying,” by The Beatles

Discussed:

Calvino’s Invisible Cities

Holiday Inn and Suites, Pittsfield, Mass.

Empire State Plaza, Albany

John Hancock Tower, 200 Clarendon, Boston

James C Scott – Seeing Like a State

Aerotropolises, and/or airport terminals and fringes we like:

- The Circle, Zurich

- The Squaire, Frankfurt

- The Jewel, Changi, Singapore

- Harmondsworth Moor, Hillingdon, London – home of a barn built in 1426, which has a view of the Heathrow control tower

- AeroCity, Delhi

- Virgin Clubhouse, Heathrow

- Schiphol, Amsterdam

- Kastrup, Copenhagen

- Arlanda, Stockholm

- Vancouver

Ways to make aviation fuel green, The Economist, 17 August 2022

Cities that produce only underwear, blue jeans and extras in domestic films are among the fascinating objects of study in Typological Drift: Emerging Cities in China by Shiqiao Li and Esther Lorenz. Journey with Unfrozen and Shiqiao Li to reveal the surprising urban realities of China that escape normative urban theories, with several stops along the way in philosophy and linguistics.

Typological Drift: Emerging Cities in China by Shiqiao Li and Esther Lorenz

Interviewee: Shiqiao Li is Weedon Professor in Asian Architecture, School of Architecture, University of Virginia, where he teaches history, theory, and design of architecture, and directs PhD in the Constructed Environment Program. He is author of Understanding the Chinese City (2014), Architecture and Modernization (2009, in Chinese) and Power and Virtue, Architecture and Intellectual Change in England 1650-1730 (2006). He recently contributed an essay to the Routledge Handbook of Chinese Architecture (2022).

Inro/Outro: “Drifted” by Groove Armada

Discussed:

Drift Triggers

Ten Thousand Things

Yiwu International Trade City

Borges: “The map of the empire is the size of the empire itself.”

Figuration

Wilhelm von Humboldt

Francois Jullien: The Silent Transformations

Nanhui New City

Hengdian World Studios

Minmetals Hallstatt

Thames Town

Lujiazui

The Bund

Tongji Architectural Design Group Co. Ltd.