Unfrozen

Rem Koolhaas is nothing if not enigmatic, which makes him and his first major built work, the Villa dal’Alva, Paris (1990), an ideal first subject of the “Gumshoe” series of architectural mysteries. Cutting through the conventions of academic jargon and trade press, The House of Dr. Koolhaas reopens the “cold case” of Koolhaas and examines evidence in a pulp-detective novel format. Unfrozen turns the lamp back on writer/editor team Francoise Fromonot and Thomas Weaver.

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Intro/Outro: “Beancounter,” by the Cooper Vane

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Discussed:

Gumshoe Architectural Mystery Series

Thomas Weaver (AA Files)

Villa d’Alva, OMA

S, M, L, XL

Luis Bunuel

City of Glass by Paul Auster

Ways of Seeing by John Berger

Aramis, or the Love of Technology by Bruno Latour

The Purloined Letter by Edgar Allen Poe

Mannerism

Madelon Vreisendorp with Teri Wehn-Damisch: The Film of Delirious New York

Countryside, The Future

Dali’s paranoiac-critical method

Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye

Next up: Oscar Neimayer’s Communist Party Headquarters, Paris, by Littell Shaw

Then: The Parthenon

Then: Case Study House by Craig Ellwood

Poelzig’s I.G. Farben Building, Frankfurt

Raymond Chandler

James Ellroy

Dismayed by the destruction and death in Gaza? Fear not, the wizards at Boston Consulting Group have a plan – a 38-slide deck that will Make Gaza GREAT Again. It’s a molten nugget of consultant-speak, SimCity planning moves, weirdly proportioned AI slop renderings, and tokenized real estate transactions that place a thin veil of “solutioneering” over what looks an awful lot like ethnic cleansing. Don’t worry – it will all be covered by private investment and all kinds of familiar corporations in the tech, design, construction and security businesses are invited, whether they know it or not. Our hot take on this hottest of messes.

Discussed:

Washington Post article

A former president of the American Institute of Architects (AIA), Carl Elefante has led the field in finding common ground between two things seemingly in conflict: sustainable design and historic preservation. He is a Principal Emeritus with Quinn Evans and a charter member of the Climate Heritage Network. In addition to his work on the intersection of historic preservation and sustainability, he has spent decades focusing on building-sector decarbonization, community vitality, and urbanism. His new book is Going for Zero: Decarbonizing the Built Environment on the Path to Our Urban Future.

Intro/Outro:

“24 Hour Limes,” by The Cooper Vane

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Discussed:

The Greenest Building is the One That is Already Built

Work and the City, by Frank Duffy

MASS Design Group

Kéré Architecture

Lo-TEK Design by Radical Indigenism, by Julia Watson

Empire State Building retrofit vs One World Trade Center: Both LEED Gold

Passive House

PassiveLogic

WUFI Modeling

Susan Roth

Mini-splits

Hillary Brown, Professor Emerita of Architecture at the City College of New York, joins Unfrozen to discuss her book Revitalize | Resettle, which explores how climate migration and rural revitalization can solve interlinked crises. Brown emphasizes that large U.S. cities alone cannot absorb climate-displaced populations due to infrastructural limits and rising costs. Instead, she proposes strategic resettlement in small towns and “micropolitan areas”—places often overlooked but rich in cultural value and potential.

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Intro/Outro:

“24-Hour Limes” by The Cooper Vane

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Discussed:

Hero towns leading the charge to accept climate migrants and flourish:

Jesse Keenan – Climate-Proof Duluth

New York State Small-Town Revitalization

T-Mobile hometown grants

Parag Khanna, ecstatic nomad

Chicago’s Wrigley Building, constructed in 1921, is the “whited sepulcher” of Michigan Avenue, gleaming in terra cotta like the rows of teeth ostensibly cleansed by Wrigley’s Chewing Gum, the company that built the Beaux-Arts edifice. But its extravagant looks are only part of the story. Unfrozen hosts Robert Sharoff and William Zbaren, who wrote and photographed the new book from Rizzoli, The Wrigley Building: The Making of an Icon, to hear the rest.

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Intro / Outro:

“24 Hour Limes,” by The Cooper Vane

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Discussed:

The Unfrozen crew hit the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale with all the furious energy our 100th episode deserved. A rollicking roundup of robots, pans, picks, porches and pavilions, with special guest interviews: Michele Champagne, Kate Wagner, Marisa Moran Jahn, Bekim Ramku, Rafi Segal, Jeanne Gang, and Mark Cavagnero. And finally, while Rome picked a pontiff, we had our own mini-conclave in Venice and humbly offered up our picks for the 20th Biennale curator. Join us for this extra special centenary episode.

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Intro/Outro: “Bounder of Adventure,” by The Cooper Vane

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Discussed:

-      Olly Wainwright: Can robots make the perfect Aperol spritz? – Venice Architecture Biennale 2025 review | Architecture | The Guardian

-         Rowan Moore: Venice Architecture Biennale review: ‘a hot mess of pretension’ | The Observer

-         The New York Architecture Review crew: Nicolas, Chloe and Sammy

-         International Exhibition in the Arsenale

o  Robots, hemp, bio-concrete, 8-point font with AI-assisted summaries

o  Kate Crawford and Vladan Joier’s megascale text: Calculating Empires

o   Bjarke Ingels Group’s entry: Ancient Future, with Bhutanese carvers paced by an ABB robot

o  Christopher Hawthorne’s Speaker’s Corner

o  Shades of Rem Koolhaas’ 2014 Fundamentals edition

-         Kate Wagner’s review:

o  Dated techno-optimism

o  Cannibalism of architecture by art and exhibition design

-         National Pavilions:

o  Austria: “Agency for Better Living”

o  Canada: “Picoplanktonics” by The Living Room Collective

o  Denmark: “Build of Site”

o  Estonia: “Let Me Warm You”

o  Romania: “Human Scale”

o  Saudi Arabia: “The Um Slaim School: An Architecture of Connection”

o  Slovenia: “Master Builders”

o  South Korea: “Little Toad, Little Toad”, but mainly this cat

o  Spain: “Internalities: Architectures for Territorial Equilibrium”

o  UAE: “Pressure Cooker”

o  USA: “Porch: An Architecture of Generosity”

§  Curators:

·        Peter MacKeith, Fay Jones School of Architecture, University of Arkansas

·        Rod Bigelow, Executive Director, Crystal Bridges Museum of Art

·        Marlon Blackwell, Marlon Blackwell Architects

·        Susan Chin, Design Connects

·        Stephen Burks, Man Made

§  Shades of the timber-themed 2021 exhibit, but with a twist

§  Interview with Mark Cavagnero, Mark Cavagnero Associates, on participation in Porch and his work updating the original 1969 design of the Oakland Museum of California by Kevin Roche and Dan Kiley

o  Uzbekistan: A Matter of Radiance

-         Interview with collaborators on Art-Tek Tulltorja, conversion of former brick works into a tech hub and community center, Pristina, Kosovo:

o  Rafi Segal, Associate Professor, Architecture & Urbanism, MIT

o  Marisa Moran Jahn, Director, Integrated Design,Parsons School of Design

o  Bekim Ramku, OUD+ Architects

o  Nol Binakaj, OUD+ Architects

-         Interview with Jeanne Gang, amidst a Bio-Blitz powered by the iNaturalist app and featuring a “disco ball for bees”

-         Unfrozen’s nominations for 2027 Biennale curator:

o  Carolyn Whitzman, Senior Housing Researcher, Schoolof Cities, University of Toronto and author of Home Truths: Fixing Canada’s Housing Crisis

o  Diane Longboat, Senior Manager, StrategicInitiatives, Center for Addiction and Mental Health, Toronto

§  See: Sweat lodge at the Center

o  Patrick Bellew, Chief Sustainability Officer, Surbana Jurong (Atelier Ten)

§  Gardens by the Bay cooling system,powered by incinerated tree trimming waste

o  Peter Barber, Peter Barber Architects

o  Eyal Weizman, Forensic Architecture

-         Stafford Beer: “The purpose of the system is what it does.”

The Unfrozen squad descends on Venice to experience inperson the full blunt force of the Biennale. Special guests include: Carlo Ratti, the curator of the 19th Architecture Biennale, Anastasia Sukhoroslova, CEO of All Things Urban, and Michele Champagne, graphic artist and contributor to Volume magazine.

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Intro/Outro: “Bounder of Adventure” by The Cooper Vane

Our guest on this episode is Christopher Hawthorne, the Senior Critic at Yale University’s School of Architecture. His previous roles include architecture critic of the Los Angeles Times, and Chief Design Officer of the City of Los Angeles. His current mission is to assemble the Speaker’s Corner at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale. Unfrozen hears his unique perspective as both critic and exhibitor.

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Intro/Outro: “Elevator,” by The Cooper Vane

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Discussed:

2025 Venice Architecture Biennale: “Inteligens: Natural, Artificial, Collective” – Carlo Ratti

Speakers’ Corner / Re-staging Criticism series, part of the GENS Public Program

-         Florencia Rodriguez, Director, School of Architecture, University of Illinois Chicago

-         Mark Lee, Sharon Johnston of Johnston Marklee

-         Inspiration: “Vincent Scully: Architecture, Urbanism, and a Life in Search of Community,” by A. Krista Sykes

-         9 May: “Exhibition as Critical Vessel”

o   Florencia Rodriguez, Moderator

o  Lesley Lokko, 2023 Biennale curator

o  Aric Chen

o  Pancho Diaz

o  Sarah Herda

o  Michael Meredith (MOS) > Building with Writing

-         10 May: Conversation on L.A. Fires

o   Michael Maltzan

o   Alejandro Haiek Coll

o  Florencia Rodriguez

11 May:

o  Kate Wagner

o  Samuel Medina

o  Sam Jacob

o  Shumi Bose

1980 Venice Architecture Biennale – The Presence of the Past - Paolo Portoghesi

-         Strada Novissima, feat. Rem Koolhaas, Frank Gehry, Arati Isozaki, Robert Venturi, Denise Scott-Brown

-         Teatro del Mundo, Aldo Rossi

-         Critic’s Corner, feat. Vincent Scully, Charles Jencks, Kenneth Frampton & Christian Norberg-Schulz

Why “The Brutalist” Isn’t Really About Architecture

Kazuyo Sejima

Writing About Architecture - Alexandra Lange

Caught practicing without a license: Frank Lloyd Wright and Thomas Jefferson

International Committee of Architecture Critics

Salon de Mobile

Ada Louise Huxtable

You Have to Pay for the Public Life, by Charles Moore

Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, Robert Venturi

Charles Jencks Foundation

A quick one before we’re away. Dan and Greg sum up theirsprings and get ready for spritzes and socializing with smart people in at the 2025 Venice Biennale.

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Intro/Outro: “Bounder of Adventure,” by The Cooper Vane

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Discussed:

Going Underground -> The Space Below w/ James Parakh

·        Toronto PATH

·        Montreal RESO

·        Chicago Pedway

·        Minneapolis Skyway

·        Houston Tunnels

·        Oklahoma City Underground

·        Hong Kong Central Elevated Walkway

Zohran Mamdami –Make the Subway Great Again

Smart City Expo, New York City

Business Facilities Live eXchange, New Orleans

Curbivore, Los Angeles

Jonah Bliss

Joshua Harris, Fordham University

Marchetti’s constant

Zipline

Austin Baker Tilly Conference

CosMc’s

National Association of Realtors survey

Waymo

RoboCop

Sidewalk Toronto

Downstate IL secession movement

Snow Crash – Neal Stephenson, feat. Mr. Lee’s Greater Hong Kong

Paul Romer

Charter Cities

The Voluntary City - David T. Beto, Peter Gordon and Alexander Tabarrok

How to Run the World - Parag Khanna

Hell on Earth – The 30 Years’ War Podcast

The Network State - Balaji Srinivasan

Global Parliament of Mayors / Ben Barber

Polarization of reality > revenge of sovereignty

Praxis: Med Charter City > Greenland feat. Steven Harper

The evermore-relevant Hidden Globe episode

Exit, Voice and Loyalty - Albert O. Hirschman

Patri Friedman

The lost art of imagining the future

“My Brain Finally Broke,” - Jia Tolentino in The New Yorker

Bruce Sterling – Atemporality

Our guest on this episode is Christopher Hawthorne, the Senior Critic at Yale University’s School of Architecture. His previous roles include architecture critic of the Los Angeles Times, and Chief Design Officer of the City of Los Angeles. His current mission is to assemble the Speaker’s Corner at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale. Unfrozen hears his unique perspective as both critic and exhibitor.

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Intro/Outro: “Elevator,” by The Cooper Vane

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Discussed:

2025 Venice Architecture Biennale: “Inteligens: Natural, Artificial, Collective” – Carlo Ratti

Speakers’ Corner / Re-staging Criticism series, part of the GENS Public Program

-         Florencia Rodriguez, Director, School of Architecture, University of Illinois Chicago

-         Mark Lee, Sharon Johnston of Johnston Marklee

-         Inspiration: “Vincent Scully: Architecture, Urbanism, and a Life in Search of Community,” by A. Krista Sykes

-         9 May: “Exhibition as Critical Vessel”

o   Florencia Rodriguez, Moderator

o  Lesley Lokko, 2023 Biennale curator

o  Aric Chen

o  Pancho Diaz

o  Sarah Herda

o  Michael Meredith (MOS) > Building with Writing

-         10 May: Conversation on L.A. Fires

o   Michael Maltzan

o   Alejandro Haiek Coll

o  Florencia Rodriguez

11 May:

o  Kate Wagner

o  Samuel Medina

o  Sam Jacob

o  Shumi Bose

1980 Venice Architecture Biennale – The Presence of the Past - Paolo Portoghesi

-         Strada Novissima, feat. Rem Koolhaas, Frank Gehry, Arati Isozaki, Robert Venturi, Denise Scott-Brown

-         Teatro del Mundo, Aldo Rossi

-         Critic’s Corner, feat. Vincent Scully, Charles Jencks, Kenneth Frampton & Christian Norberg-Schulz

Why “The Brutalist” Isn’t Really About Architecture

Kazuyo Sejima

Writing About Architecture - Alexandra Lange

Caught practicing without a license: Frank Lloyd Wright and Thomas Jefferson

International Committee of Architecture Critics

Salon de Mobile

Ada Louise Huxtable

You Have to Pay for the Public Life, by Charles Moore

Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, Robert Venturi

Charles Jencks Foundation