Unfrozen

Intro/Outro: “Trying Not to Think About Time,” by The Futureheads

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Discussed:

• Unfrozen’s 2023 Spotify Wrapped Stats: 
  • Most Popular Episode: “Show Me the Bodies” with Peter Apps
  • Most Shared Episode: “Untimely Meditations, Virtual Repatriations,” with Era Merkuri and Martin Gjoleka + Chidi Nwaubani
• After School Newsletter by Casey Lewis
• Unfrozen’s Favorites of 2023:
  • Attending the Venice Biennale during previews, including Sir Peter Cook’s assertion that, while at their event and on their payroll, NEOM would be less than half-built and eventually devolve into shantytowns
  • “Moving the Monolith, Speed-Running the Follies,” with Andreea Ion Cojocaru and Nick Kauffman
  • “The Atlas of Space Rocket Launch Sites,” with Brian Harvey and Gurbir Singh. Greg was channeling Geoff Manaugh’s BLDGBLOG
  • “Smaller Cities in a Shrinking World,” with Alan Mallach
  • “Renewing the Dream” with James Sanders

• 2024 Doomscroll:
  • NEOM meets the Metaverse at Aquellum + Zaha Hadid’s Minas Morgul tower, Discovery at Trojena
  • You won’t have Charlie Munger to kick around anymore
  • CES is underway, and so is the metaverse rebranding
  • Apple Vision Pro
  • Meta Wayfarer Ray-Bans
  • Want work? You need to kneel before the PIF
  • Are architects and engineers really building the future for Saudi’s young? Or are they just taking the money and running
• Half the world’s population will vote in 2024
• No election scheduled in Canada, but in 2025, things are looking topsy-turvy:
  • Canada is “three NIMBYs in a trenchcoat” right now
  • Households now owe more in mortgage debt than Canada’s entire GDP
  • Pierre Poilievre and the Canadian Conservatives seem to be the only ones taking the housing crisis seriously, and the kids are listening
  • CHMC can’t just straight-up build affordable housing – why?
• But it’s good real estate vibes in the US once rates get cut
• Freedom Cities
• California Forever
• You can build it – but who will insure it?
• Will San Francisco exit its doom loop in 2024? What cities will pull ahead?
• Gensler doubles down in its hometown + Shvo to the rescue at the Transamerica Pyramid
• Greg draws a picture of the work-from-home, AI-driven, obesity-drug-taking hellscape called America
• People are competing for walkable urbanism everywhere because we can’t seem to build any new housing
• Could consumer branding of residential real estate boost housing construction?
  • Welcome to the Neighborhood! Wall Street Designed It
  • Culdesac – build-to-rent walkable urbanism in Tempe, AZ
  • WeWork’s Adam Neumann starts Flow
• Dead mall resurrections
• Easton Town Center, Columbus
• Retrofitting Suburbia, Ellen Dunham Jones and June Williamson

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Engagements Preview 2024:

• “Don’t Believe the Hype: Cities are Alive and Well,” University of Maryland Baltimore, 22 February
• “Using Augmented Reality to Drive Inclusive City Development,” SXSW, Austin, 10 March
• Smart City Expo USA, New York, 22-23 May
• CTBUH International Conference, London and Paris, 23-27 September

On the dawn of our fourth season, your hosts recap their favorite ‘casts of 2023, a live dramatic reading of Unfrozen’s 2023 Spotify Wrapped stats, and get on and off the soapbox as we stare down the barrel of 2024.

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Intro/Outro: “Trying Not to Think About Time,” by The Futureheads

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Discussed:

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o  Most Popular Episode: “Show Me the Bodies” with Peter Apps

o  Most Shared Episode: “Untimely Meditations, Virtual Repatriations,” with Era Merkuri and Martin Gjoleka +

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o  Attending the Venice Biennale during previews,

o  “Moving the Monolith, Speed-Running the Follies,” with Andreea Ion Cojocaru and Nick Kauffman

o  “The Atlas of Space Rocket Launch Sites,” with Brian Harvey and Gurbir Singh. Greg was channeling Geoff Manaugh’s BLDGBLOG

o  “Smaller Cities in a Shrinking World,” with Alan Mallach

o  “Renewing the Dream” with James Sanders

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o  NEOM meets the Metaverse at Aquellum + Zaha Hadid’s Minas Morgul tower, Discovery at Trojena

o  You won’t have Charlie Munger to kick around anymore

o  CES is underway, and so is the metaverse rebranding

o  Apple Vision Pro

o  Meta Wayfarer Ray-Bans

o  Want work? You need to kneel before the PIF

o  Are architects and engineers really building the

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-      

o  Canada is “three NIMBYs in a trenchcoat” right

o  Households now owe more in mortgage debt than Canada’s entire GDP

o  Pierre Poilievre and the Canadian Conservatives seem to be the only ones taking the housing crisis seriously, and the kids are listening

o  CHMC can’t just straight-up build affordable housing – why?

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Freedom Cities

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o  Gensler doubles down in its hometown + Shvo to the rescue at the Transamerica Pyramid

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o  Welcome to the Neighborhood! Wall Street Designed It

o  Culdesac– build-to-rent walkable urbanism in Tempe, AZ

o  WeWork’s Adam Neumann starts Flow

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Engagements Preview 2024:

Intro: “Low Rider” by War

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Discussed:

• James Sanders:
• Celluloid Skyline: New York and the Movies: 2001, Knopf
• New York: A Documentary Film with Ric Burns, 1999
• Donald Shoup
• Woods Bagot & Renewing the Dream
• John Rossant & CoMOTION
• Christopher Hawthorne
• Party time on the Expo Line
• The California courtyard apartment complex & bungalow court
• Courtyard Housing in Los Angeles, by Stefanos Polyzoides, Roger Sherwood and James Tice. Photos by Julius Shulman 
• Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
• Chinatown
• La La Land
• California transit-oriented development legislation and funding
• LA’s transit-oriented communities program
• Tesla LED drive-in

Upcoming readings/bookstore appearances:

• Book Soup, West Hollywood, CA:              1/5
• The Skyscraper Museum, New York:        1/23

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Outro: “L.A. Woman” by the Doors

Intro/Outro: “Something for the Girl with Everything” by Sparks

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Discussed:

• Calacatta Tucci marble
• Miele appliances
• New York State LLC purchase transparency law
• Lawsuits over construction defects at 432 Park Avenue, by Rafael Vinoly
• One57
• Trump Tower
• Lantern House by Thomas Heatherwick
• 53w53 (MoMA Tower) by Jean Nouvel
• 56 Leonard, by Herzog & de Meuron, with sculpture by Anish Kapoor
• 85% of ultra-high-net-worth (UHNW) individuals are men
• 90% of billionaires are men
• A Dubai-style free zone in Hungary
• EB-5 visas
• Editor Irena Lehkoživová and VI PER gallery
• Next project 1: World Islands, Dubai
• The Palm, Dubai
• Next project 2: London’s “Iceberg Homes”
• Oliver Bullough’s Kleptocracy Tours
• From Russia with Cash

Intro/Outro: “Ride Captain Ride,” by Blues Image

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Discussed:

• A Trip Down Market Street
• The City Beautiful Movement
• A. Page Brown
• California Building at the 1893 Columbian Exposition
• Embarcadero Freeway
• San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge
• The Key System
• Alameda Ferry
• Golden Gate Bridge
• Dianne Feinstein
• Ballot measure 1986 – tear down the Embarcadero Freeway?
• Art Agnos
• Loma Prieta Earthquake, 1989
• Ghirardelli Square
• Lawrence Halprin
• Faneuil Hall
• Wilson Meany (Sullivan)
• Chez Panisse
• Hallidie Plaza
• The Doom Loop
• Union Square
• Hayes Valley
• Dogpatch
• Parklets

Intro / Outro: “The Deconstruction,” by Eels

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Discussed:

• Permission granted to examine house by its architect, Allied8.
• The research focused on four vectors: 
• Atomic Consciousness that dates back to the Big Bang and the earliest supernovas
• Production Consciousness that involves a vast array of ingredients that are combined to make architectural products
• Labor Consciousness that spans a wide spectrum of temporal and economic conditions 
• Source Consciousness that is multilayered and global in its reach. 

• “Consciousness” as opposed to “research” or “history”
• Deliberate obfuscation of sources of environmentally damaging materials
• Normalization of the “chemicalization” of supply chains in the building industry
• The entire industrial complex is based on exploitation of the planet – which we need to fundamentally rethink
• Design for deconstruction – labeling all materials, using machine learning in some cases, in order to consider how a building can be taken apart and reassembled into a project in the future
• Interview took place on the day a space exploration rocket mission was launched, sent in search of metallic bodies
• Attempting to quantify the inputs and normalize them for comparison proved next to impossible – and beside the point, somewhat, which is simply to establish awareness of the complexity.
• The objective is to create a generation of future designers who have the “rearview mirrors” that prior generations didn’t, when it came to understanding material sourcing.

Intro: "The Cutter," by Echo and the Bunnymen

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Discussed:

• Blank: Speculations on CLT: Jennifer Bonner & Hanif Kara
• MIT Senseable City Lab
• Katerra
• ETH Zurich Robotics Aesthetics & Usability Center
• AGO Modina - adaptive reuse in which an A.I.-designed steel kinetic roof covering the courtyard - using digitally fabricated components.
• Alpine stone bivouacs
• What’s the best tessellation?
• What’s the best kinetic result?

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Outro: "The Trees," by Pulp

At the intersection of A.I. and timber,

Intro: The Cutter, by Echo and the Bunnymen

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Discussed:

Blank: Speculations on CLT: Jennifer Bonner & Hanif Kara

MIT Senseable City Lab

Katerra 

ETH Zurich Robotics Aesthetics & Usability Center

AGO Modina - adaptive reuse in which an A.I.-designed steel kinetic roof covering the courtyard - using digitally fabricated components.

Alpine stone bivouacs

What’s the best tessellation?

What’s the best kinetic result?

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Outro: The Trees, by Pulp

Intro/Outro: “Value,” by Foliage

Discussed:

• Verse Design Shanghai – with Leon Dai
• USC American Academy in China
• Projects:
  • High-Speed Rail Station, Bengbu, China, 2010
  • Thirty75 Tech, Santa Clara, CA, 2022
  • Guenoc Valley, Lake County, CA (16,000 acres) – Ongoing
  • Adrian Zecha, partner, founder Aman Resorts
• Manhattan = 14,478 acres // California Forever, Solano County, CA = 55,000 acres
• Pro forma as a design tool