Archinect Sessions

​Archinect Sessions Next Up: Exhibit Columbus concludes today with our conversations with the recipients of The J. Irwin and Xenia S. Miller Prize. Today's final episode is a conversation with Sam Jacob​​.​ ​Sam Jacob Studio​​ is a London-based practice that works at a variety of scales from urban planning to architecture, design objects, art, and curatorial work. Sam Jacob also currently works as a Professor of Architecture at the University of Illinois, Chicago​, and as a columnist for Art Review. Sam's installation for Exhibit Columbus is located on Washington Street. He treats the six city blocks as a design object in his project titled "Alternative Instruments," telling a story of Utopia from the perspective of both history and fiction, referencing a 16th century novel by Thomas More through symbolism, mapping, and the typography of the Utopian alphabet.

​Archinect Sessions Next Up: Exhibit Columbus continues with sharing conversations with the recipients of The J. Irwin and Xenia S. Miller Prize. Today's episode is a conversation with Ann Lui and Craig Reschke of Future Firm​.​ Future Firm is a Chicago-based architecture and design research office founded in 2015. Their work spans a wide array of scales, framed by their tagline, "We design on behalf of the secret lives of cities." In the case of their installation for Exhibit Columbus, Midnight Palace, the secret lives represent the nocturnal community in Columbus, Indiana. The sidewalk installation will bring together people that work in manufacturing, one of the most common jobs in the regions, with restaurant workers, truckers on I65, parents of newborns, dedicated stargazers, students, and residents with families overseas.

Archinect Sessions Next Up: Exhibit Columbus continues this week as we introduce the winners of The J. Irwin and Xenia S. Miller Prize​. This series was introduced last week with Mimi Zeiger and Iker Gil​, the curators of Exhibit Columbus. If you're not yet familiar with this year's Exhibit Columbus designers and programming, we encourage you to take a listen to last week's episode​. To begin our first episode featuring the recipients of The J. Irwin and Xenia S. Miller Prize, we're sharing my conversation with Jennifer Newsom and Tom Carruthers of Dream the Combine​. Partners in work and life, Jennifer and Tom's Minneapolis-based practice explores metaphor, imaginary environments, and perceptual uncertainties that cast doubt on our known understanding of the world. Their installation for Exhibit Columbus starts off with addressing the name Columbus, and the various associations with the controversial name. The project is aptly titled "Columbus Columbia Columbo Colón."

On our year-end show Donna, Ken and I are joined by Frances Anderton. For those listeners that are in LA, Frances's voice is probably very familiar to you. Frances is the host of DnA, the radio show the focuses on architecture and design on KCRW, the local favorite station among architects in the Southern California region. A few weeks ago Frances broke the news that she would be leaving the beloved radio show at the end of the year, after an 18-year run. Today she joins us to tell us about work with DnA, the backstory behind her transition from architecture student to journalist to radio personality, and gives us a hint at what she'll be doing next. Later in the episode, the four of us discuss some of the bigger news stories that helped define what 2020 meant for architects. We also share what we're each looking forward to as we enter into a new year.

On today's show Donna and I are joined by Cruz Garcia and Nathalie Frankowski of WAI Architecture Think Tank. The last time we had Cruz and Nathalie on the podcast was for our Next Up series at the inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial. We've since also had Cruz on the podcast to discuss the unfortunate changes at Taliesin's School of Architecture, where Cruz and Nathalie were both visiting teaching fellows. On each of these instances we had a limited time with them to discuss highly specific aspects of their work, so we wanted to have them back on to learn more about their backgrounds, how they met, and what drives their work. If you've been following them, you'll know that they recently published a book on their work entitled Narrative Architecture. They've also published a powerful anti-racist manifesto on un-making architecture, as the fight for equality pushes forward, propelled by the Black Lives Matter movement.

This is the fifth installment of Archinect Sessions six-part series of conversations we've had with architects, designers, and others in the industry. The discussions address the challenges experienced navigating these uncertain times, from the stay-at-home orders due to the coronavirus, to the toll it's taken on jobs and the economy. Conversations in this episode include Will Galloway, an architect/firm-owner and educator who has been stuck in Canada, his country of citizenship, while unable to return to Tokyo, his home of residence. We also speak with Sobia Sayeda, an architect in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Dillon Jones, a Portland-based architect who has been sheltering-in-place in California since getting furloughed.

Today we share the third part of Archinect Sessions six-part series of conversations​ we've had with architects, designers, and others in the industry. The discussions address the challenges experienced navigating these uncertain times, from the stay-at-home orders due to the coronavirus, to the toll it's taken on jobs​ and the economy​. Conversations in this episode include Nicolai Kruger​, an architect and illustrator in Portland, Oregon; Charles Pifer​, a practicing architect and teacher of architectural ethics, in Tucson, Arizona; and Michele Grace Hottel​, an architect/sole-proprietor in La Mesa, California​.

Today's installment of Archinect Sessions introduces the first of six episodes sharing conversations we've had with architects, designers. and others in the industry. The discussions address the challenges experienced navigating these uncertain times, from the stay-at-home orders due to the coronavirus, to the toll it's taken on jobs and the economy. In this first part, we feature the perspectives of Zachary, a recently laid-off unlicensed architectural designer in Oshkosh, Wisconsin; Nancy, an architect-turned-architectural-consultant in New York; and an architect in Glasgow, Scotland, who wishes to remain unnamed because of the potentially-illegal layoffs he's been the victim of in recent months.

Today Donna, Ken and I are joined by Paulette Singley. Paulette is a respected architectural historian, educator and author. Her writing and editing expands beyond the world of architecture, looking at connections within the culinary arts and film. In today's conversation we're focusing on her latest book "How to Read Architecture: An Introduction to Interpreting the Built Environment," a must read for architecture students, architects, designers and admirers of the built world.

On this special (and very spontaneous) episode of Archinect Sessions we are joined with three members of the Taliesin community to help shed some light on the mysterious and disturbing sudden announcement of the closure of The School of Architecture at Taliesin​​. With us are Benjamin Aranda, partner at Aranda\Lasch with Chris Lasch, the Dean at The School of Architecture at Taliesin​; Cruz Garcia co-director at WAI Architecture Think Tank and a previous visiting teaching fellow at The School of Architecture at Taliesin; and Ryan Scavnicky of Extra Office, and former visiting teaching fellow at The School of Architecture at Taliesin. Our conversation shares our guest's experiences at the school, with insight into the questionable relationship between the foundation and the school. We talk about what happened this week, how these events conflict with Frank Lloyd Wright's wishes, as outlined in his will, about the direction of the foundation as an institution for learning, and the troubling lack of transparency from the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation​​ about the decisions that have been made.

On this episode of Archinect Sessions we're sharing the recording of a panel discussion I moderated last weekend at the A+D Museum​, as part of the current exhibition The Los Angeles Schools​. The panel brought together five students and three faculty members representing student-led publications from LA's architecture programs. Rayne Laborde and Phoebe Webster represented UCLA​'s POOL​​​; Marcelyn Gow represented SCI-Arc​'s Offramp​; Richard Mapes, Corie Yaguchi and Irvin Shaifa represented SCI-Arc​'s Underscore​; Alvin Huang​ represented USC​'s Supertall​; and Stephen Phillips​, Cal Poly LA Metro's Director, represented their program's hardcover publication LA Ten​. Our talk covers a lot of ground, exposing the inner-workings of editing and producing publications in today's unique and highly transformative media landscape. Our conversations cover issues of editorial decision-making, design, freedom of expression and thoughts on the future of student publishing in architecture school.

On this episode, we're joined by Chilean architect​​ Alejandro Aravena​​. A long-familiar name to most of our listeners, Aravena's work gained significant media attention upon winning the Pritzker Prize in 2016​, elevating his reputation for working to address some of today's most difficult issues through participatory design, engaging users, groups, experts, and the public-at-large. His most notable projects are his "incremental housing" developments, a partially subsidized low-income solution for displaced families providing half-built homes for families to complete on their own, within their own budgets and tastes. Elemental has since released the plans for these projects for free, via download from their website​. This week Aravena was awarded another significant prize, the ULI J.C. Nichols Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development​. The award recognizes visionaries that are making significant contributions to international community building, with an emphasis on land use and development bettering society. Our conversation starts with him describing how this ULI prize is so important to him...

We have a very special July 4th episode for you today. Today's show offers a very American conversation with the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Paul Goldberger. The discussion was recorded live at Archinect Outpost last month for the launch of his latest book Ballpark. Ballpark takes a deep dive into the history of the ballpark, and the impact it's had on the evolution of the American city. The book looks at a selection of case studies to arrive at a simple yet compelling thesis: "In the ballpark," Goldberger writes, "the two sides of the American character - the Jeffersonian impulse toward open space and rural expanse, and the Hamiltonian belief in the city and in industrial infrastructure - are joined, and cannot be torn apart. If you're interested in a copy of the book, we have a few copies available at Archinect, both in our shop in downtown Los Angeles, and online at outpost.archinect.com. Paul Goldberger began his career at The New York Times, where in 1984 his architecture criticism was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Criticism, the highest award in journalism. From 1997 through 2011 he served as the Architecture Critic for The New Yorker, where he wrote the magazine's celebrated "Sky Line" column. He is currently a contributing editor for Vanity fair and holds the Joseph Urban Chair in Design and Architecture at The New School in New York City.