Cultivated City: Designed Solutions vs. Organic Growth

Cultivated City: Designed Solutions vs. Organic Growth

From Design Principles Pod by Sam Brown, Ben Sutherland and Gerard Dombroski

October 1, 2025 · 56 min · Season 2 · Episode 14

About this episode

This episode explores the impact of urban design on daily life, contrasting modernism with classical approaches and envisioning a New Zealand urban vernacular.

Send us Fan Mail A city can make you breathe easier—or grind your teeth—before you’ve even named why. We follow that feeling from a flimsy townhouse hinge to the rhythm of a street that forces a ute to crawl, exploring how materials, widths, and mixed uses quietly choreograph daily life. In this episode we pull apart modernism’s big promises, tip our hats to classical street smarts, and ask what a genuinely New Zealand urban vernacular might look like—one with corrugate, brick, and crafted fa...

People in this episode

Hosts: Sam Brown, Ben Sutherland, Gerard Dombroski

Topics covered

  • urban design
  • modernism
  • classical architecture
  • New Zealand vernacular
  • daily life
  • materials

Keywords

  • urban design
  • modernism
  • classical architecture
  • New Zealand
  • daily life
  • materials
  • vernacular

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: Cultivated City

Places: New Zealand

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