
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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