Scaffold

Níall McLaughlin is this year's recipient of the RIBA Royal Gold Medal—awarded for more than three decades of work ranging from a seaside bandstand at Bexhill to the Stirling Prize-winning library at Magdalene College, Cambridge. To mark the occasion, his practice has released a new book, published by Objectif Edition and co-edited with Bryony Jones. And it's far from your typical architecture monograph.Uncle Toby's Garden, and it takes its title from Tristram Shandy, Laurence Sterne's mid-eighteenth-century novel—a book that seems to have arrived from the future, treating the conventions of the still-young English novel as toys to be dismantled, and anticipating experimental fiction by roughly two centuries. It tries to capture real experience, and the movement of consciousness, in a way that tidy, linear narrative can't.Níall's book is similarly non-linear, organised around digressions rather than buildings. Its title character, Uncle Toby, is a wounded veteran who spends his days re-enacting old battles on his bowling green, in a pastime both trivial and profound. In that spirit, the book reframes architecture as a performance of ritual, collaboration, speculation and play.Fittingly, our conversation took place at 10 Bowling Green Lane, home of the Zaha Hadid Foundation, and the temporary site of the Architecture Foundation's summer programme, POST PRESS. It was recorded on Tuesday 21 July 2026.Link to Níall's lecture Circling a Star - a Daylight Talk: https://www.niallmclaughlin.com/media/circling-a-star-a-daylight-talk/Thanks to Velux for supporting the podcast. Velux.com/design Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today’s episode considers a part of the built environment that’s often overlooked in architectural discourse, yet has become one of the most vibrant sites of experimentation in recent years: the nightclub.Since the post-COVID resurgence of nightlife, we’ve seen club spaces music festivals become laboratories again — places where architects, artists and designers, artists test how bodies move, gather, and connect. After years of enforced separation, there’s been a renewed appetite for intimacy, tactility, and collective presence. Nightclubs have stepped into that space, foregrounding not just sound and spectacle, but how architecture can invite touch, trust, and new forms of social closeness.There are few people exploring that frontier more boldly than today’s guests: Thea Arde and Joel Jjio, the duo behind playbody. Playbody is far more than a club night — it’s an ongoing design research project that treats the dancefloor as a site of architectural inquiry. Their events incorporate sculptural objects, spatial interventions, and choreographic prompts that encourage people to rediscover their own physicality in relation to others.In a time when digital life keeps pulling us apart, their work asks a simple but radical question: how can design rebuild social intimacy? Today we’ll talk about how playbody grew from a nightlife concept into a design studio, how they prototype through parties, and why they see the club as a critical testing ground for the future of spatial practice.Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production. Support our work by becoming a member on Patreon. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Truwant+Rodet+ is a Basel-based architecture firm founded in 2015 by Charlotte Truwant and Dries Rodet, which operates across the fields of architecture, landscape urbanism, exhibition making, installations, furniture design, research, and teaching.In 2017, they received the Swiss Art Award for their project A Pavilion. Since 2018, they have been developing the project, Fountain of Youth with Fabian Marti for the Campus Santé in Lausanne. In 2020, Truwant+Rodet+ won the renovation for the Centre Culturel Suisse in Paris with the Parisian firm ASBR. In 2022, they won the competition for the renovation of the Stadium of Bulle.This conversation was recorded remotely on 12 September in Basel and London. Special thanks this week to Bárbara Maçães Costa.The essay "Time as Material" referred to in the conversation can be accessed here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Paul Shepheard is a British architect and writer known for his philosophical and multidisciplinary approach to architecture. Shepheard was a student at the Architectural Association in the 1960’s, and has worked both in practice, for the likes of James Gowan, and in academia, teaching at institutions like the AA, the University of Texas at Austin, and the Kingston School of Art.As a writer, he is best known for books that explore architecture in relation to broader cultural, technological, and existential themes. His notable works include What is Architecture? (1994), The Cultivated Wilderness (1997), Artificial Love (2003), and How to Like Everything (2013). His most recent book, and the focus of our interview, is called Autobiography, which was published in 2024 by Canalside press.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A month after the opening of this year's Venice Architecture Biennale, we've invited three critics to come on the show to help make sense of what was arguably one of the most content overloaded, and curitorially ambiguous biennales in recent memory.Since its inception in 1980, The Venice architecture biennale has set the tone for global discourse on contemporary design and urbanism, and yet the agenda of this year’s exhibition, curated by the MIT professor and recent guest of this podcast, Carlo Ratti, seemed surprisingly muted and anodyne, calling for architects to marshal the quote intelligence of the natural, artificial and collective”Still there are more complex although perhaps unintended themes to the biennale this year, including the emerging relationship between unaccountable technologies and authoritarianism, quantatitve expansion as a proxy for genuine inclusivity, and perhaps most importantly, the exchange of an independent curatorial vision for an apparent new ideal of algorithmically determined experience. Furter reading:Emily Conklin: We Will Rest: Seeking Resistance and Recovery During Carlo Ratti’s Venice Biennale in the Brooklyn RailFabrizio Gallanti: "Fakery and deception is everywhere at Venice Architecture Biennale 2025" in DezeenPhin Harper: Venice Architecture Biennale 2025 Review: A Tech Bro Fever Dream in Art Review and La Biennale Architettura: A Beginner’s Guide on The Fence.Emily Conklin is the former managing editor of the Architect's Newspaper and is an editor and critic based in New York City. She is trained as a historic preservationist and is the founder of Tiny Cutlery studio. Fabrizio Gallanti is an architect, writer and curator, and directs Arc en Rêve, an architectural center in Bordeaux.Phin Harper is a critic, curator, and sculptor and former Chief Executive of Open City.Correction: the list of Swiss Pavilion curators mentioned in this episode mistakenly omitted Myriam Uzor, who led the project alongside Elena Chiavi, Kathrin Füglister, Amy Perkins amd Axelle Stiefel. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

To mark the 25th Anniversary of the Tate Modern this week, the Architecture Foundation's Director Ellis Woodman speaks with two key figures behind the museum's conception: Nicholas Serota and Jacques Herzog.Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. Download the London Architecture Guide App via the App Store or Google PlayBecome an Architecture Foundation Patreon member and be a part of a growing coalition of architects and built environment professionals supporting our vital and independent work.   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Michael Meredith is a co-founder with Hilary Sample of MOS, an architecture practice based in New York.MOS is an acronym derived from Meredith and Sample, with the "O" serving as an abstract, connective element. The name, much like the practice itself and the cultural moment it emerged from in the early 2000s, captures a playful tension between irony and sincerity. It's a subtle nod toward global architectural giants like SOM or OMA, while genuinely embodying Michael and Hilary's playful and collaborative spirit.A hallmark of Meredith and Sample’s work is their ability to balance intentional imperfection with technical precision. They've described their practice as embracing a philosophy that's "horizontal and fuzzy," deliberately moving away from the conventional "tall and shiny" image typically associated with architecture firms. It's a metaphor reflecting their preference for an architecture that's smaller, less bureaucratic, more experimental, and ultimately more alive.Michael's podcast Building with Writing Stan Allen: https://open.spotify.com/show/7CUtD3SnpyKxWUmsNnDmSwMichael's 2025 Princeton Syllabus: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aU1IqdLYJmcldMAzgnxrwOczO1TIrTtCejEziyxZ4-U/edit?tab=t.0Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. Download the London Architecture Guide App via the App Store or Google PlayBecome an Architecture Foundation Patreon member and be a part of a growing coalition of architects and built environment professionals supporting our vital and independent work.   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.