ArchitectureTalk

This week, we had the opportunity to talk to Aaron Bourget who is a film maker of hundreds of short films. Bourget's process of creativity? Pre-crastination, use whatever you have at hand, and push whatever you have into the world week by week. 

This week, Nigerien architect Mariam Issoufou Kamara joins us in a stimulating discussion about reimagining architecture and epistemologies that come from West Africa. Kamara also touches on how African, South Asian, and other non-European can help us think out of modernity.

This week, we are joined once again with Ambrose Gillick for Part II of Comparting Connections in the Ethosphere. In this episode, Gillick shares his thoughts on the connections of his two interests in sacred architecture and the modalities and politics of design and the city influence that connects to architecture trends. 

Kicking off our new season of ArchitectureTalk, we engage in a conversation with Ambrose Gillick. Gillick shares his interest and findings in participatory and community-led architecture through a collaborative project with self-organising women's- co-op in Dakar, Senegal, and  theory of sacred space in medieval church architecture.

We're back with a conversation with Principal Architect at OLI Architecture, Hiroshi Okamoto. In this conversation we discuss his time working with I.M. Pei, the design of the Mu Xin Art Museum dedicated to the celebrated Chinese painter, scholar, poet and writer, and designing spaces for the work of American sculpture artist Richard Serra.

This week, we talk with Martino Stierli, MOMA’s Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design, about MOMA’s current exhibition entitled The Project of Independence: Architectures of Decolonization in South Asia, 1947–1985.

This week, we talk with Aneesha Dharwadker, assistant professor in architecture and landscape architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and author of the recently published article Dystopia’s Ghost. In this episode, we revisit the remaking of New Delhi’s Central Vista project, its design, politics, and history.

This week, we talk with Randhir Singh about his life as an architectural photographer, which he pursues, not just as an art, but as a way of architectural thinking itself. From the art and craft of the making of a photograph, to the final presentation in MOMA, Randhir Singh walks us through his methods and philosophy on the art of architectural photography.

How does the idea of a “Nation” come through in architectural language? Is there such a thing as a Nigerian architecture, for example? Are there national identifications visible in architectural makeup? On the other hand, how does architecture transcend borders? What is the status of Modernism in architecture in these various places? This week, we dive into these larger questions as we dissect the recently published series Sub-Saharan Africa Edited by Philipp Meuser, Adil Dalbai, and Livingstone Mukasa.

This week we sit down with Prof. Richard Williams of the Edinburgh College of Art to discuss his recently published book Reyner Banham Revisited

Once again, we travel back in time with architectural historian and theorist William J.R. Curtis for Part two of this conversation. We pick up right where we left off, rumbling through the dusty roads of India with William on his way to meet Balkrishna Doshi, the living link between the force that is Corbusian Modernism in India and deep, deep Indian tradition.

This week, we travel back in time with architectural historian and theorist William J.R. Curtis and his reading of the narrative of Indian Modernism. Part one of a two part series, Curtis and Prakash focus today’s conversation on the life and work of Aditya Prakash, the nature and production of Modernism in India, and Curtis’ own engagement with Indian Modernism.

The modernist legacy has helped proliferate the current environmental crisis on a global scale. In architecture, what is to be done to address this civilizational problem? Could oracular visions be a way to rethink how we practice and teach architecture? Join us for this week's conversation with Mark Jarzombek, professor at MIT and co-director of the Office of [Un]certainty Research.

In anticipation of the next installment of the One Continuous Line webinar series on Globalization and the Modernist City (being held online on December 13, 2021) this episode is a re-release of the previous panel discussion. This episode features guests Mark Jarzombek, Anthony Vidler, Partha Mitter, and Sunil Khilnani who discuss the relevance of Indian Modernism in terms of its various contemporary postcolonial contexts.

This week, we sit down with Remi Papillault to discuss the topic of his new book, and the subject of his ongoing interests: the development of Chandigarh and Le Corbusier’s hand in its shaping.

This week, we sit down with Joseph Clarke to discuss his new book Echo’s Chamber: Architecture and the Idea of Acoustic Space. The discussion looks at the convergence of politics, acoustics, and the metamorphosis of acoustic spatial thinking from Wagner to Le Corbusier and beyond.

This week, the subject turns back to legacy. We have a conversation with the son of Joseph Allen Stein who was an American-born architect, designing fabulous buildings across India during the Nehruvian period in the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s. David Stein takes us through his life growing up in India and what his understanding was of his father's life and career.

What is an architecture of the Nightrise? How might we spatialize the unseeable, or “freeze” the shadows of a conjuration? This week, we have a fascinating discussion with Mohamad Nahleh, a recent MIT graduate, about his recent personal research and graduate thesis on the night in Jabal ‘Amil in the southern reaches of Lebanon.

How might we think about architectural education differently in a post-pandemic world? What are the intersections between Covid and Climate Change? How does seeing architecture as a site of thinking impact education today? This week, we sit down with Mark Dorrian to take a deep dive into the material, political, cultural and educational realities surrounding the ongoing pandemic.

Join us this week for a far-ranging and fascinating conversation with David Turnbull, architect, thinker and educator.