archinect

This week we are joined, in studio, by David Lee and Marina Bourderonnet, the hosts of the Midnight Charette podcast. You may be already familiar with their podcast, or perhaps you’ve just heard about the podcast since they released their episode with me a couple days ago.

The Midnight Charette has been podcasting for a while now. They're quickly approaching their 100th episode. They describe their show as an explicit podcast about design, architecture and people. The format is casual, and unscripted, and tends to run on the long side, 2 hours being about average for an episode. While this is an architecture podcast, it’s often not addressing architecture directly, rather, David and Marina discuss non-architectural issues from the perspective of a couple of architecturally-minded professionals.

In today’s conversation we learn more about the host's backgrounds, and how they came together and conceived of the podcast. We also take a peek behind the curtain by talking about all of the little details that we use to make these podcasts.

Today’s show follows up on Archinect Sessions episode 83, when we discussed this first year of Exhibit Columbus. The inaugural exhibition of Exhibit Columbus opens this summer, on August 26, and will include six built structures, designed by teams from six different Midwestern universities, investigating the built environment of Columbus. On today’s show, we will be discussing these projects along with Joshua Coggeshall and Janice Shimizu from the Ball State University team, and Martin Summers from the University of Kentucky. 

The last few weeks have been a bit of a downer—we had a big ol' roundtable on how Brexit is changing architecture practice and education, the Democratic and Republican National Conventions raged, and Rio is coping (somewhat) with its Olympic stress. Now, we're in need of some lighter fare. We wanted to take a moment in the summer heat to check-in with what Donna and Ken have been up to, and pass on some of our own recommendations for what to read and listen to this summer.

Also featuring: Ken dishing about Guy Fieri and vegan butchers, Donna giving us the latest on her husband's giant installation in Rancho Cucamonga, and "a really fun text book".

Shownotes:

Archinect's theme for August is Games – check out our open call.

The Olympics begin tomorrow! Get caught up with what's been happening in Rio

At home in a changing climate: strategies for adapating to sea level rise

Revok, the artist who painted Brian's "Native" palm tree installation.

Melania Trump's website disappears after architecture degree claim is debunked

Phoenix May become a Lot More Green (more info here from Donna)

UK architecture students seeking mental health care is on the rise, according to Architects' Journal survey (more info here from Ken)

New Sandy Hook elementary really looks like a church

Summer Recommendations:

What we're reading:

• Donna: Parable of the Sower, by Octavia Butler, and Underground Airlines, by Ben H. Winters
• Ken: Man, Play and Games, by Roger Caillois, Teach Your Chicken to Fly Training Manual, by Trevor Weekes
• Amelia: Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman, and You'll Grow Out of It, by Jessi Klein

What we're listening to: listen on our YouTube playlist.

This week, we’re taking a moment to catch-up with what’s happened on Archinect lately, and share some endorsements—we discuss our latest interview with Snøhetta, our ongoing coverage of the Venice Biennale, student work on refugee camps, and more.

Next week, in light of the shooting death of 49 people at a gay club in Orlando, we plan to discuss the significance of accessible queer spaces, for all members of a city community.

Collecting the most important news of the past week – that is, from the recording date's perspective of March 30th, the day before Zaha Hadid's sudden death – this episode brings stories on: the winning below-grade skyscraper (sinkscrapers?) of eVolo's Skyscraper Competition; a long-lost Le Corbusier tapestry returning to the Sydney Opera House; another twist on co-habitation in the co-work startup, PodShare; Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects taking "revenge" on Charles Moore's Hood Museum; and our future of eating sandwiches while robots do our work. 

We'll discuss the late Dame Zaha Hadid's legacy on next week's podcast.

As Deputy Director for Urban Design and Mobility in Glendale, CA, a teacher of urban design at Woodbury University, and one of the Mayor's appointees on the City of Pasadena's Design Commission, Alan Loomis has thoroughly installed himself in the shifting scene of southern Californian urbanism. After moving from Michigan to get his MArch at SCI-Arc in the late 1990s, Loomis has seen enough of Los Angeles' urbanism to be convinced that whatever post-sprawl paradigm gets adopted here will become the guidebook for many more cities in the US, particularly those ever-expanding desert cities in the southwest.

Loomis joined Amelia Taylor-Hochberg in Archinect's studio to talk about urban design in the public and private realms, pedagogical approaches to urban design vs. urban planning, and his earlier days in LA as an Archinect editor.

Scott Merrill, winner of this year’s Driehaus Prize for his work under his firm Merrill, Pastor & Colgan, studied economics before getting an MArch at Yale, and found inspiration early in his career from Vermont's vernacular architectures. He began practicing solo in Florida in 1990, and works at a range of scales, in a form true to what the Driehaus celebrates: traditional, classical architecture. The award, started in 2003 by the architecture school at Notre Dame, celebrates (and gives $200,000 to) an architect whose work “embodies the highest ideals of traditional and classical architecture in contemporary society, and creates a positive cultural, environmental, and artistic impact.”

Scott spoke with me about what the prize means to him, and his view of architecture as primarily about serving our human nature, not fulfilling a formal agenda.

At least once in their professional life, every architect is likely to ask themselves, "Should I start my own practice?" From there, there are countless aspects to weigh against one another, but it begins as a very personal question – what do I want to create, and where?

Longtime Archinector (and tiki-drink enthusiast) David Cole began a discussion in the forum to mull over such questions for himself, as he considers whether to start a firm in his hometown of Cincinnati, or brave new territory in Seattle. We invited him onto the podcast to talk about the process behind such a momentous decision, and swap personal stories from Donna and Ken's experiences working in new cities and running their own practices.

Architect and experimental preservationist Bryony Roberts joins us for our next Mini-Session, a continuation of our Next Up event staged at the Chicago Architecture Biennial. While Roberts' interview at the Chicago Cultural Center unfortunately didn't make it to tape, I called her up for a do-over interview in Rome, where she is currently residing as a winner of 2015-2016's Rome Prize.

Roberts' contribution to the Biennial – a drill team performance entitled "We Know How to Order," staged in downtown Chicago's Mies van der Rohe-designed federal center plaza – was performed for a limited run during the Biennial's opening weekend. Check out a video of the performance here.

Architect and educator Liam Young joins Paul Petrunia and Nicholas Korody in the Archinect studio for this week's One-to-One. Young, a kind of architect-non-architect (his definition of the role may vary), concerns his design and creative work with the anthropocentric futures of our globalized society, in architecture, energy, and technology.

Standard among his many roles are co-director of the AA's Unknown Fields Division, a nomadic research studio, and founder of the urbanism think tank, Tomorrow's Thoughts Today. Current projects include developing a new masters program at SCI-Arc in fiction and entertainment, and leading a studio at the AA. Special thanks to SCI-Arc for helping set up the interview.

Season two of Archinect Sessions premiered last week – featuring a discussion on the Chicago Architecture Biennial with Log director (and co-curator of the US Pavilion for the 2016 Venice Biennale) Cynthia Davidson – and to finish out our coverage of CAB, we're posting the "Next Up" live-interviews we did in Chicago as Mini-Sessions, continuing from the interviews done at Jai & Jai Gallery in Los Angeles. Due to a most unfortunate technical glitch in Chicago, the second half of live interviews were lost – so some Chicago interviews were recorded on another date. You can listen to past Mini-Sessions here.

For our first Mini-Session recorded during the Biennial's opening weekend, we spoke with Urtzi Grau and Cristina Goberna Pesudo of Fake Industries Architectural Agonism.

Our new podcast, Archinect Sessions: One-to-One is an interview show, straight-up. Each episode features a single interview with a notable figure in contemporary architecture – it's that simple. Usually, One-to-One will be led by me or Paul Petrunia, while occasionally others will serve as guide. The conversation will be casual and spontaneous, touching on the interviewee's role in the expanding range of architectural practice, and will serve (we hope) a valuable archival role in future discourse.

For our very first episode, I spoke with Neil Denari of Neil M. Denari Architects (NMDA). Aside from his firm's work, Denari is a tenured professor at UCLA, and was the director of SCI-Arc from 1997 - 2001. We spoke about the shifting focus of architecture education, multitasking, Los Angeles and the recession's impact on architecture.

It's great to be back. Our second season of Archinect Sessions premieres today in a new, shorter format, with an episode devoted to the Chicago Architecture Biennial, and featuring special guest Cynthia Davidson, director of Log and co-curator of the US Pavilion for the 2016 Venice Biennale. Keep a look out as well for more Mini-Sessions, featuring interviews from the Biennial.

In other podcasting news, we're going to be launching a brand new podcast early next week, focusing exclusively on interviews. You can keep up-to-date on all our podcasting news by following us on Twitter, @archsessions, and let us know what you think by rating us on iTunes.

Tomorrow (!!!) we'll premiere season two of Archinect Sessions, and in anticipation of the launch, we've been posting Mini-Sessions interviews, recorded during our first-ever live-podcasting series, "Next Up", held at Jai & Jai Gallery in Los Angeles' Chinatown and at the opening weekend of the Chicago Architecture Biennial. You can listen to past Mini-Sessions here. We'll also be launching a brand new podcast soon. 

For our last Mini-Session recorded at Jai & Jai, we spoke with a panel of jurors from Archinect'sDry Futures competition, featuring: Charles Anderson of werk, Hadley Arnold of the Arid Lands Institute, Ian Quate and Colleen Tuite of GRNASFCK (who joined us via Skype), andPeter Zellner of Zellner Naecker Architects LLP. The winners had been announced just a few days prior.

Leading up to (and continuing after) the premiere of Archinect Sessions' second season on November 5, we're posting individual interviews as Mini-Sessions from our first-ever live-podcasting series, "Next Up", held at Jai & Jai Gallery in Los Angeles' Chinatown and at the opening weekend of the Chicago Architecture Biennial. You can listen to past Mini-Sessions here. We'll also be launching another brand new podcast soon. 

Here you can listen to our fifth Next Up Mini-Session with Marcelo Spina of P-A-T-T-E-R-N-S. More Mini-Sessions will be released in the coming days, and remember to subscribe to Archinect Sessions to not miss an episode! 

If you couldn't join us during our first-ever live-podcasting series, "Next Up", held at Jai & Jai Gallery in Los Angeles' Chinatown and at the opening weekend of the Chicago Architecture Biennial, then good news – you can still listen to the over four hours of live interviews we recorded. Leading up to the premiere of Archinect Sessions' second season on Thursday, November 5, we'll be releasing them as individual "Mini-Sessions". We'll also be launching another brand new podcast soon. You can listen to past Mini-Sessions here.

So please enjoy our fourth Next Up Mini-Session, an interview with Anna Neimark and Andrew Atwood of First Office. M

After accumulating over four hours of live interviews from our first-ever live-podcasting series, "Next Up", held at Jai & Jai Gallery in Los Angeles' Chinatown and at the opening weekend of the Chicago Architecture Biennial, we're now letting them go, one by one. Leading up to the premiere of Archinect Sessions' second season on Thursday, November 5, we'll be releasing them as "Mini-Sessions". We'll also be launching another brand new podcast soon.

Without further ado, please enjoy our third Next Up Mini-Session, a panel discussion with Claus Benjamin Freyinger, Andrew Kovacs and Jimenez Lai. We'll be sharing more Mini-Sessions in the coming days, and remember to subscribe to Archinect Sessions to not miss an episode! You can listen to past Mini-Sessions here.

Listen to our "Next Up" panel discussion with Claus Benjamin Freyinger, Andrew Kovacs and Jimenez Lai.

After we wrapped our first live-podcasting series, "Next Up", held at Jai & Jai Gallery in Los Angeles' Chinatown and at the opening weekend of the Chicago Architecture Biennial, we had over four hours of live interviews to release. Now, we're letting them loose as "Mini-Sessions", leading up to the premiere of Archinect Sessions' second season on Thursday, November 5. We'll also be launching a brand new podcast soon, so keep your eyes and ears open.

Archinect recently wrapped its first live-podcasting series, "Next Up", held at Jai & Jai Gallery in Los Angeles' Chinatown and at the opening weekend of the Chicago Architecture Biennial. Now, we're releasing those 4+ hours of "Next Up" interviews as "Mini-Sessions", leading up to the premiere of Archinect Sessions' second season on Thursday, November 5. We'll also be launching a brand new podcast soon, so keep your eyes and ears open.

Without further ado, please enjoy our first Next Up Mini-Session, an interview with John Southern of Urban Operations. We'll be sharing more Mini-Sessions in the coming days, and remember to subscribe to Archinect Sessions to not miss an episode!

Thom Mayne and Eui-Sung Yi join us to discuss their recently published book, Haiti Now – a herculean resource on post-disaster urbanism in Haiti, published by their urban think tank, the NOW Institute.

The rest of this episode takes a look back at the first forty episodes of Archinect Sessions, as we wrap up season one. Each new episode has expanded, and sharpened, our idea of what the podcast can and should be. We've spoken with some pretty heavy hitters, including Denise Scott Brown, Kevin Roche, Patrik Schumacher, Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, Bjarke Ingels, Thomas Heatherwick, Christopher Hawthorne and Michael Rotondi, as well as some up and comers, like Andrés Jaque (winner of MoMA's 2015 YAP), Jimenez Lai, and Nicolas Moreau and Hiroko Kusunoki (winners of the Guggenheim Helsinki competition).

It's been a blast, but moving forward, we want to tighten up, dig deeper and move the proverbial furniture around. We'll start up season two in the coming weeks, but while we're on hiatus, we'd love to get your feedback – tell us what you think of the podcast by taking this short survey, or rating us on iTunes. Your thoughts will help us shape Sessions' next season.