archinectsessions

We're taking a break from One-to-One this week to set off fireworks and contemplate the potential future of a Trump Presidential Center. In the meantime, we present some of our favorite episodes related to this big ol' hot mess of a nation.

We've got it all:

• "Traditional" architecture, not necessarily just like Jefferson would have wanted: Building Our Best Nature: Archinect Sessions One-to-One #8 with Scott Merrill, winner of this year's Driehaus Prize
• The too-common tragedy of mass shootings: Queer Space, After Pulse: Archinect Sessions #69 ft. special guests James Rojas and S. Surface
• Seeing through anti-LGBTQ legislation: Due Protest: pushing back against HB-2 and fighting for interns on Archinect Sessions #64, ft. special guest Gregory Walker
• Gun-control in the classroom: Guns in the Studio: Texas' new campus carry law prompted Architecture Dean Fritz Steiner to resign. He joins us to discuss the law's effect on architecture education, on Archinect Sessions #55
• Public health crises from compromised infrastructure: Dispatch from Flint: How architects can help, on Archinect Sessions #54
• Good ol' American architecture institutions: Inside the Institute: Archinect Sessions goes to the AIA National Convention on Episode #30
• Interview with the architects who would become the designers for Obama's Presidential Center: "Starts with me, ends with us": A conversation with Tod Williams and Billie Tsien on Archinect Sessions Episode #22
• and, of course, hot dogs: Hot Dogs Around the World: James Biber, architect of US Pavilion "American Food 2.0" at EXPO Milan, joins us for Episode #31 of Archinect Sessions

I (Amelia) also personally recommend you check out these prior One-to-One's:

• The "Impossible" Car – Faraday Future's lead designer, Richard Kim, on One-to-One #17
• The Ascendancy of Theory: writer and theorist Sylvia Lavin on Archinect Sessions One-to-One #13
• The Art of Architecture Criticism: Archinect Sessions One-to-One #7 with Michael Kimmelman, architecture critic for the New York Times
• Our brand new interview podcast "Archinect Sessions One-to-One" premieres today! Listen to episode #1 with Neil Denari

Last week we witnessed the loss of Dame Zaha Hadid, one of architecture's most formidable and prolific talents. We'll be devoting a later podcast episode to remembering her and honoring her work. Until then, we'll continue catching you up with the most significant architecture news from the past week.

This episode we discuss Alejandro Aravena's Pritzker acceptance speech (and the designs he's giving away for free), how NASA is experimenting with inflatable space houses, how we "crave" public space, and Nicholas Korody joins us to discuss the cockroach of unpaid architecture internships (they just won't die).

Shownotes:

Zaha Hadid Dies at Age 65

The NASA-grade work of Garrett Finney

Quilian Riano's Who Owns Space project  

Woman calls out Florida Governor Rick Scott in a Starbucks

One-to-One is taking a break this week – we've been super busy these last few weeks, getting together more interviews and doing some spring cleaning for the podcasts. We'll be back next week with a new One-to-One, featuring Oana Stanescu and Dong-Ping Wong of Family New York, the designers behind Kanye's volcano and the + Pool project.

Until then, we'd recommend checking out these recent interviews:

• The Ascendancy of Theory: writer and theorist Sylvia Lavin on Archinect Sessions One-to-One #13
• Architecture for Humanity's Next Chapter: Garrett Jacobs, executive director of AFH-offshoot the Chapter Network, on One-to-One #11
• The Art of Architecture Criticism: Archinect Sessions One-to-One #7 with Michael Kimmelman, architecture critic for the New York Times

As always you can share your thoughts on the podcast through @archsessions or #archinectsessions, or through connect@archinect.com. Until next week!

The tragedy of Flint, Michigan's water crisis seems to worsen with every newly uncovered detail. As a manmade public health crisis provoked by willful denial and compromised safety standards, the entirely preventable poisoning of Flint's water supply with lead stands not only as a failure to care for the citizens of one city, but as a dreadful harbinger for the U.S.'s deteriorating infrastructure networks.

Like any concerned citizen, Filnt-based architect Kurt Neiswender sees this as a call to action to help any way he can. Kurt joins us on the podcast this week to discuss how architects might apply their skills to improve such a monstrous situation, and address the real limitations the profession has when it comes to these scenarios.

Michael Kimmelman, architecture critic for the New York Times, joins me for our first One-to-One interview of 2016. I wanted to talk with Kimmelman specifically about a piece he had published just at the end of last year, called “Dear Architects: Sound Matters”. The piece considers how an architectural space’s unique audio atmosphere helps create its overall personality, invariably affecting us as we experience it. Alongside Kimmelman’s writing in the piece are looped videos of different spaces – the New York Times’ office, a restaurant, the High Line, Penn Station, a penthouse – meant to be viewed while wearing headphones, to get to know that space’s sonic portrait, of sorts.

Too often, says Kimmelman, architects don’t think of sound as a material like they would concrete, glass or wood, when it can have a profound effect on the design’s overall impact. In our interview, Kimmelman shares how the piece came to be, and how it fits into the Times’ overall push into more multimedia journalism. We also discuss how Kimmelman’s role as former chief art critic for the Times has influenced his architecture criticism, and how multimedia and VR may affect the discipline.

This week on the podcast, we speak with Jens Bertelsen – a Danish architect specializing in historic preservation, who since 2011 has called himself "The Queen's Architect." Bertelsen’s official title under the Danish monarch (Queen Margrethe II) translates to something like “Royal Building Inspector,” “Royal Builder” or “Royal Surveyor,” but essentially means he's responsible for making sure that all the structures belonging to the monarchy stay in shape, and ideally, in use. This includes buildings like the Danish Parliament and the royal family’s winter home, Amalienborg Castle.

Bertelsen's firm, Bertelsen & Scheving, was founded in 2007 in Copenhagen, and specializes in historic preservation work. Bertelsen will hold the Royal Builder position until 2016.

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!