A is for Architecture
Ambrose Gillick
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Top 10 A is for Architecture Episodes
Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best A is for Architecture episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to A is for Architecture for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite A is for Architecture episode by adding your comments to the episode page.
Rob Fiehn: London’s futures
A is for Architecture
01/03/24 • 48 min
Episode 17/3 of A is for Architecture, is a conversation with Rob Fiehn, writer, communications consultant, Director of the London Society and Chair of the Museum of Architecture, about the London Society’s 2023 London of the Future book, a collection of essays by experts from various disciplines – ‘engineering, urbanism, architecture, manufacturing, futurology, journalism and more’ – speculating on ‘how the metropolis might be governed, organized and designed in the years to come.’
London of the Future is a plush publication, as you would expect, full of smart ideas and lovely images. It follows 102 years on from the London Society’s original publication of the same name when, ‘under the editorship of the architect Sir Aston Webb [it] published a collection of essays [...] some rather more futuristic than others.’ (Gilbert, D. (2004). London of the Future: The Metropolis Reimagined after the Great War. Journal of British Studies).
2023’s edition is futuristic indeed, but not sci-fi. There are ideas that, without too much effort - or perhaps not any effort at all - may well come to pass.
You can find the book on Merrell’s website here, and on the London Society website here. Rob professional alter ego is here, and he is on X here, LinkedIn here and Instagram too.
Available on Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts and Amazon Music.
Thanks for listening.
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Music credits: Bruno Gillick
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Apple: podcasts.apple.com
Spotify: open.spotify.com
Google: podcasts.google.com
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Loretta Lees and Elanor Warwick: Defensible space
A is for Architecture
02/28/24 • 67 min
In Episode 26/ 3 of A is for Architecture, Loretta Lees and Elanor Warwick speak about their book, Defensible Space on the Move: Mobilisation in English Housing Policy and Practice, published with Wiley in 2022. We discuss a few of its themes, including the emergence of the concept in America with Oscar Newman and others, its transference to Britain and its articulation and deployment by geographers, architects and policymakers, not least Alice Coleman, in the later twentieth century.
The book tells ‘the history of defensible space from the 1970s work of Oscar Newman on New York City public housing projects to Alice Coleman’s work in English boroughs and estates [using] oral histories and in-depth interviews with key figures alongside extensive archival research to examine the movement/mobility/mobilization of defensible space across the Atlantic as well as across, in and through academic, professional and governmental circles in the UK.’
Loretta is Professor & Faculty Director of the Initiative on Cities at Boston University, and is also on X. Elanor is Head of Strategic Policy and Research at Clarion Housing Group, and is on LinkedIn and X.
Available on all good podcast platforms.
Thanks for listening.
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Music credits: Bruno Gillick
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Ken Worpole: Designing social care
A is for Architecture
02/21/24 • 50 min
Series 3, Episode 25 of A is for Architecture’s is a conversation with social and architectural historian, Ken Worpole, discussing his life and work, and focusing on the new edition of his book Modern Hospice Design: The Architecture of Palliative and Social Care , published by Routledge this year. As the gloss puts it, ‘At its core [the book is] a public discussion of a philosophy of design for providing care for the elderly and the vulnerable, taking the importance of architectural aesthetics, the use of quality materials, the porousness of design to the wider world, and the integration of indoor and outdoor spaces as part of the overall care environment.’ We talk about all this, and the place hospices play in the urban and ethical fabric of contemporary urban life.
Ken’s personal website is here, and you can find links to his other works there, including the important New Jerusalem: The Good City and the Good Society (2017, The Swedenborg Society). Along with the landscape photographer Jason Orton, he also writes the online journal, The New English Landscape (also a book), documenting ‘the changing landscape and coastline of Essex and East Anglia, particularly its estuaries, islands and urban edgelands’.
Available on all good podcast platforms.
Thanks for listening.
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Music credits: Bruno Gillick
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Rowan Moore: The social house.
A is for Architecture
12/13/23 • 59 min
In Episode 14/3 of A is for Architecture’s, Rowan Moore speaks about his recent book, Property: The Myth the Built the World, published by Faber & Faber this year.
Rowan is the architecture critic at the Observer, and has previously published Why We Build (Picador/ Pan Macmillan, 2012), Anatomy of a Building (Little, Brown, 2014) and Slow Burn City: London in the Twenty-First Century (Picador/ Pan Macmillan, 2016).
According to the publisher’s gloss, Property ‘asks how we have come to view our homes as investments – and [...] offers hope for how things could be better, with reform that might enable the social wealth of property to be returned to society’. One wonders, though, given modernity qua modernity, if this doesn’t amount to a petition for a new society.
Rowan is here on Twitter, and his Observer profile is here. You can get Property online at the Faber & Faber website.
Good, wholesome fun. Have a listen and see for yourself.
Available on Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts and Amazon Music.
Thanks for listening.
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Music credits: Bruno Gillick
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Apple: podcasts.apple.com
Spotify: open.spotify.com
Google: podcasts.google.com
Amazon: music.amazon.co.uk
Youtube: youtube.studio
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Neelkanth Chhaya: Architectures of Indian modernity
A is for Architecture
03/20/24 • 56 min
Episode 29/3 of A is for Architecture is a conversation with Professor Neelkanth Chhaya, architect and scholar, and former Dean of the Faculty of Architecture, CEPT, Ahmadabad, Gujarat. We discuss India, notions of modernism (and postmodernism) in postcolonial contexts, indigeneity and identity, and the meaning of the/ a ‘vernacular’ in a globalising culture, as well as time, language, poetry, food and parampara...
We also talk about Balkrishna Doshi, and you can hear/ watch Chhaya speak about him and his work as part of a fascinating panel discussion – "Suppose We Don't Talk About Architecture" - An Homage to Doshi – produced by the Bengal Institute in 2023, and also featuring former podcast guest, Juhani Pallasmaa. Chhaya was named the inaugural recipient of the ‘Balkrishna Doshi: Guru Ratna Award 2023’, for his contribution to education, innovation, and mentorship.
I broke bread with Chhaya one night in Ahmedabad. He was amazing then, and he remains so now. Have a listen, find out for yourself, on all good podcast platforms.
Thanks for listening.
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Music credits: Bruno Gillick
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Laurence Lord: Civic practice in Ireland and Holland.
A is for Architecture
03/13/24 • 58 min
In Episode 28/3 of A is for Architecture, architect, curator and educator Laurence Lord speaks about his practice AP+E, which he founded with Jeffrey Bolhuis, and their civically-minded work in Ireland and Holland, his work at the 2023 Venice Biennial’s The Laboratory of the Future show, as Assistant to the Curator, Exhibition Design, and lecturer at Queen’s University Belfast.
Laurence can be found at the AP+E website, at QUB, on LinkedIn, X/ Twitter and Instagram.
Find it where the beautiful people listen to such things, and also those places they would really rather not.
Thanks for listening.
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Music credits: Bruno Gillick
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John Pawson: Minimalist architecture.
A is for Architecture
01/17/24 • 67 min
In Episode 19/3 of A is for Architecture, John Pawson speaks about his design education, work, ethos and practice. John is recognised as the preeminent minimalist architect of the age, with work including Calvin Klein shops, St John at Hackney Church (2020), the Abbey of Our Lady of Nový Dvůr, Czech Republic (2004) the Moritzkirche, Augsburg (2013) and the Sackler Crossing at Kew (2006). Last year, a new book was published on John’s work – John Pawson: Making Life Simpler, published by Phaidon, and written by Deyan Sudjic. His 1996 book, Minimum, was something like a phenomenon.
You can find John on Instagram, and on his practice website.
Available on Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, YouTube and Facebook .
Thanks for listening.
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Music credits: Bruno Gillick
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Des Fitzgerald: Green urbanism, health and city futures
A is for Architecture
07/03/24 • 51 min
Episode 111 of A is for Architecture is a conversation with Des Fitzgerald, Professor of Medical Humanities and Social Sciences at University College Cork, about his fairly recent and quite well-covered book, The City of Today is a Dying Thing: In Search of the Cities of Tomorrow, which he published this year with Faber & Faber.
Green urbanism is undergirded by an expectation – a belief? - that it will deliver on modernism’s promises of emancipated, healthful lives. The City of Today contests this. As Des explains, ‘the book is really an attempt to start [...] thinking critically about the growing trend towards green, traditional, small, human scale - I would even say 15 minute - cities [and] that kind of vision of the city is something we need to develop critical language for. [...] there's a pretty close mapping between 19th century discourse of the cities effect on character or its capacity to degenerate particular sorts of character in a heritable way [...] and our own discourse about the relationship between particular shapes of buildings and mental health disorders.’
A little bit saucy and rather funny, man, book and podcast.
You can find Des professionally at UCC and on X.
Thanks for listening.
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Music credits: Bruno Gillick
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Ashton Hamm: Democratic practice
A is for Architecture
04/03/24 • 34 min
Episode n/3 of A is for Architecture is a conversation with Ashton Hamm, founding principal of uxo architects, a cooperative practice based in California, USA. Building on some themes and ideas in Ashton’s recent book, Practice Practice (Oro Editions 2023), we discuss the what, why, where and how of cooperative, worker-owned practice. This is an American tale, of course, because each cooperative is a formal, legal structure and so depends on contextual legal protocols, but it is an illustrative and inspiring tale too, which indicates another possible way of being architect.
You can find UXO on Instagram here. The book is here. Have a cheeky and a purchase and side with the good guys.
Thanks for listening.
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Music credits: Bruno Gillick
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Nimi Attanayake and Tim O'Callaghan: The principled architect.
A is for Architecture
04/24/24 • 51 min
In Episode 102 of A is for Architecture, Nimi Attanayake and Tim O'Callaghan, founders and principals of nimtim architects, talk about their work, practice and the social role of the practice/s of architects and our architecture. Their body of work is very lovely, but it’s not just this, having a richness born of a dynamic ethicality. The question then is, is the fruit of good ethics good architecture?
In an Architecture After Grenfell, an article they wrote around 2022, and which appeared in BD, they suggest ‘What is required is a reset for the whole industry. If morality is replaced by profiteering then the events at Grenfell tower will be the outcome. [...] Whilst the world gasps at the cynicism and callousness revealed by the [Grenfell] inquiry, we should be positioning ourselves as the potential solution. Fundamentally, the problem is not one of process or competence, it is one of ethics and morality. Architects are uniquely placed to become the custodians of a new set of values that can run through every stage of a project. This may demand greater responsibility but it is a responsibility we should fight for and embrace.'
That’s what we’re here for, right?
Thanks for listening.
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Music: Bruno Gillick
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FAQ
How many episodes does A is for Architecture have?
A is for Architecture currently has 131 episodes available.
What topics does A is for Architecture cover?
The podcast is about Design, Podcasts and Arts.
What is the most popular episode on A is for Architecture?
The episode title 'Ken Worpole: Designing social care' is the most popular.
What is the average episode length on A is for Architecture?
The average episode length on A is for Architecture is 62 minutes.
How often are episodes of A is for Architecture released?
Episodes of A is for Architecture are typically released every 7 days.
When was the first episode of A is for Architecture?
The first episode of A is for Architecture was released on Sep 25, 2021.
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