A is for Architecture Podcast

In Episode 22 of A is for Architecture, I speak with architect, urban designer and anthropologist, Shira de Bourbon Parme, co-founder of ForeGrounds and member of the London Collective. Shira's background is as an architect, but through doctoral research in social anthropology, now works alongside developers, planners and architects to guide them in the production of sustainable urban spaces that are rooted in a close and sensitive reading of the social and material nature of places.

I was introduced to Shira through another member of the London Collective, Bee Farrell, a food anthropologist, with whom I work. Shira holds a doctorate from the Future of Cities programme at the University of Oxford, for a thesis entitled How do master planners think? A sociomaterial inquiry (2018).

Enjoy!

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Music credits: Bruno Gillick.

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aisforarchitecture.org

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In this, the fourth episode of A is for Architecture, I speak with Amica Dall of the design collective Assemble, about themes and ideas in her talk Are Words Good Enough, delivered as a keynote at the Future Architecture platform's 2021 Creative Exchange: Landscapes of Care conference. I met Amica through Baxendale, a practice I co-directed for a while in Glasgow, seeing her in action via her teaching but particularly her role as a co-founder and trustee of Baltic Street Adventure Playground in the East End of Glasgow.

The conversation is wide-ranging, but comes out of a discussion on the role of language in architecture and for architects, and its importance if architecture is to be a tool for coproducing the common good.

Enjoy!

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Music credits: Bruno Gillick

In Episode 5 of A is for Architecture, I speak with Dr Tahl Kaminer of the Welsh School of Architecture, Cardiff University, about his research on ideas of political identity, agency and practice in architecture, and how architects have addressed (and sometimes still do!) their social role. We talk around and about his 2016 book, The Efficacy of Architecture: Political contestation and agency (Routledge) and his 2011 book Architecture, crisis and resuscitation: The reproduction of post-Fordism in late-twentieth-century architecture (Routledge).

I met Tahl when I worked in Glasgow, at an interview, then later in Cardiff. I use his books in my teaching, and was involved briefly in one of the schemes he describes, the Atelier d'architecture autogérée in Paris, France.

Tahl's academic profile can be found here: www.cardiff.ac.uk/people

In Episode 30, Season 2 of A is for Architecture, Professor Albena Yaneva discusses her very recent book, Architecture After Covid, published by Bloomsbury this year. Albena is Professor of Architectural Theory at the Manchester School of Architecture and Director of the Manchester Architecture Research Group at the Manchester Urban Institute, University of Manchester.

‘Architecture After COVID is the first book to explore the pandemic's transformative impacts upon the architectural profession. It raises new questions about the intertwined natures of architectural production, science, society, and spatial practice [exploring] how the pandemic modified the spatial conventions of everyday life in the city, [...] transformed building typologies [and] leads us to rethink the social dimension of architecture and urban design; and ultimately proposes a radical re-evaluation of the conditions of architectural practice’.

Well, that’s what the blurb says, anyway. ‘Listen to Albena and see if it’s right.

Available on Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts and Amazon Music.

Albena can be found on the Manchester School of Architecture website here, and she Twitters here; her LinkedIn is here. You can get the book here. Our previous conversation, Bruno Latour, ANT and Architecture can be gotten on Spotify and iTunes.

Thanks for listening.

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Music credits: Bruno Gillick

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aisforarchitecture.org

Apple: podcasts.apple.com

Spotify: open.spotify.com

Google: podcasts.google.com

Amazon: music.amazon.co.uk

In this episode of A is for Architecture, I spoke to Álvaro Sevilla-Buitrago, associate professor of urban planning at the School of Architecture, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, about his book Against the Commons: A Radical History of Urban Planning (University of Minnesota Press 2022). Challenging conventional ideas of shared urban space, Alvaro explores how planning has historically been used as a tool of enclosure, dispossession, and control—shaping cities to serve elite interests rather than fostering true commoning.

We discuss the historical and contemporary nature of commons as spaces that represent marginalisation, but its resolution through collective action and solidarity. We discuss how urban development has often restricted collective life, from the privatization of land to the suppression of grassroots alternatives, reflecting on historical and contemporary struggles over public space, offering insights into how radical urbanism can resist enclosure and reclaim the city for all.

Join us for a thought-provoking discussion on the intersection of planning, power, and resistance in the built environment.

Alvaro can be found on X, and on his personal website and on Academia. Against the Commons is linked above.

🎧 Listen now & subscribe for more discussions on architecture and urbanism! #UrbanPlanning #Commons #RightToTheCity #RadicalUrbanism #PublicSpace #PeoplePower

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Music credits: ⁠Bruno Gillick