Archinect Sessions One-to-One
Archinect Sessions One-to-One is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with architects spanning the professional and geographical map.
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50 – A psychic predicts who'll win the 2017 Pritzker (Season Finale)
12/19/2016
50 – A psychic predicts who'll win the 2017 Pritzker (Season Finale)
Tired of all those repetitive Pritzker-prediction lists? Always those same, predictable bigly names, and when was the last time they actually got it right? It's time to cut through all the crap and go straight to the source to get the info — the ones who operate at a higher level than any listicle or explainer-piece could. So we asked a psychic. After a quest to find a future-seer who would let me record the reading, I (Amelia) ventured deep into the depths of Los Angeles' Echo Park neighborhood and sat for 15 minutes with a psychic named Mary. She gave me the following tarot reading, responding to two questions: What are going to be the major concerns for architecture in 2017, and who’s going to win the Pritzker? Find out the answers in this season finale of One-to-One. After this, One-to-One will be going on indefinite hiatus for 2017. In the meantime, we'd love to hear your feedback on the show — things you liked, disliked, ways to improve, and people you'd like us to interview. Send any One-to-One thoughts to us via or through Twitter, @archsessions. Here's to 2017, and thanks for listening!
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49 – Yvonne Farrell, director of Grafton Architects – winner of the RIBA International Prize
12/12/2016
49 – Yvonne Farrell, director of Grafton Architects – winner of the RIBA International Prize
Shortly after for their UTEC campus in Lima, Peru, I spoke with the firm's director, Yvonne Farrell, to get the backstory to the project and discuss how the award might affect the firm in the long run. As an academic building, UTEC joins a rich collection of other institutional projects by the Dublin-based Grafton.
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48 – 'Next Up: The LA River' — The Second Half
12/05/2016
48 – 'Next Up: The LA River' — The Second Half
Missed out on , Archinect Sessions' podcasting event? Now you can listen to the whole thing, released in two parts on One-to-One. Last week, we released the first half of the interviews, and this week we've got the rest. This week's playlist of live recordings features interviews with: (designer with Metabolic Studio) (director and founder of Clockshop, a non-profit arts organization) and (co-director of LA-Más) (partner at Dake Wilson Architects and VP of the Los Angeles City Planning Commission) and (assistant professor of architecture at USC and principal at Office of Outdoor Research) (founder and president at Mia Lehrer + Associates)
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47 – 'Next Up: The LA River' — The First Half
11/29/2016
47 – 'Next Up: The LA River' — The First Half
Missed out on , Archinect Sessions' live podcasting event? Now you can listen to the first half all at once, on One-to-One. Next week we'll release the full second-half. This playlist of live recordings features interviews with: (host, KCRW’s DnA) and (architecture critic, Los Angeles Times) (co-founder, LA River Kayak Safari) and (co-founder, Play the L.A. River game) (Executive Director (formerly Senior Policy Director), Friends of the Los Angeles River) (Chief Deputy City Engineer, LA Bureau of Engineering) About Next Up: The LA River When to the L.A. River's master plan and redevelopment, the river began attracting fresh attention over a project that had already been evolving for decades. This October, in an attempt to do justice to the river's (and the accompanying urbanist discourse), Archinect hosted ''—a live podcasting interview series with an array of architects, planners, artists, and journalists with varying perspectives on the subject. We're now eager to share those conversations with everyone as eight Mini-Sessions, released as part of our podcast. Amelia Taylor-Hochberg, Paul Petrunia and Nicholas Korody moderated the conversations, which took place . While we reached out to them, unfortunately no representatives from Gehry's office were able to take part.
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46 – David Delgado and Daniel Goods, visual strategists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory
11/15/2016
46 – David Delgado and Daniel Goods, visual strategists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Through their work as visual strategists for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, David Delgado and Daniel Goods inspire scientists and make science inspiring. Under 'The Studio' at JPL, David and Dan help engineers and scientists sort through their own design problems using creative methodologies, while also framing JPL's research for a general audience—making things like travel posters for exoplanets and helping realize a giant listening station for orbiting satellites. David and Dan sat down with me to discuss their role in the JPL ecosystem, and the invaluable role their architect- and designer-collaborators play in imagining the future. David starts off the conversation by describing their 'Metamorphosis' project: visualizing the surface of a comet through sculpture, for the Rosetta Mission. Update 11/15/16: To clarify, the "Jason" Dan refers to ~2:08 is Jason Klimoski, of the architecture firm StudioKCA, whom NASA JPL asked to design the installation 'Metamorphosis'. David and Dan are not themselves designers/architects, but work with those professionals as their clients to realize JPL/NASA's objectives.
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45 – 'Never Built New York' authors Greg Goldin and Sam Lubell
11/07/2016
45 – 'Never Built New York' authors Greg Goldin and Sam Lubell
Never Built New York, by curators and authors Greg Goldin and Sam Lubell, is an astounding collection of architectural projects that never made it into being. The book features projects from the last two centuries, sited all throughout the five boroughs, that range from the monumental to the mortifying. Alongside infamous projects like Buckminster Fuller’s dome over Manhattan and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Key Plan for Ellis Island, visions for an alternate New York-urbanism abound: aborted reflections of their time, place and politics. The book continues in the tradition of Goldin and Lubell's 2013 exhibition, "", including focused research on each project alongside gorgeous drawings and visualizations. I spoke with the authors about their curatorial approach to the book, and the projects that they were most excited by.
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44 – RotoLab co-founders Michael Rotondi, M A Greenstein and Nels Long
10/31/2016
44 – RotoLab co-founders Michael Rotondi, M A Greenstein and Nels Long
Paul and Amelia are joined in-studio by the co-founders behind RotoLab, Michael Rotondi's new start-up. Along with Nels Long and M A Greenstein, Rotondi has ambitions to create uniquely VR-environments for architectural education and practice, and in the process, completely upend how we learn and work. Inspired by decades of experience in architecture and VR’s imminent future, Rotondi and his co-founders spoke about socializing in VR, gaming as education, and what this new frontier could mean for tomorrow’s architects.
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43 – George Tsypin, stage designer behind the 2014 Sochi Olympic Games and "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark"
10/24/2016
43 – George Tsypin, stage designer behind the 2014 Sochi Olympic Games and "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark"
You probably don’t recognize George Tsypin’s name, but you’re almost certainly familiar with his projects. After training as an architect in Moscow, Tsypin moved to New York to study theater design, and it’s now safe to say millions upon millions of people have seen his work. He’s designed stage sets for the MTV VMA’s, operas, Broadway plays, and the 2014 Winter Olympics’ Opening Ceremony at Sochi, among many others. Tsypin's work is now captured in , released on October 18 by Princeton Architectural Press. We spoke about designing for theatrical and mass media performances, and how his architectural training grounds his practice. Our interview begins with Tsypin's account of working in , the infamous graffiti building in Long Island City. Special thanks to Princeton Architectural Press for helping coordinate the interview.
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42 – Catie Newell and Wes McGee, ACADIA conference workshop co-chairs
10/17/2016
42 – Catie Newell and Wes McGee, ACADIA conference workshop co-chairs
Aside from their role as workshop co-chairs for the conference, this week's One-to-One guests are both architects who work and teach at Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan. Their focus on fabrication led them to their roles at ACADIA, with McGee directing Taubman's FABLab and Newell serving as Director of the Master of Science in Material Systems and Digital Technologies. ACADIA stands for the Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture, and this year's conference, "Posthuman Frontiers: Data, Designers and Cognitive Machines" (October 27-29) attests to the extreme collaborative depths humans and machines have come to in architecture. I spoke with Catie and Wes about what they have planned for the , taking place October 24-26, and just how close architects are to achieving the singularity.
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41 – Deborah Berke
10/10/2016
41 – Deborah Berke
The small town of Columbus, Indiana is packed with the works of famous modernist architects, but unlike cities like New York or Chicago, Columbus’s pedigree isn’t so often brought into the national architectural discourse. , a new symposium and exhibition happening annually in the city, is hoping to change that. , architect and dean at Yale, has worked extensively in Indiana and was a keynote speaker at this year's inaugural Exhibit Columbus symposium. She joined me on the podcast to reflect on the local and regional influences of Columbus IN, and the impact they've had on her career.
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40 – Steven Holl
10/03/2016
40 – Steven Holl
Steven Holl is globally renowned for monumental works that specifically invoke light, color and porosity in both programmatic and aesthetic ways. Holl can also be thought of as an artist’s architect—his firm has done work for many arts institutions, he methodically sketches his projects in watercolors, and his style is heavily influenced by art practice and theory. He’s also very interested in the phenomenology of architecture—how it’s sensed by humans, and its impact on our existence. We spoke in a totally unremarkable conference room at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, the day before Holl was scheduled to give a keynote presentation for the ’s conference.
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39 – Tomas Koolhaas, filmmaker behind REM documentary
09/26/2016
39 – Tomas Koolhaas, filmmaker behind REM documentary
Tomas Koolhaas is a filmmaker in Los Angeles, whose most recent project, a documentary about his father Rem, recently premiered at the Venice Film Festival. REM follows its titular architect around the world, visiting his projects and investigating their human impact. Aware of his special perspective on the film's subject, Tomas didn't want REM to be a teary biopic or heady architectural salvo, but something more impressionistic and accessible, appealing to emotions over intellectualism. We speak about managing family relationships in creative work, his influences as a filmmaker, and film's role in architectural media at large.
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38 – Martino Stierli, chief curator of architecture and design at MoMA
09/19/2016
38 – Martino Stierli, chief curator of architecture and design at MoMA
Martino Stierli took over as MoMA's chief curator of architecture and design in 2015, when the museum was already undergoing major changes. Diller Scofidio + Renfro's redesign was underway, and the architecture and design galleries faced something of an uncertain future in the expanded museum layout. On the podcast, Stierli dispels the rumors that the galleries would be closed permanently, and discusses MoMA's strategies for exhibiting architecture, as well as his plans to diversify the museum's collection.
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37 – Michael Arbib of the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture
09/12/2016
37 – Michael Arbib of the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture
For nearly 30 years, Michael Arbib taught computer science, neuroscience, engineering, psychology, and mathematics at the University of Southern California, and is known for his prolific work on brains and computers: essentially, what the mechanisms of one can teach us about how the other works. Gathering together all aspects of his work, he’s sharpened his focus on the connection between architecture and neuroscience, and developed the concept of neuromorphic architecture. He is now associated with the NewSchool for Architecture and Design and UC San Diego, and has played a major role in the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture, based in La Jolla, California. We spoke about the Academy’s upcoming conference, and what architecture practice can realistically take from neuroscientific research.
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36 – Kunlé Adeyemi of NLÉ
09/06/2016
36 – Kunlé Adeyemi of NLÉ
Kunlé Adeyemi founded NLÉ in Amsterdam and Lagos in 2010, after over eight years at OMA. Raised in Kaduna, Nigeria, with an architect father who was constantly redesigning his childhood home, Adeyemi studied architecture in Lagos before getting an MArch II at Princeton, studying with Peter Eisenman. His work at OMA included pivotal roles in projects such as Lagos’ master plan and the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. Throughout his work, he focuses on issues of rapid urbanization and climate change in the Global South. I spoke with Kunlé this past August, for his keynote presentation at the AIA Tennessee Convention in Chattanooga. We cover his work in wide breadth: how he focuses on cities’ relationships to water and infrastructure, quickly iterating projects like the prototypes in Lagos and at the Venice Biennale, and why he left OMA to start his own firm in the first place. Due to a technical glitch in the live recording, the episode starts about ten minutes into our conversation.
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15 – Michael Maltzan (REBROADCAST)
08/29/2016
15 – Michael Maltzan (REBROADCAST)
Los-Angeles based architect may be best known for his multiple residential projects with the , and the longer-than-the-Empire-State-Building-is-tall residential mixed user, . But Maltzan’s office is also designing Los Angeles’ new , a since-demolished infrastructural icon of the city that bridged the Los Angeles River between downtown and Boyle Heights. Michael shares his relationship with the growing identity of downtown , and his perspective on the style of urbanism arising on LA’s westside in the “Silicon Beach” neighborhood of Playa Vista. We also discuss the effect of for LA-architects practicing there. This episode originally aired on March 14, 2016.
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35 – Charlie Hailey, author of 'Design/Build with Jersey Devil'
08/22/2016
35 – Charlie Hailey, author of 'Design/Build with Jersey Devil'
Design/Build with Jersey Devil: A Handbook for Education and Practice is a wonderful mixture of history, interviews, experiments and how-to’s, all focused around the design/build pedagogy and practice of its 1970s pioneers, Jersey Devil. Author Charlie Hailey, who is also an architecture professor at the University of Florida, spoke with me about Jersey Devil's beginnings at Princeton University, and the implications of design/build pedagogy for today’s academic climate. Special thanks to Princeton Architectural Press for helping coordinate this interview. This episode's title is a reference to architect and writer Michael Sorkin's description of the firm: Jersey Devil “put the funk back in functionalism".
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34 – architect and experimental theater founder Abraham Burickson
08/15/2016
34 – architect and experimental theater founder Abraham Burickson
In the spring of 2015, we ran a , the practicing architect who founded Odyssey Works—a theater company that produces performances for an audience of one, often lasting days. Participants are extensively researched and the performances are rigorously planned, so that the whole thing unfolds before them spontaneously, as they move about the world. To Burickson, theater and architecture are one and the same—their objective is to immerse the audience, and make them feel something. And in preparation for this month’s theme of Games, it's impossible not to see Odyssey Works' performances in the same genre of experience: game-like interventions that change the way we experience the built environment. The following interview is our conversation from February of 2015, edited for time and clarity.
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33 – Dora Epstein Jones, executive director of Los Angeles' A+D Museum
08/08/2016
33 – Dora Epstein Jones, executive director of Los Angeles' A+D Museum
Dora Epstein Jones is the executive director of the A+D Architecture and Design Museum in Los Angeles. With a doctorate in Architectural History, Theory and Criticism from UCLA, Epstein Jones came to A+D after nearly 15 years at SCI-Arc, where she led the coordination of humanities and theory courses, and served as the founding coordinator of the General Studies program. Now situated in L.A.’s booming Arts District, A+D is neighbor to downtown’s own museum renaissance, not to mention the SCI-Arc campus. In our interview, Epstein Jones imagines how A+D could become the L.A version of , while working to keep it accessible to the local community.
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32 – Jose Sanchez, co-creator of Block'hood computer game
08/01/2016
32 – Jose Sanchez, co-creator of Block'hood computer game
Architect Jose Sanchez is the co-creator of , a city-building computer game that runs on real city data. Under his practice, plethora-project (covering architecture and indie game development), he focuses on how play can initiate design practice. In Block’hood, players build cities out of 80 preset block types, and are rewarded for thinking “ecologically” and creating diverse cities. Sanchez wanted the game to be accessible to everyone, not just urban planners or architects, and to ultimately be both a learning tool and fun in its own right. Sanchez's interview is part of our special August focus on .
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31 – LeRoy Troyer of Troyer Group
07/18/2016
31 – LeRoy Troyer of Troyer Group
The Genesis-sized replica of Noah's Ark is just the beginning of Ark Encounter, Kentucky's new managed by the Christian apologist ministry, Answers in Genesis. Troyer Group are the architects behind the ark, with president and chair LeRoy Troyer as the lead architect. I spoke with LeRoy about the challenge of building a project with Biblical construction specs, as well as the inherent controversy of designing something that is meant as a kind of proof of concept for Answers in Genesis' ideology: that .
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30 – Mark Middleton of Grimshaw
07/11/2016
30 – Mark Middleton of Grimshaw
Mark Middleton, partner at in London, has been facing the Brexit decision's aftermath like —with positive pragmatism. While many architects and design professionals strongly supported "Remain", they have little choice but to #keepcalmandcarryon, while carefully reevaluating how ties with the European Union could affect business, as well as London as a design capital. Middleton joins Amelia Taylor-Hochberg on One-to-One to sort through the current mood for practitioners in the UK, and the effects Brexit could have on architecture projects and policy in the years to come.
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Happy 4th from One-to-One!
07/04/2016
Happy 4th from One-to-One!
We're taking a break from 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: The too-common tragedy of mass shootings: Seeing through anti-LGBTQ legislation: Gun-control in the classroom: Public health crises from compromised infrastructure: Good ol' American architecture institutions: Interview with the architects who would become : and, of course, hot dogs: I (Amelia) also personally recommend you check out these prior One-to-One's:
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29 – Pierluigi Serraino
06/27/2016
29 – Pierluigi Serraino
In the late 1950s, some of the world's most prominent architects gathered in Berkeley, California, to take part in a landmark psychological experiment on creativity and personality. Eero Saarinen, Philip Johnson, Richard Neutra, William Pereira and dozens of other architects were put through a barrage of tests and surveys, to gain a better understanding of what creativity is, and its place in architecture. They also rated one another, and in the process exposed not only exposed their egos honestly, but also their insecurities. For the first time, the story behind the study (along with its data and results) have been made public, in , by architect and author Pierluigi Serraino. I spoke with Serraino about the context of psychological research in the 1950s and the evolving personality behind being a “creative” architect.
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28 – Hugh Howard, author of "Architecture's Odd Couple: Frank Lloyd Wright and Philip Johnson"
06/20/2016
28 – Hugh Howard, author of "Architecture's Odd Couple: Frank Lloyd Wright and Philip Johnson"
Architecture writer and historian Hugh Howard has written many books on American architecture, telling stories that meld design and cultural history together in highly accessible and humanistic ways. His latest book, "Architecture's Odd Couple: Frank Lloyd Wright and Philip Johnson", tracks the fruitful and contentious relationship between the two architectural frenemies—beginning with Wright’s role in Johnson’s pivotal “Modern Architecture” exhibition at MoMA in 1932, up until Wright’s death in 1959. Through their relationship, Howard provides an excellent overview of midcentury architecture's context in the United States, and personalizes the architectural giants in the process.
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27 – Craig Dykers and Elaine Molinar
06/13/2016
27 – Craig Dykers and Elaine Molinar
Elaine Molinar joined founding partner Craig Dykers at Snøhetta's very beginning, when they won their first competition for the Alexandria Library in 1989. Since then, the firm has grown true to its mountainous namesake, expanding to four offices worldwide and winning pivotal cultural projects in architecture and design, among them the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet, SFMOMA's expansion, the entrance pavilion at the National September 11 Memorial Museum, and Norway's new banknotes. They both joined me on One-to-One to talk about their future hopes for the firm, Snøhetta's office culture, and their advice for working with your significant other (they've been a couple since the firm began).
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26 – Geoff Manaugh
06/06/2016
26 – Geoff Manaugh
Writer and BLDGBLOG founder 's latest book, A Burglar's Guide to the City, isn't just a set of case studies on bank vaults and getaway routes—it's a dialectic for public and private space. It’s definitely the first book I’ve come across classified jointly under “architecture” and “true crime”, and it's full of fascinating insights into how burglars exploit architecture to pull off the perfect crime, as well as the extent architects go to prevent that from happening. Geoff spoke with me about the research behind the book, and how a personal experience with burglary changed his ideas about privacy in architecture. For more podcasting with Geoff, check out our conversation about .
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25 – Amro Sallam
05/31/2016
25 – Amro Sallam
Amro Sallam helped start Architects for Society in 2015, gathering together a collective of international architects to focus their work on humanitarian and social-welfare projects. One of their first projects, Hex House, is a solar-powered, single-family unit designed for deployment in refugee camps and other displaced communities. Sallam shared with me the firm’s origin story, their mindset towards architecture’s involvement in humanitarian efforts, and his thoughts on .
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24 – Aileen Kwun and Bryn Smith
05/23/2016
24 – Aileen Kwun and Bryn Smith
20 over 80: Conversations with Legends of Architecture and Design is the antidote to those breathless, over-hyped lists you’ve seen, trying to predict which baby-faced youngster will be the next big thing in their creative practice. A compilation of unique interviews with such greats as Milton Glaser, Michael Graves, Phyllis Lambert, Jens Risom, Denise Scott Brown and Deborah Sussman, 20 over 80 not only draws a thread through the last century of creative practice, but is also a testament to the talented people whose lifetime of experience came to define today’s design and architecture. Editors Aileen Kwun and Bryn Smith joined Amelia Taylor-Hochberg to discuss how they approached the dream assignment of interviewing such "legends", and the surprising similarities and differences running through the interviewees' history.
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23 – Steve McConnell and John SanGiovanni
05/16/2016
23 – Steve McConnell and John SanGiovanni
Today's podcast guests are Managing Partner Steve McConnell and John SanGiovanni, co-founder of Visual Vocal, a new company bringing virtual and augmented reality systems to the architecture industry. As , NBBJ plans to foster the company in all of its design processes, using its collaborative platforms to communicate among designers, clients, and users, at all stages of project development. With a beta program launching this summer, Steve and John gave me a taste of how NBBJ plans to use the service, why it invested in the company in the first place, and how ubiquitous VR stands to dramatically change the architectural process.
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