Whatever becomes of Facebook’s corporate future – and therefore the consequential Internet – will play out in the world of Frank Gehry. The architect’s new HQ for Facebook in Menlo Park, MPK20, opened earlier this week with plentiful Instagrammed fanfare, and Facebook recently submitted plans to build two more Gehry buildings in the area. As we discuss on this week’s podcast, MPK20 is refreshingly old-school FOG, designed to embrace Facebook's “work in progress” feel that Gehry’s rougher materia...
Apr 09, 2015•1 hr 38 min
It’s been a strange week, especially in Indiana. On this episode, before getting to the RFRA-ff, we hit on a neat architectural inversion: LA-heavyweight Morphosis designs a "middle-finger" luxury tower in the quaint mountain town of Vals , Switzerland, while the subtly grand Swiss museum-master Peter Zumthor pushes a calligraphic inkblot for LACMA on LA's Miracle Mile. Vals is already home to Zumthor's Therme Spa. It’s like Trading Spaces, but with starchitects! On the latter-half of our show, ...
Apr 02, 2015•56 min
We are delighted to devote the entirety of this episode to an interview with Tod Williams and Billie Tsien . Our discussion spanned their nearly 30 years (and counting) working together, focusing not on individual projects but their architectural philosophy, their material explorations, and their work with landscape. The rising cream throughout was the way Williams and Tsien talk with one another, each pulling on their side of the rowboat to craft a truly collaborative response....
Mar 25, 2015•56 min
Last week, Michael Graves passed away at the age of 80. In the aftermath, much attention has been paid to his most eye-catching work, but as often occurs when someone of great influence passes away, focusing on the person's products comes at the expense of honoring their humanity – simply, who they were as a person. In this light, this episode we hear from Patrick Burke , principal and studio head at Michael Graves Architecture & Design (where Burke got his start in 1982), reflect on Graves’...
Mar 19, 2015•1 hr 19 min
Ten minutes before we sat down to record this week's episode, the Pritzker Prize Laureate was announced – posthumously. The winner, Frei Otto (1925 - 2015), was a German architect whose impressive work and research with lightweight and sustainable structures influenced countless architects through the 20th century to today. Otto was informed of the prize before his death in Germany this past Monday, March 9, prompting the Pritzker committee to make the formal announcement the day after. This epi...
Mar 12, 2015•1 hr 2 min
This week Amelia, Paul, Donna and Ken discuss the somewhat controversial Google Headquarters design by BIG and Heatherwick . On a completely different note, we also discuss the new, and the nation's first, slavery museum, Whitney Plantation, in Louisiana....
Mar 05, 2015•50 min
Winner of this year's MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program , Andrés Jaque of the Office for Political Innovation , joins us on the podcast this week to discuss his winning design, COSMO . In a continued thread from last year's YAP, The Living's "Hy-Fi" , Jaque's COSMO focuses on issues of sustainability and ecology – its main element is a series of pipes that will purify water with biological treatments. Before winning the YAP, Jaque's office already had a piece in MoMA's permanent collection, IKEA...
Feb 26, 2015•1 hr 13 min
Far away from the snowscapes peppering the rest of the country, the salt flats and dry martinis of Palm Springs exists in a time and place apart. An original enclave of midcentury modernism, Palm Springs has been able to preserve that heritage thanks in large part to Palm Springs Modernism Week , a series of events, lectures and tours whose proceeds go straight back into architectural preservation and advocacy. On this episode, we discuss Palm Springs' modernism in the midst of the city's genera...
Feb 19, 2015•1 hr 13 min
What do Robert Ivy FAIA, EVP/CEO of the AIA, and Jimenez Lai, of Bureau Spectacular, have in common? Other than they're both architects, not so much! What better way to celebrate a profession at the crossroads than featuring interviews with both in our latest podcast episode. Paul, Amelia, Donna and Ken spoke with Ivy about the AIA's newly launched " I Look Up " (#ilookup) public awareness campaign for architects, and Jimenez Lai joined us in studio to discuss his latest Graham Foundation-funded...
Feb 13, 2015•1 hr 40 min
It seems as if the tumult and intrigue that ran through Frank Lloyd Wright's life has lived on at Taliesin. After being embroiled in accreditation issues, suspending Fall 2013 enrollment , and working through rocky fundraising plans , Taliesin recently appointed Aaron Betsky to lead the school and help it regain solid footing. Betsky was previously the Director of the Cincinnati Art Museum and has quite the art/architecture pedigree: he's served as the Director of the 2008 International Architec...
Feb 05, 2015•1 hr 33 min
This episode is a doozy. Paul and Amelia left the temperate sunshine of Los Angeles for Washington, DC's frigid monumentality, to interview Bjarke Ingels on the eve of his " Hot to Cold" exhibition at the National Building Museum . The 40-year old architect shared some quick-won wisdom about scaling a business, the Danish condition, and the indispensability of humor and play in architecture. Donna and Ken joined Paul and Amelia to speak with Lian Chang about her recently published visualizations...
Jan 29, 2015•1 hr 33 min
At first we thought we could cram all of this week's amazing podcast content in under one hour. That dream was not to be, but we decided to give no f*cks, in honor of our guest Elizabeth Timme . The tenacious and game-changing Timme spoke with Donna and Amelia (with the appropriate amount of f*cks) about her work with LA Más , a non-profit design studio aimed at social justice issues in Los Angeles. In other matters of justice, Paul sat down with Archinect Session s 's legal correspondent, Brian...
Jan 22, 2015•1 hr 22 min
In celebration of Ehrlich Architects winning the 2015 AIA Architecture Firm Award , we had Steven Ehrlich and Takashi Yanai in-studio to reflect back on the firm's history and their work with "multicultural modernism". We also discuss the feelings around Boston's US Olympic bid nomination , and former president Bill Clinton's appointment as keynote speaker to AIA's 2015 National Convention . We also dump a fair amount of schadenfreude on Karim Rashid . This episode also features the voice of rea...
Jan 15, 2015•1 hr 26 min
Happy new year! We're happy to announce Archinect Session's inaugural 2015 episode features a conversation with urban planner, architect, artist, programmer, educator, and of course, beloved Archinect blogger, Mitch McEwen . Principal at firms McEwen Studio and A(n) Office , Mitch has also written the Archinect blog Another Architecture since 2012. Paul, Amelia, Donna and Ken talk with Mitch about living and working in Detroit, her collaborative pursuits, and the profession's impending new wave ...
Jan 08, 2015•1 hr 10 min
This week, with the encroaching holiday craziness picking up steam, we're releasing a mini-version of Archinect Sessions to cap off the 2014 podcasting season. For this special XS session, Paul, Amelia, Donna and Ken make predictions for the world of architecture in 2015, and discuss our plans for the year's end. We'll return from the hiatus with a new episode airing on January 8th.
Dec 18, 2014•15 min
How far we've come: this week, we're thrilled to have Christopher Hawthorne on the podcast, architecture critic for the Los Angeles Times . Paul, Amelia, Donna and Ken talk with Christopher about his recent 3-part series on architecture and immigration in southern California , the role of the architecture critic at a major national newspaper, and his take on new media journalism. We're also proud to introduce our inaugural bit with Archinect's lawyer-correspondent, Brian Newman at Dykema Gossett...
Dec 11, 2014•1 hr 6 min
This week, architect-turned-coffee entrepreneur Yeekai Lim of Cognoscenti Coffee joins us in-studio, to talk pop-up shops and hospitality architecture. Afterward, Paul , Amelia , Donna and Ken hash out the recently announced finalists for the Guggenheim Helsinki competition ....
Dec 04, 2014•59 min
Michael Rotondi joins us in-studio this week, for a special conversation with Orhan Ayyüce about architecture education and Rotondi's Los Angeles roots. Paul , Amelia , Donna and Ken also discuss ol' fashioned southern contextualism in Charleston, South Carolina, in response to Clemson University's scrapped modern building plans....
Nov 26, 2014•1 hr 45 min
This week on the podcast: continuing our earlier discussion on student debt , special guest (and fellow Archinector) Quilian Riano joins Paul , Amelia , Donna and Ken to discuss the Architecture Lobby's advocacy for increasing the value of architecture, both monetarily and in the public eye. We also cover Karim Rashid's recent inflammatory New York Times interview ....
Nov 20, 2014•1 hr 5 min
This week on the podcast: student debt , Chicago's " State of the Art of Architecture ", and our new series, Archinect's Lexicon . Paul , Amelia , Donna and Ken are joined by architecture students Jarrod and Elliott to discuss how student debt is changing their lives and careers. We also consider what Chicago has in store for its inaugural architectural biennial next year, and how architectural language (and English in general) is changing with the internet. As always, you can tweet questions/co...
Nov 13, 2014•1 hr 43 min
For this week's podcast, Paul and Amelia spoke with architect Barbara Bestor , of Bestor Architecture, about growing her firm and Los Angeles' design influence, prompted by one of her recently acquired projects, a renovation of Lautner's Silvertop house . Next up, something's rotten in the state of New Jersey: Donna and Ken join in to discuss the local-beefs surrounding the new Michael Graves School of Architecture , whose prioritization of hand-drawing is inciting criticism from the neighboring...
Nov 06, 2014•1 hr 44 min
This week, Paul , Amelia , Donna and Ken speak with Greg Henderson , architect and co-founder of Arx Pax, the company that is bringing the long-fantisized hoverboard to the market. We also discuss the hoverboard's technology and its potential applications in architecture. Greg holds an M.Arch from UC Berkeley, leading to our discussion on the history behind Working Out of the Box , and what may come next for the series, now that employers have more jobs than there are architects to fill them. We...
Oct 29, 2014•1 hr 31 min
This week, Paul and Amelia talk with co-hosts Donna and Ken about the fickle pomo debate that is Michael Graves' Portland Building . We're joined by special guest Brian Libby , a freelance architecture journalist based in Portland, who's spent his fair share of time writing, reporting on, and inside the Portland Building. We also hash out the Guardian' s boondoggle on Obama's Presidential Library , and introduce our upcoming coverage on the ACADIA Conference , taking place October 23-25 in Los A...
Oct 23, 2014•1 hr 23 min
Co-hosts Donna Sink and Ken Koense join us for our second episode, to discuss licensing and IDP issues at NCARB, the value of mentorship in the profession, and the latest news on the Moriyama RAIC International Prize . "Archinect Sessions" is a weekly podcast discussing recent news items and happenings on the website. Hosted by Archinect's founder and publisher, Paul Petrunia , alongside Editorial Manager Amelia Taylor-Hochber g, the podcast pulls on the expertise of special weekly co-hosts, whe...
Oct 16, 2014•1 hr 44 min
A podcast is born! "Archinect Sessions" is a weekly podcast discussing recent news items and happenings on the site. Hosted by Archinect's founder and publisher, Paul Petrunia , along with Editorial Manager Amelia Taylor-Hochberg , the podcast also pulls on the expertise of special weekly co-hosts, whether other Archinectors or players within the architecture community at large. Our first episode focuses on the issue of gender in the architecture world, prompted by the recent news post from ACSA...
Oct 09, 2014•1 hr 14 min
