This week is a conversation with John May and we’re discussing a book he recently wrote called ‘Signal, Image, Architecture. It’s a short book with an objective to define the playing field today for this discussion. The book makes a clear distinction between that of a drawing, a photograph and an image. And in doing so makes it clear that those first two (drawing and photograph) are not what architects and designers are likely to be producing in school or practice anymore. Instead, we’re produci...
Aug 17, 2020•50 min
Today is a conversation with Holly Jean Buck and we’re discussing her book After Geoengineering: Climate Tragedy, Repair and Restoration. I think for many of us that like to think we’re working in at least the general wheelhouse of climate change, we still don’t have a firm grasp of what geoengineering entails. For most of us, it’s a singular black box technology that will either help our current situation or make it worse. It’s often portrayed as a technology more so than as policy or even desi...
Aug 03, 2020•48 min
James Bradley is an author and critic. His books include the novels, Wrack, The Deep Field, The Resurrectionist and Clade , a book of poetry, Paper Nautilus and the Penguin Book of the Ocean and of course most recently Ghost Species. Today is a conversation with the author and critic James Bradley and we’re discussing his recent novel Ghost Species which looks to the implications of the great upheaval occurring around climate change. But instead of focusing solely on the technological or statist...
Jul 13, 2020•1 hr 14 min
Today is a conversation with Sylvia Lavin and we’re discussing her recent book ‘Architecture Itself and Other Postmodernization Effects’. Book Sylvia Lavin is Professor of History and Theory of Architecture at Princeton University. Prior to her appointment at Princeton, Lavin was a Professor in the Department of Architecture and Urban Design at UCLA, where she was Chairperson from 1996 to 2006 and the Director of the Critical Studies M.A. and Ph.D. program from 2007 to 2017. She is the author of...
Jun 29, 2020•55 min
Natasha Sandmeier’s work and research straddles the worlds of architecture and visualization – with a long-standing interest the role of media within the creation and production of speculative architectures and environments. She is an educator and leads the postgraduate Entertainment Studio at UCLA Architecture & Urban Design. She is an architect and founding partner of Studio OUR, and the author and editor of Little Worlds (London, 2014); a monograph of projects and essays re-examining the ...
Jun 15, 2020•53 min
Just yesterday two astronauts launched into outer space from the United States for the first time in 9 years. Interesting side note, this launch was the first time in 40 years that NASA astronauts launched in a new space craft...The Space Shuttle had been around for over thirty years. Today is a conversation with Jeffrey Nesbit and we’re discussing the book ‘Extraterrestrial’ co edited by himself and Guy Trangos. In looking to the extraterrestrial, the book is a collection of essays from a range...
Jun 01, 2020•50 min
Jane Hutton is a landscape architect and Assistant Professor at the University of Waterloo School of Architecture. Her research looks at the extended material flows of common construction materials and their social and ecological relations. Recent publications include Reciprocal Landscapes: Stories of Material Movements (Routledge, 2019) as well as an edited volume, Landscript 5: Material Culture – Assembling and Disassembling Landscapes (Jovis, 2017), and Wood Urbanism: From the Molecular to th...
Apr 20, 2020•46 min
Larry Busbea is Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Arizona. He is the author of Topologies: The Urban Utopia in France, 1960-1970 (MIT Press, 2007), The Responsive Environment: Design, Aesthetics, and the Human in the 1970s (University of Minnesota Press, 2020), and Proxemics and the Architecture of Social Interaction (forthcoming from Columbia Books on Architecture and the City).
Mar 30, 2020•44 min
Fred Scharmen teaches architecture and urban design at Morgan State University’s School of Architecture and Planning. He is the co-founder of the Working Group on Adaptive Systems, an art and design consultancy based in Baltimore, Maryland. His work as a designer and researcher is about how we imagine new spaces for future worlds, and about who is invited into them. His first book, Space Settlements —on NASA’s 1970s proposal to construct large cities in space for millions of people—is out now fr...
Mar 16, 2020•49 min
Christopher Schaberg is Dorothy Harrell Brown Distinguished Professor of English at Loyola University New Orleans, USA. In addition to his new book Searching for the Anthropocene: A Journey into the Environmental Humanities, he is the author of The Textual Life of Airports: Reading the Culture of Flight (2012), The End of Airports (2015), Airportness: The Nature of Flight (2017), and The Work of Literature In An Age of Post-Truth (2018). He is series co-editor (with Ian Bogost) of Bloomsbury's O...
Mar 02, 2020•54 min
Elisa Iturbe is a critic at the Yale University School of Architecture (YSoA), where she also coordinates the dual-degree program between YSoA and the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. Her writings have been published in Log , Dearq , and Pulp , in addition to a forthcoming piece in Perspecta . Most recently she guest edited Log 47, titled Overcoming Carbon Form, an issue dedicated to redefining the relationship between architectural form and our dominant energy paradigm. She ...
Feb 17, 2020•48 min
Today is a conversation with Charles Waldheim. Waldheim is a Canadian-American architect and urbanist. Waldheim’s research examines the relations between landscape, ecology, and contemporary urbanism. He is author, editor, or co-editor of numerous books on these subjects, and his writing has been published and translated internationally. Waldheim is John E. Irving Professor at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design where he directs the School’s Office for Urbanization. Waldheim is recipi...
Feb 03, 2020•55 min
Today is a conversation with Jo Lindsay Walton and we’re discussing a book called ‘Strange Economics’ which is edited by David F. Shultz. The book consists of 23 new science fiction pieces written specifically for the book that foreground various types of economic models. Jo is a guest editor of ‘Strange Economics’ and wrote the afterward for the book. Jo is also co-editor (with Polina Levontin) of Vector, the critical journal of the British Science Fiction Association. Recent essays and fiction...
Nov 11, 2019•1 hr 1 min
Lisa Feldman Barrett, PhD, is a University Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University, with appointments at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. In addition to the book How Emotions are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain , Dr. Barrett has published over 200 peer-reviewed, scientific papers appearing in Science , Nature Neuroscience , and other top journals in psychology and cognitive neuroscience...
Sep 23, 2019•29 min
Alexander Eisenschmidt is the author of 'The Good Metropolis, Between Urban Formlessness and Metropolitan Architecture' Birkhauser, 2018 Alexander is a designer, theorist, and Associate Professor at the School of Architecture, University of Illinois at Chicago, where he teaches design studios and courses in history & theory.
Sep 09, 2019•51 min
Dr. Kiang is a biometeorologist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York. She conducts research on the interaction between the biosphere and the atmosphere, focusing on life on land. Dr. Kiang also relates this work to research in astrobiology, particularly with regard to how photosynthetic activity produces signs of life at the global scale and how these may exhibit adaptations to alternative environments on extrasolar planets, resulting in other "biosignatures" that might be det...
Aug 12, 2019•33 min
Neil Denari is principal of Neil M. Denari Architects / NMDA and a Professor in the Department of Architecture and Urban Design at UCLA. With NMDA, Denari works on building projects in North America, Europe and Asia. In 2012, NMDA won first prize in the New Keelung Harbor Service Building competition. Denari lectures worldwide and has been a Visiting Professor at Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, Penn, and Rice among other schools. He is the author of Interrupted Projections (1996), Gyroscopic Horiz...
Jul 29, 2019•1 hr
This week is with Mark A. Cheetham discussing his book 'Landscape into Eco Art: Articulations of Nature since the 60's'
Jul 15, 2019•42 min
This week is with Rachel Armstrong, Professor of Experimental Architecture at the Department of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, Newcastle University. Rachel Armstrong leads Metabolism research in developing artificial biology systems showing qualities of near-living systems. Armstrong is the author of the books Origamy and Invisible Ecologies.
Jul 01, 2019•59 min
‘The Efficiency Paradox: What Big Data Can’t Do’. Edward Tenner is a distinguished scholar of the Smithsonian's Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation and a visiting scholar in the Rutgers University Department of History. His essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times , The Washington Post , The Wall Street Journal , The Atlantic , The Wilson Quarterly , and Forbes.com.
Mar 04, 2019•38 min
Perry Kulper, an architect and Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Michigan. He has recently published Pamphlet Architecture 34, ‘Fathoming the Unfathomable: Archival Ghosts and Paradoxical Shadows’ with Nat Chard. They are at work on a new book to be published by Routledge.
Feb 11, 2019•36 min
Dr. Catherine Bliss is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California San Francisco. Her research explores the sociology of race, gender and sexuality in science, medicine, and society. Today we’re discussing her book ‘Social by Nature, The Promise and Peril of Sociogenomics’. We discuss the relationships between our body's genetic makeup and the environments we live in.
Jan 28, 2019•48 min
Brad is the Chair of the Landscape Architecture program at the University of Virginia. Brad is the co-author of the book ‘Responsive Landscapes’ with Justine Holzman. And co authored of the paper‘Designing Autonomy: Opportunities for New Wildness in the Anthropocene’ with Laura J. Martin, and Erle C. Ellis. This article is our jumping off point for the conversation which discusses the use of machine learning for maintaining areas of non human ecologies. What are the implications and opportunitie...
Jan 14, 2019•40 min
Today we discuss Chris's writings about augmented reality and cartography. Chris is a public servant within Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland Directorate, Northern Ireland Civil Service as well as a guest writer for San Francisco based Venture Beat.
Dec 17, 2018•40 min
Today is a conversation with Chris Pak who is a scholar of speculative literature. His research interests are in the ecological and environmental significance of stories of terraforming and pantropy , which is to say the modification of other planets and the modification of bodies to enable the habitation of otherwise uninhabitable environments. His book (which we’ll be discussing today) is from Liverpool University Press called, Terraforming: Ecopolitical Transformations and Environmentalism in...
Nov 12, 2018•52 min
Astrophysicist Adam Frank is a leading expert on the final stages of evolution for stars like the sun, and his computational research group at the University of Rochester has developed advanced supercomputer tools for studying how stars form and how they die. His most recent book is 'Light of the Stars, Alien Worlds and the Fate of the Earth'.
Oct 29, 2018•46 min
Muchaneta Kap-fundee is founding editor-in-chief of FashNerd.com, which she co founded with Mano ten Napel in 2015. Fashnerd is one of the fastest growing digital magazines writing about fashion technology and wearables. www.Fashnerd.com
Oct 22, 2018•39 min
Today is a conversation with Ian Bogost. Dr. Ian Bogost is an author and an award-winning game designer. He is Ivan Allen College Distinguished Chair in Media Studies and Professor of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he also holds an appointment in the Scheller College of Business. Bogost is also Founding Partner at Persuasive Games LLC, an independent game studio, and a Contributing Editor at The Atlantic . We discussed privacy, machine learning, cows, and buy...
Oct 08, 2018•52 min
This week is with Paola Antonelli - MoMA's Senior Curator of Architecture & Design + Director of R&D. We’re discussing her new show ‘Broken Nature’ for the upcoming XXII Triennale di Milano. www.brokennature.org
Oct 01, 2018•33 min
Kiel Moe is a practicing architect and Sheff Professor of Architecture at McGill University, and author of 8 books. We’re discussing his most recent book Empire, State and Building . The book plots the material history and geography for one plot of land in Manhattan – the parcel of land under the Empire State Building – over the past two hundred years.
Sep 24, 2018•36 min
