Interviews With Architects, Artists & Designers

Beka & Lemoine are documentary filmmakers based in Italy. “The question of fragmentation of thought and narration, which has necessarily an impact on the way you understand completeness and objectivity […] these are topics that we had developed over the years in the various films we’ve made as a basis of principles on which we’ve built up our methodology […] of looking for the most subjective, the most fragile position in what we defend, rather than copying that absurd tone of objectivity that you find in most architecture films.”◣ Support scaffold: visit https://www.patreon.com/scaffold to find out how. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Alvaro Barrington is an artist working in New York and London.“In terms of cultural production, I do think that the erasure that has happened to women, to people of colour, we have to work against that, because it creates a space where people feel lesser than because they don’t feel like they have contributed to the conversation when that is far from the truth, and then it also creates a space where white men feel more entitled to invention even though they haven’t been more inventive than any other race…and so it creates two sorts of violence within people - one feeling lesser than, and then one where white men maybe feel inadequate because they’re not as great as this other white man, and so that anxiety plays out in their head. Because we have created these false narratives we see all of this internalised violence, and I do think it’s our generation’s thing to maybe start correcting that truth.” See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Neri & Hu are an architecture and design practice based in Shanghai  “The right projects aren’t defined by fees at all […] the right projects are defined by their potential to bring breakthroughs. Our fear is the lack of time, and the risk of losing ourselves and our own vision amidst all this busyness” Support this podcast to help sustain future episodes: visit Patreon.com/Scaffold See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This special episode of Scaffold features a conversation with Ellis Woodman and Rosie Gibbs-Stevenson of the Architecture Foundation.For 100 days from April to August, the AF put on a series of nearly 300 lectures, interviews, building tours and panel discussions, handing over the virtual stage to a diverse cast of practitioners from all over the world, from Alvaro Siza to Yasmeen Lari, Kate Macintosh to Jack Self, all hosted virtually and free to view on youtube. In this conversation Ellis and Rosie reflect on the 100 Day Studio and the possibilities it has opened up for architectural discourse. Visit architecturefoundation.org.uk for more information and upcoming events, and consider becoming a member or making a donation. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Sara Hendren is an artist, design researcher, writer, and professor at Olin College of Engineering.“Disability knocks at the foundations of individualism […] If needfulness is actually universal, and if slowness is also part of life, and if dependence is partly what makes us human, that actually changes everything in terms of our ideas about the social contract […] The giving and receiving of care is in all of our lives; I think we really do want a world where care is part of the landscape of existence.” See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Chris Dorley Brown is a photographer living and working in London I suspect that [I’m documenting] what you might call the last days of the civil contract between state and people. I get worried that the post war optimism […] exemplified by architecture - I’m talking about public buildings and public spaces that are built for no other reason than to help us, maybe a library or a block of flats, they weren’t put there for any particular profit or gain – that’s the contract that I feel I’m witnessing the end of. There’s been a breach somewhere along the line, and I spend my days looking for the remnants of it still in existence. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Cia Rinne is an artist, writer and poetI don’t want to think about the audience while I’m writing, and I’m not excluding anybody voluntarily – nothing could be further from my thinking – but this kind of poetry work will probably not help people … and you don’t have any control [over whom it will reach] anyway. […]I don’t think that [poetry] is made to serve the public - I think that is the wrong ends to start with - I’m really starting from the work, and the fact that if I like it maybe someone else will too. And that’s good. You don’t know what to expect, and I don’t want to control that or have expectations - I think that’s the best starting point. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Adam Caruso is an architect and co-director of Caruso St. John"[When we started our practice] we were really interested in the syntax of architecture - how you make a brick wall, how you make an opening - and we believed that the syntax of architecture held within it the culture of architecture. And the reason we concentrated on that rather than the semiotics of architecture is that we didn’t believe so much in a shared language [for architecture to speak symbolically]. We live in a society that’s diverse and globalised, and I’m trying to find positive ways of engaging with those things.”◣ Support Scaffold: visit https://www.patreon.com/scaffold to find out how. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This special episode of Scaffold features a conversation between architect Mabel O. Wilson and Dario Calmese, host of the new podcast Institute of Black imagination. “We could be a very equitable society, it's just the will is not there. We have the resources — I don’t think its a project of inclusion, I think we have to radially change the system. If we have to destroy it and rebuild it, so be it. But I don’t think including us in the current system — it wipes us out, it’s not sustaining for us.”- Mabel O Wilson See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Janina Gosseye is a scholar and co-editor, with Naomi Stead and Deborah Van der Plat, of the recently published Speaking of Buildings: Oral History in Architectural Research. “Architecture has long been dominated by elites, mostly western and male, and its historiography has often been dictated by what these individuals have to say about buildings. Speaking of Buildings seeks to open up the conversation, to shed light on those who have been silenced in architectural history or on those who have remained unheard”This interview was recorded as part of the Architecture Foundation’s 100 Day Studio: https://www.architecturefoundation.org.uk/news/100-day-studio See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

David Leech is an architect based in London. I don’t have ‘big ideas’ [in my work] - and if I do, I do everything I can to undermine them. I do not want a project to be read in one sentence, or understood in one sentence […] we don’t judge anything else like that - people are much more complex, and I think buildings are much more complex.” See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Andrew Clancy is a director of the Dublin-based practice Clancy Moore, and Professor of Architecture at the Kingston School of Art. “There isn’t an Irish style, and I don’t really think there is an Irish tectonic, but there is a space for a particular type of plural conversation in Ireland - one that uses multiple engagements with the history of architecture that comes from our slightly marginal location […] It allows architects to act with territorial intent, with great sincerity, and with no attempt at cynicism or anything like that […] I think that as the world moves to being one where people do more and more work on fabric and less and less monument, and there’s more and more contingencies and we’re more aware of the world, that kind of curiosity and that sincerity is useful right now.” See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Francesca Torzo is an Architect based in Italy.“In all of our projects there is always a construction experiment, but that is never the purpose. It seems that we just land there, to find a solution that is able to combine severable variables. Most of the time the most sensitive variable is silence - this naturalness where you don’t need to see all of the effort.“ See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Geoff Manaugh is an architecture writer based in Los Angeles. He launched BLDGBLOG in 2004 and is the author most recently of The Burglar's Guide to the City (2016). "Ideas of things to research and rabbit holes to go down are not always in your discipline. Whether its anthropology or poetry or crime, these things that might change your life are everywhere, and they’re hiding in plain sight." See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Michael Maltzan is an architect based in Los Angeles. "I think it’s important to try to anticipate the city in the future […] to speculate about how scale and density is going to change, because architecture not only takes a long time to get built, but it exists for a long time as well, and it’s very likely that if you try to build a building that relates to a rapidly changing context, by the time it’s built it’s already out of scale – it’s already a part of the past […] The idea that we as architects have a responsibility to try and meet the scale, the relationships and context in the future is something that is very difficult to talk about because we are trying to describe and anticipate a speculative vision of the city, but I think it’s incumbent in what we do” See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Natsai Audrey Chieza is Founding Director of Faber Futures, a multidisciplinary design agency operating at the intersection of nature, technology, and society.“I’m interested in futures, and I’m interested in how we actually structurally make changes that can bring forward futures that are more equitable. My approach is to, if you like, be what we think [the future] is. It is through this process of doing that you can better articulate how you think it could work. It is through the process of doing that you can actually build a network to make it work. This goes back to the decision to put the speculative aside and start just being it through practice. This became a necessary and strategic device to get shit done, because then you are in the lab, making and experimenting and someone is going to want to know more.” See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

John Patkau is an architect based in Vancouver."I always seek out the opposite. I’ve always been interested in architects who are least like me – the ones who are most like me I find objectionable." See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Shumi Bose is an architecture teacher, curator and editor."[Curation] is the idea of taking care of a conversation. Whether that conversation is for students, for academic learning, or whether its for a conversation within a community, or within a broader public […] it’s a similar process of nurturing and selecting. So in that sense it feels like I’m doing the same thing - it’s the format that changes” See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Tom Kundig is a director of the Seattle-based architecture practice Olson Kundig."I think there is this danger in architecture, that it becomes so self referential and circular in its myopic position that it forgets that we’re really a part of a much bigger world. I’m actually more interested in that world than I am in the architectural world." See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Farshid Moussavi is an architect and educator based in London. "I’m interested in buildings, not architects. The building is independent once the architect is gone, and that’s when the building becomes a more open and detached from notions of representation. I would say buildings are closer to how people understand contemporary art today. The interesting thing about art is precisely the fa that is is so polysemic - we stand in front of a piece of art and we will all take away different things from it, and I think buildings perform in a similar way." See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.