Interviews With Architects, Artists & Designers

Shajay Bhooshan is co-founder of the computational design group at Zaha Hadid Architects. "We want to address the social but not without aesthetic language […] I don’t think [the study of housing] can be aesthetic free, and we chose to attach catenaries and descriptive geometry as an a-priori because that’s the language we are most researched in […] One way or another you need a language to attach to these social studies, it cannot happen in a vacuum. There has to be a language attached to the ordering of social processes." See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Johanna Gibbons is a landscape architect and founding partner of J & L Gibbons. “There really isn’t any wilderness left on the planet. [Wildness] is to do with how we envisage our landscapes and our relationship with natural processes, understanding where we’ve interrupted them, and appreciating how we can mend and reconfigure them […] Stewardship is what my profession is about, we are stewards of the planet.” See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Fraser Muggeridge is a graphic designer based in London. “I’m always trying to create typefaces that are a little bit wrong, that are a little bit off […] We’re in a world now where it’s actually quite easy for graphic designers and non graphic designers to create a piece of communication that actually looks alright. If you use a new font, you don’t really have to do much, whereas if you’ve got a font that’s got a few problems you have to work harder. So I often do that - I often work really hard to make something look nearly normal.” See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Philippe Malouin is an industrial designer based in London. “I graduated in 2008 at the height of the financial crisis, and I think it humbled a lot of people […] Nowadays you need to be nice and work hard in order to get ahead, I don’t think being a rockstar and having an ego will get you anywhere.” See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Pablo Bronstein is an artist based in London. "I’m from a generation that lives entirely within irony - so that everything is a quotation, everything is double-sided, everything is good and bad […] In order to feel that you’re simultaneously lying and telling the truth, it’s because there is a ‘you’ there somehow - there is a core at the centre that is able to perceive the difference between truth and lie. The majority of young people today have a very different relationship to themselves, and I think it has something to do with how external their lives are now, and how there is less self-formation early on in life, so you are given more options to choose from but they are just a series of options pre-fabricated for you […] I’ve always said that people under the age of 25 don’t really have a sub-conscious. There’s nothing really there, or rather, there’s a lot there but it’s the same all the way through."Correction: In this interview it is suggested that Adam Nathaniel Furman had written a response to a 2017

Charlotte Cooper is a Psychotherapist, Cultural Worker and Fat Activist. “The therapy I do, and maybe therapy in general enables people to think about their lives in ways they hadn’t considered before. It’s about illuminating the dusty corners that they may have forgotten or overlooked, and showing them that there may be value in those places. […] We are in society, and we’re bound by the tensions and rules of society, but there's still a lot of space for agency and choice within those strictures.” See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

David Grandorge is an architectural photographer and educator. "Looking at the complexity of the world one can obviously become sad about it. One can become sad about one’s own life, or one’s feeling of the loss of power [...] I think visual solace is a way of coping with one’s ability to deal with these traumas - it's a better way than taking drugs." See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Adam Nathaniel Furman is a London based designer. "For me once something is made it achieves this sort of holy status, which requires silence [...] By the time that something is made real, if there’s narrative and depth that’s been part of the process of designing it, that should come across as an atmosphere. There’s nothing I dislike more than being shown something and then needing a text to explain to me what it is." See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.