ArchitectureTalk

152. Songs of Protest and Sorrow and Connecting Civilizations with Sumangala Damodaran

Today we are joined by Sumangala Damodaran who teaches in the Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies at the University of Washington, trained economist, dedicated her life to documenting and being a part of leftist oppositional protest movements. Today, Damodaran discusses her protest songs, her songs of sorrow, her singing, the research she has done to connect civilizations, and the diverse impact she has created internationally.

151. Soft Data and Common Wares with Afroditi Psarra and Audrey Desjardins

Today we are joined by Afroditi Psarra and Audrey Desjardins who talk about building alternative technologies that respond to and critique the world of data, and their project “Soft Data and Common Wares”.

150. Before and After Our Wars with Eliyahu Keller

Today we are joined by Eliyahu Keller who shares with us the relationship between war, war technology, architectural thinking, the climate crisis, the post-COVID era, and the crisis of imagination.

149. Architecture as the Rearrangement of Relationships with Neelkanth Chhaya

To kick off the new year, today we are joined by Neelkanth Chhaya who is a professor in India. Chhaya discusses forms and contingence of south Asian aesthetic theory, he is an open-minded and inquisitor thinker, and examines the ideas and interests and cross-references them.

148. The Promise. Architect B.V. Doshi with Jan Schmidt-Garre

This week, we are joined by Jan Schmidt-Garre, who directed the film The Promise. Architect B.V. Doshi which was shown at the ADFF (Architecture Design Film Festival). This film took place in the last few years of his life and highlighted his philosophies and outlook on architecture and design.

147. Moby Dick and Modernism with Ayad Rahmani

Today we are joined with Ayad Rahmani who teaches architecture at Washington State University. Rahmani's love for literature and architecture leads us to today's conversation about Moby Dick and architecture.

146. Modernism, Utopia, and Living Catastrophe with Anthony Vidler

As we kick off our new season on ArchitectureTalk, we are bringing back our conversation with Anthony Vidler: Modernism, Utopia, and Living Catastrophe. Anthony Vidler (1941-October 19, 2023) was an architectural historian, role model, and friend who will be missed dearly.

145. The Cyberfeminism Index with Mindy Seu

This week we are joined by Mindy Seu who published The Cyberfeminism Index electronically and physically. What we focus on is how the index is gathered, organized, and shared and how it could be applicable in the built environment.

144. Towards a Post-Punk Gothic Architecture with Phillip Thurtle

This week we are joined by Phillip Thurtle, who is the director of the Comparitive History of Ideas (CHID) program at the University of Washington Seattle. Thurtle talks to us about the gothic, what it is and what it means to him and what he researches. 

143. Robotic Architecture with Mahesh Daas

142. Phantom Hands with Deepak Srinath

This week, we are joined by the founder and CEO of Phantom Hands Deepak Srinath. Phantom Hands creates chairs and other various furniture pieces, and also brings attention to Indian craft worldwide.

141. The Faada-Adda Conversations with Mariam Issoufou Kamara (Part III): Future Faada Adda with AbdouMaliq Simone

This week, we are joined again with Mariam Issoufou Kamara and AbdouMaliq Simone, where we talk about the “Faada” and “Adda” as hangout spaces, and go in depth of what future Faada and Adda spaces would look like with urban inhabitation.

140. Biking Through American Freedom with Benedikt Hartl

This week, we are joined again with Benedikt Hartl. Hartl and his girlfriend recently biked from Seattle to La Jolla, and shares his experience as a European traveling through the West Coast as well as the architectural impacts he observed.

139. Planetary and the Climate Crisis with James Graham

This week, we are joined by James Graham who is currently an assistant professor at CCA, and used to be faculty at Columbia University and handled publications there. His work heavily revolves around the planetary and climate crisis.

138. Fronts: Military Urbanism and the Developing World with Ersela Kripa and Stephen Mueller

This week, we are joined by Ersela Kripa and Stephen Mueller, who are both principals at AGENCY. Kripa and Mueller recently published their book Fronts: Military Urbanism and the Developing World, which starts our conversation and dives into immigration, migration, and questions the climate change emergency.

137. Bawa's Garden with Clara Kraft Isono

This week, we are joined by Clara Kraft Isono, who directed the architecture film Bawa's Garden. Isono is an architect, film maker, and educator in the UK and is currently focused on film making. In this discussion, Isono talks about what film making is, as well as what an architecture film is and what it should be.

136. Architecture after Architecture with Jeremy Till

This week, we are joined by Professor Jeremy Till, who talks about his work with the research collective MOULD and their project Architecture after Architecture which interrogates the constitutive entanglement between architecture and modernism. With modernism responsible for the climate emergency, we will have to re-think what architecture is in fundamental terms, and Till discusses architecture as the solution. 

135. The Faada-Adda Conversations with Mariam Issoufou Kamara (Part II): Future Hériter

This week we are once again joined by Mariam Issoufou Kamara for the Faada-Adda Conversations Part II: Future Hériter. In this conversation, Kamara talks about breaking free from the boundaries of the cardinal directions and getting into new ways of being.

134. Architecture and Design Film Festival with Kyle Bergman

This week we are joined by Kyle Bergman, who is the CEO of the Architecture and Design Film Festival. Bergman shares with us his thoughts about the connections between film, architecture, and design, and more.

133. Arch Talk on Architecture Talk with Junichi Satoh

This week we are joined by Junichi Satoh, who is current faculty in the Department of Architecture at the University of Washington. Junichi shares with us how he has incorporated architectural thinking in diverse and constructive ways throughout his life, and how it has gotten him to where he is today.

132. Digital Stockholm Syndrome in the Post-Ontological Age with Mark Jarzombek

This week, we are joined again by Mark Jarzombek to discuss the data society on contemporary architecture, as well as his book Digital Stockholm Syndrome in the Post-Ontological Age.

131. Pre-crastinating Art with Aaron Bourget

This week, we had the opportunity to talk to Aaron Bourget who is a film maker of hundreds of short films. Bourget's process of creativity? Pre-crastination, use whatever you have at hand, and push whatever you have into the world week by week. 

130. The Faada-Adda Conversations with Mariam Issoufou Kamara (Part I)

This week, Nigerien architect Mariam Issoufou Kamara joins us in a stimulating discussion about reimagining architecture and epistemologies that come from West Africa. Kamara also touches on how African, South Asian, and other non-European can help us think out of modernity.

129. Comparing Connections in the Ethosphere with Ambrose Gillick (Part II)

This week, we are joined once again with Ambrose Gillick for Part II of Comparting Connections in the Ethosphere. In this episode, Gillick shares his thoughts on the connections of his two interests in sacred architecture and the modalities and politics of design and the city influence that connects to architecture trends. 

128. Comparing Connections in the Ethosphere with Ambrose Gillick (Part I)

Kicking off our new season of ArchitectureTalk, we engage in a conversation with Ambrose Gillick. Gillick shares his interest and findings in participatory and community-led architecture through a collaborative project with self-organising women's- co-op in Dakar, Senegal, and  theory of sacred space in medieval church architecture.

127. The Architecture of Art with Hiroshi Okamoto

We're back with a conversation with Principal Architect at OLI Architecture, Hiroshi Okamoto. In this conversation we discuss his time working with I.M. Pei, the design of the Mu Xin Art Museum dedicated to the celebrated Chinese painter, scholar, poet and writer, and designing spaces for the work of American sculpture artist Richard Serra.

126. Moving Beyond the Post-Colonial and the Mythological West with Martino Stierli

This week, we talk with Martino Stierli, MOMA’s Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design, about MOMA’s current exhibition entitled The Project of Independence: Architectures of Decolonization in South Asia, 1947–1985.

125. Architecture in the Symbolic Realm: Troubling the Remaking of New Delhi's Central Vista with Aneesha Dharwadker

This week, we talk with Aneesha Dharwadker, assistant professor in architecture and landscape architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and author of the recently published article Dystopia’s Ghost. In this episode, we revisit the remaking of New Delhi’s Central Vista project, its design, politics, and history.

124. Architecture and the Photographic Eye with Randhir Singh

This week, we talk with Randhir Singh about his life as an architectural photographer, which he pursues, not just as an art, but as a way of architectural thinking itself. From the art and craft of the making of a photograph, to the final presentation in MOMA, Randhir Singh walks us through his methods and philosophy on the art of architectural photography.

123. A Fieldguide to Sub-Saharan African Architecture with Adil Dalbai and Livingston Mukasa

How does the idea of a “Nation” come through in architectural language? Is there such a thing as a Nigerian architecture, for example? Are there national identifications visible in architectural makeup? On the other hand, how does architecture transcend borders? What is the status of Modernism in architecture in these various places? This week, we dive into these larger questions as we dissect the recently published series Sub-Saharan Africa Edited by Philipp Meuser and Adil Dalbai.

123. A Fieldguide to Sub-Saharan African Architecture with Adil Dalbai and Livingstone Mukasa

How does the idea of a “Nation” come through in architectural language? Is there such a thing as a Nigerian architecture, for example? Are there national identifications visible in architectural makeup? On the other hand, how does architecture transcend borders? What is the status of Modernism in architecture in these various places? This week, we dive into these larger questions as we dissect the recently published series Sub-Saharan Africa Edited by Philipp Meuser, Adil Dalbai, and Livin...

122. Reyner Banham Revisited with Richard Williams

This week we sit down with Prof. Richard Williams of the Edinburgh College of Art to discuss his recently published book Reyner Banham Revisited

121. Part 2: The Living Links between Indian Modernism and Indian Tradition with William J.R. Curtis

Once again, we travel back in time with architectural historian and theorist William J.R. Curtis for Part two of this conversation. We pick up right where we left off, rumbling through the dusty roads of India with William on his way to meet Balkrishna Doshi, the living link between the force that is Corbusian Modernism in India and deep, deep Indian tradition.

120. Part 1: Mental Landscapes and the Architectural Archipelagos of Indian Modernism with William J.R. Curtis

This week, we travel back in time with architectural historian and theorist William J.R. Curtis and his reading of the narrative of Indian Modernism. Part one of a two part series, Curtis and Prakash focus today’s conversation on the life and work of Aditya Prakash, the nature and production of Modernism in India, and Curtis’ own engagement with Indian Modernism.

119. Oracular Visions and the Fungal Futures with Mark Jarzombek

The modernist legacy has helped proliferate the current environmental crisis on a global scale. In architecture, what is to be done to address this civilizational problem? Could oracular visions be a way to rethink how we practice and teach architecture? Join us for this week's conversation with Mark Jarzombek, professor at MIT and co-director of the Office of [Un]certainty Research.

118. OCL Rerelease: On the Relevance of the Midcentury Modern Moment in India

In anticipation of the next installment of the One Continuous Line webinar series on Globalization and the Modernist City (being held online on December 13, 2021) this episode is a re-release of the previous panel discussion. This episode features guests Mark Jarzombek, Anthony Vidler, Partha Mitter, and Sunil Khilnani who discuss the relevance of Indian Modernism in terms of its various contemporary postcolonial contexts.

117. Chandigarh:Possibility in Engaging the Unknown in the Incomplete with Remi Papillault

This week, we sit down with Remi Papillault to discuss the topic of his new book, and the subject of his ongoing interests: the development of Chandigarh and Le Corbusier’s hand in its shaping.

116. The Politics of Acoustic Space and Sonic Montage with Joseph Clarke

  This week, we sit down with Joseph Clarke to discuss his new book Echo’s Chamber: Architecture and the Idea of Acoustic Space. The discussion looks at the convergence of politics, acoustics, and the metamorphosis of acoustic spatial thinking from Wagner to Le Corbusier and beyond.

115. An American Architect in India with David Stein

This week, the subject turns back to legacy. We have a conversation with the son of Joseph Allen Stein who was an American-born architect, designing fabulous buildings across India during the Nehruvian period in the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s. David Stein takes us through his life growing up in India and what his understanding was of his father's life and career.  

114. Nightrise and the Nocturnal Landscape with Mohamad Nahleh

What is an architecture of the Nightrise? How might we spatialize the unseeable, or “freeze” the shadows of a conjuration? This week, we have a fascinating discussion with Mohamad Nahleh, a recent MIT graduate, about his recent personal research and graduate thesis on the night in Jabal ‘Amil in the southern reaches of Lebanon.

113. Architecture as a Site of Thinking with Mark Dorrian

How might we think about architectural education differently in a post-pandemic world? What are the intersections between Covid and Climate Change? How does seeing architecture as a site of thinking impact education today? This week, we sit down with Mark Dorrian to take a deep dive into the material, political, cultural and educational realities surrounding the ongoing pandemic.

112. Connectedness, Eroticism, and the Flâneur with David Turnbull

Join us this week for a far-ranging and fascinating conversation with David Turnbull, architect, thinker and educator.

111. Jean Louis Cohen and the Transurbanism of the Modern City

Discussing his work on the transurban, Jean Louis Cohen takes us on a tour of the history of ideas that have shaped, formed, and deformed the various cities that stitch together the seams of the world. This conversation continues the ongoing conversation centering the impact of Modernism on architecture and contemporary culture in the world today.

110. The Life and Times of Cyrus and Ruth Jhabvala with Firoza Jhabvala

This week, we sit down with Firoza Jhabvala, musician and daughter of Cyrus and Ruth Jhabvala. We talk about growing up with two creative parents, the trans-disciplinarity of Cyrus' Jhabvala’s architecture practice, parallels with Vikram’s own father, Aditya Prakash, and the politics of colonial and post-colonial India.

109. Textile Capitalism and Architectural Patronage with Dan Williamson

This week, we continue interrogating the modern nationalist project in India, its legacy and implications for thinking the present with Dan Williamson, professor and scholar of Mid-century Ahmedabad. We learn why and how Amedabad, a city in Western India, came to be home to some of the best and most amazing advances in Indian Modernism.

108. The Idea of India with Sunil Khilnani

How do ideas travel across the world? How do ideas change? Why do they change? This week, we contemplate these questions in the mid-century context of the emerging Indian nation-state in the 1950s into the contemporary cultural climate we see today. Sunil Khilnani is professor of politics and history at Ashoka University and author of the book The Idea of India.

107. OCL Part 2: Modernism and the Skeptic Turn with Mark Jarzombek, Anthony Vidler, Partha Mitter, and Sunil Khilnani

In part two of our two-part series One Continuous Line, we sit down with Mark Jarzombek, Anthony Vidler, Partha Mitter, and Sunil Khilnani to discuss the relevance of Indian Modernism in terms of its various contemporary postcolonial contexts.

106. OCL Part 1: Indian Modernism and the Anxiety of Western Influence with Mark Jarzombek, Anthony Vidler, Partha Mitter, and Sunil Khilnani

In part one of our two-part series One Continuous Line, we sit down with Mark Jarzombek, Anthony Vidler, Partha Mitter, and Sunil Khilnani to discuss the relevance of Indian Modernism in terms of its various contemporary postcolonial contexts.

105. Revisiting the Modern and the Global, a reissue and crossover episode with Anthony Vidler and Mark Jarzombek

This week, we revisit two past episodes as a preamble to the forthcoming panel discussion “One Continuous Line: is Indian MidCentury Modernism still relevant today?” In this crossover episode we discuss the project of Utopia and its colonial situatedness, modernity and its critiques, and the ways in which global thinking (dis)connects with deconstruction.

104. One Continuous Line with Vikram Prakash

This week, we turn the mic back on Vikram Prakash to discuss his newly published book One Continuous Line: Art, Architecture and Urbanism of Aditya Prakash. The conversation picks up the thread of the book, mapping out and analyzing the life and multi modal work of Vikram’s father, Aditya Prakash, in Mid Century Modern India.