Scaffold
119 episodes - English - Latest episode: 9 days ago - ★★★★★ - 31 ratingsInterviews with architects, artists and designers. Produced by the Architecture Foundation and hosted by Matthew Blunderfield.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Episodes
102: Phineas Harper
April 18, 2024 04:30 - 1 hour - 84.2 MBPhineas Harper develops cultural programmes that engage broad audiences with architecture and design. A regular contributor to The Guardian and former Chief Executive of Open City, their career spans criticism, curation, education, youth engagement, journalism and sculpture. "I see my work as always having an eye on some other change that is about making a better built environment […] and that’s why I admire architects so much, because they have the patience and the care to see a project t...
63: Asif Khan (April 2022)
April 03, 2024 04:30 - 1 hour - 99.7 MBThis episode originally aired in April 2022; Scaffold will be back with a new episode next week. Asif Khan is a designer of buildings, landscapes, exhibitions and installations. “It’s helpful sometimes to think that architecture is made up. All of this cannon, all of this writing, all of this schooling […] let’s just imagine it’s a religion of some sort that you’re operating within, but before that religion there were other religions, and so it’s about stepping outside of that world and s...
101: Fernanda Eberstadt
March 20, 2024 05:30 - 55 minutes - 76.7 MBFernanda Eberstadt is a New York born writer living in Europe. She has published five novels and two books of non-fiction, the latest of which is BITE YOUR FRIENDS: STORIES OF THE BODY MILITANT. "Art lies in the cracks, the deep tremors, the dysfunctions, in the gap between our own broken capabilities and the unpoliced world we’re hoping to create" – FE Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more inf...
100: Cristina Gamboa (Lacol)
March 07, 2024 09:55 - 52 minutes - 72.3 MBCristina Gamboa is a co-founder of the Barcalona-based architecture cooperative Lacol. "We are constantly fighting with budgets, and are often left with what is absolutely necessary – a “pure” architecture. […] When the manzanas [Cerda’s urban grid for Barcelona] were built without architects this lead to a homogeneity, or even genericness, that we are comfortable with, maybe because of its lack of a specific aesthetic narrative." Episode References: John Habraken – frameworks of mass su...
99: Takero Shimazaki
February 22, 2024 05:00 - 1 hour - 104 MBTakero Shimazaki is director of the London-based practice t–sa, which he co-founded with Yuli Toh in 1996. "You can’t control everything as an architect. You can’t dictate everything – that’s not the point. Instead it’s quite exciting to be liberating, to let things be in a way. I'm interested in the discrepancies that exist between imagined ideals and the realities of tolerance and conflict. In these kinds of chaotic and raw situations, how does architecture survive?" Scaffold is an Arch...
98: Jamie Fobert
February 09, 2024 06:00 - 1 hour - 94.3 MB“The artist working alone in their studio is the antithesis of what we do every day as architects […] and yet one hopes that the work you produce might have the same resonance.” Jamie Fobert a Canadian-born architect who has found himself increasingly working on projects at the centre of British culture. Fobert, who has recently become chair of the Architecture Foundation's board of trustees, studied at the University of Toronto before moving to London in 1988, where he worked for for Dav...
97: Apparata
January 24, 2024 05:30 - 1 hour - 96.2 MBNicholas Lobo Brennan and Astrid Smitham founded Apparata, their London-based architecture practice, in 2016. "What we are always trying to do is a kind of activism, but the activism is entirely expressed and developed through prosaic things – literally, where is the door, how wide is the walkway, that kind of stuff. It’s not either or – either architecture is its own autonomous discipline, or it’s a social practice – there has to be room for the idea that the actual devices you use to eng...
96: Hans Ulrich Obrist (Part 2)
December 29, 2023 06:30 - 36 minutes - 50.6 MBHans Ulrich Obrist is a curator and artistic director of the Serpentine Galleries in London. This episode features Part 2 of his interview for Scaffold. (Listen to part 1 here). "There is a different kind of time in the studio of artists […] time almost gets suspended when I do a studio visit, which is a major aspect of how I break with routine and liberate time. Artists are world builders, and so you travel into another world." – HUO Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hos...
95: Hans Ulrich Obrist (Part 1)
December 20, 2023 06:30 - 45 minutes - 61.9 MBHans Ulrich Obrist is a curator and Artistic Director of the Serpentine Galleries in London. "We need protected spaces for art, yes – that's why we have museums – but we need also to find ways to actually go from from the gallery space to the park, into the city, and into society…curating is about building bridges between art and society, and I’ve always believed we need to create this kind of experience for people” Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blun...
94: Rural Urban Framework
November 29, 2023 05:30 - 55 minutes - 75.5 MBRural Urban Framework is a research and design collaborative based at the University of Hong Kong, directed by Joshua Bolchover and John Lin. Conducted as a non-profit organization designing for charities and NGOs working in China, RUF has built over 15 projects in various villages in China including schools, community centers, hospitals, village houses, bridges, and incremental planning strategies. Of course, much has changed in China since John and Joshua began their practice - the rur...
93: Tosin Oshinowo
November 16, 2023 05:30 - 55 minutes - 75.9 MBTosin Oshinowo is a Lagos-based architect and curator of the 2023 Sharjah Architecture Triennial. Titled "The beauty of Impermanence, an Architecture of Adaptability," this year’s triennial considers design solutions built from conditions of scarcity and explores how this might impact sustainable design today. This interview was recorded in Sharjah during the opening weekend of the Triennial in mid November 2023, and the conversation began by addressing the triennial itself, before unfol...
92: Resolve Collective
November 02, 2023 06:30 - 1 hour - 119 MBRESOLVE is the Croydon-based collective practice of Akil Scafe-Smith, Seth Scafe-Smith and Melissa Haniff. “We want people to look at our work and think: “I could do that” - if it means it doesn’t look amazing, and it can’t go on dezeen, so be it. There has to the mark of people on these structures, and the mistakes of people too. That is a fundamental part of our work.” Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. Download the London Architecture Gu...
Dank Lloyd Wright (Power & Public Space)
October 12, 2023 04:30 - 15 minutes - 20.7 MBScaffold is on holiday this week – instead here's an interview with the IG architecture meme account Dank Lloyd Wright recorded last year for the podcast Power and Public Space, co-produced by Drawing Matter and the Architecture Foundation. A new Scaffold interview with Resolve Collective will air in two weeks ✌️ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
91: Theo de Meyer
September 28, 2023 17:29 - 1 hour - 114 MBTheo de Meyer is an architect based in Ghent whose work moves between architecture, design and the arts. He and doorzon interieur architecten together represent the core of the modular collective Stand Van Zaken (‘State of Affairs’), who create furniture and architecture in collaboration with specialists in various fields. Special thanks this week to the General Representation of Flanders to the UK (Embassy of Belgium) for their support. Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, ...
90: Tony Fretton (Part 2)
September 13, 2023 04:30 - 58 minutes - 80.3 MBTony Fretton founded his eponymous architecture practice in 1982. His early work in London, including the Lisson Gallery (1986-1992), was influential in defining a new approach to architecture focused on urban context and daily life. “By the time I graduated, London was completely different. It wasn’t opulent, it was poor, and punk was an attitude that accepted the nihilism of the state and of the city. All those songs by the Sex Pistols, they rang true, they weren’t just inventions. Punk w...
89: Tony Fretton (Part 1)
August 31, 2023 04:30 - 1 hour - 82.8 MBTony Fretton founded his eponymous architecture practice in 1982. His early work in London, including the Lisson Gallery (1986-1992), was influential in defining a new approach to architecture focused on urban context and daily life. “By the time I graduated, London was completely different. It wasn’t opulent, it was poor, and punk was an attitude that accepted the nihilism of the state and of the city. All those songs by the Sex Pistols, they rang true, they weren’t just inventions. Punk...
88: About Buildings + Cities
August 16, 2023 04:30 - 53 minutes - 73.8 MBLuke Jones and George Gingell are hosts of the podcast About Buildings and Cities. "We’re interested in getting into things that are obscure [in architectural history], but we’re also interested in looking at things that are super obvious. […] Taking Gaudi for example, he’s the world’s favourite architect, and he’s also curiously elusive and totally unfashionable - like kitch embarrassing tea-towel stuff. At the same time, he is such a strange and virtuosic designer. We’re interested in tr...
87: Ben Bowling
August 02, 2023 04:30 - 50 minutes - 69.8 MBBen Bowling is Professor of Criminology at Kings College London, and the son of the celebrated painter Frank Bowling, whose studio he now manages. "Frank always wanted children, but did not want to be a father, because of his own father’s violence; by being an absent father through my infancy and childhood, Frank allowed me to re-write the script of fatherhood. "One thing that is joyous about working in the studio is being able to involve my son, who’s now in his 30’s, and his son, who’s t...
86: Asli Çiçek
July 19, 2023 04:30 - 55 minutes - 76.4 MBAsli Çiçek is an Architect and writer based in Brussels, whose work focuses on scenography and exhibition design. "Culture is not a luxury. I don’t like populistic discussions about what culture should be or how history should be flattened to a quick communication. I think it’s fantastic to not understand everything at once, to keep the fascination for history and culture alive in museums […] "There is no shame in having culture. If there’s a debate I silently follow, it’s that there is ...
85: Charlotte Cooper
July 05, 2023 04:30 - 43 minutes - 59.4 MBCharlotte Cooper is the author of Poundbury: a Queer Tour of Monarchy, published earlier this year by 33 Editions. "One of my bugbears about Poundbury is that it’s not an honest place – it’s pretending to be something that it isn’t. They talk about how green it is, how it is invested in traditional building techniques, but it’s also breeze blocks, it’s plastic, it’s a great place to park your car […] My question is, if you could, what would bring the truth our of Poundbury, what would show...
84: Robin Winogrond
June 21, 2023 04:30 - 33 minutes - 45.6 MBRobin Winogrond is a Landscape Architect based in Zurich. "I try to never look at what I expect to see, but to see in a raw way, in an uninformed way, I try to read space and atmospheres in the most unschooled way I can, to soak up as much knowledge as I can." – RW Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
83: Karin Templin (At Home in London: The Mansion Block)
May 26, 2023 04:45 - 40 minutes - 55.7 MBKarin Templin is an architect, educator, and author of the book At Home in London: The Mansion Block, co-published by The Architecture Foundation and MACK. This book is first in a series on types of London housing, reflecting on the place of the home in the city in the light of its longstanding housing crisis. To find out more visit mackbooks.co.uk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
62: Lesley Lokko (April 2022)
May 18, 2023 04:30 - 1 hour - 87.9 MBThis episode originally aired in April 2022. Lesley Lokko is founder of the African Futures Institute and curator of the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale. “I don’t see myself as being ‘the future’, but the expanded field [of architecture] that I’ve operated in for most of my life has given me something that is of use to he generation coming behind me, so that no matter how I end up making my living, I see myself first and foremost as a teacher.” Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation pr...
82: Sumayya Vally
May 11, 2023 04:30 - 59 minutes - 82.3 MBSumayya Vally is a Musilm South African architect, and founder of the practice Counterspace. “Architecture is abstract, and I think what I’m doing in my practice is making a concerted effort to find different sources for the origins of that abstraction. I think what has happened in the cannon and in the profession more broadly is that we’ve inherited so much that we don’t deeply question…I think the languages that we’ve inherited could do with being supplemented or oven being overtaken, ...
81: David Gissen
April 20, 2023 04:30 - 44 minutes - 60.9 MBDavid Gissen is a New York-based author, designer, and educator who works in the fields of architecture, landscape, and urban design. His book, The Architecture of Disability (University of Minnesota Press, 2023) has been praised as “an exhilarating manifesto” and a “complete reshaping about how we view the development and creation of architecture.” The Architecture of Disability offers a critical perspective on histories and futures of buildings, cities, and landscapes — beyond a sole foc...
80: b+
April 06, 2023 04:45 - 46 minutes - 63.6 MBb+ is a collaborative architecture practice that operates across different media and formats. The practice seeks to engage with challenges of eco-social transformation and adaptive reuse, and to contribute to the societal transformation with ecologically and economically viable answers. “Why does the political right have better propaganda than the left? It’s perhaps because the right is situated in the 'no' – the 'yes' is much more difficult to propagandise. It’s therefore necessary to find...
79: Julian Opie
March 16, 2023 05:30 - 1 hour - 83.2 MBJulian Opie is an artist based in London. We create models to deal with the world and to function in the world. It’s how we perceive the world and our own life and existence, drawing from the world a language that can then be shared and used to talk about existence – JO Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
78: Carmody Groarke
March 03, 2023 11:21 - 53 minutes - 73 MBCarmody Groarke is an architecture practice based in London. "This idea of thinness [of surfaces] has to do with pragmatism and thrift, but it's also a contemporary challenge of buildings – now that we've disassembled the monolithic way of traditional construction we have to consider the making of walls in a different way, and yet we enjoy that discipline of making the most with the least." Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
77: Albert Williamson Taylor (Part 2)
February 10, 2023 05:00 - 54 minutes - 86.5 MBAlbert Williamson Taylor is a design engineer and founder of AKT II. “The goal has always got to be the project – the design – everything else is just an inconvenience. Even deciding to start a practice was very much that. It’s a means to an end, and the end in my view is being able to contribute with your abilities, rather than what’s expected of you.” – AWT Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation podcast, produced by Matthew Blunderfield Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more i...
76: Albert Williamson Taylor (Part 1)
February 02, 2023 05:00 - 39 minutes - 62.6 MBAlbert Williamson Taylor is a design engineer and founder of AKT II. “The goal has always got to be the project – the design – everything else is just an inconvenience. Even deciding to start a practice was very much that. It’s a means to an end, and the end in my view is being able to contribute with your abilities, rather than what’s expected of you.” – AWT Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation podcast, produced by Matthew Blunderfield Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for mo...
75: Thomas Demand
January 20, 2023 12:46 - 1 hour - 122 MBThomas Demand is an artist working in Berlin and Los Angeles "When architects look at my work it’s like when you show your work to your mother – she looks at something completely different than when you show your work to your peers. Architects are not “Mother”, but they see different aspects of my work than the art world do.” Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
49: Esther Choi (July 2021)
January 05, 2023 05:30 - 1 hour - 97.7 MBThis episode was recorded in October of 2020, and originally aired in July of 2021. Esther Choi is a New York-based multidisciplinary artist and writer trained in photography and architectural history and theory. “[In Le Corbuffet] I was trying to experiment with whether or not you could introduce a critical message into a circulation network that was unsuspecting, which is why the idea of “soft power” is so interesting to me […] We’re used to negational critique, and that’s been the pre...
43: Sara Hendren (October 2020)
December 22, 2022 06:00 - 49 minutes - 79.9 MBThis episode originally aired in October 2020 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 w...
74: Thomas Heatherwick
December 09, 2022 12:20 - 44 minutes - 71.6 MBThomas Heatherwick is a designer and founder of Heatherwick Studio in London. "I’m inspired by people who don’t try to impress other people in their profession [...] The people who really matter are the public who you are doing projects for. What actually matters, In the big picture of time, is what matters to the people around us." Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
73: Tacita Dean
November 25, 2022 05:30 - 1 hour - 113 MBTacita Dean is a visual artist who works in Berlin and Los Angeles "The direction in which I’m going is never fixed. Because I don’t know where I’m going, I’m very able to change direction. . . only at the very end of the process does all this nascent information suddenly have resonance – only in the singularity of the final work does the impact of this desperate journey make any sense." Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. Hosted on Acast. ...
72: Sam Chermayeff
November 11, 2022 05:30 - 59 minutes - 81.6 MBSam Chermayeff is an architect based in Berlin. "The success of all interiors are specifics – specific wobbles, specific things in the way, specific dirt behind the ears of a house […] It’s wildly inefficient way of designing […] and it can drive people crazy, but the notion that you can provide this joyous instability for people – I want to offer that to everyone." Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy ...
71: Soft Baroque
October 28, 2022 04:30 - 51 minutes - 83.2 MBNicholas Gardner and Saša Štucin founded the design practice Soft Baroque in 2013, and are currently based in Ljubljana. “For us, the satisfaction of buying something pales in comparison to even pushing a button and hitting print on a 3D printer or hitting play on a CNC machine – there is a fascination that we have with making things work and making something in three dimensions [...] It feels like the type of urge that could replace our consumer desires.” Link to Nicholas Gardner's tag p...
70: Richard Wentworth
October 14, 2022 14:02 - 1 hour - 146 MBRichard Wentworth is an artist based in London. "Without feeling sorry for myself, I feel like a bit of a misfit […] I don’t really have a tidy sense of where [I belong]. I want to be effective. I would be a bit bored if I died and no one ever mentioned me again – not because I want them to say “do you know he was such and such” – I’d like to be the grit in a lot of shoes, and I’d like that grit to be useful across quite a lot of subjects." Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation project, ...
69: Moshe Safdie
September 29, 2022 04:00 - 52 minutes - 84.1 MBMoshe Safdie is an architect based in Boston who first came to prominence through his Habitat 67 project, a modular housing prototype constructed for the Montreal Expo in 1967. Safdie's memoir, If Walls Could Speak, has just been published by Atlantic Books. “It’s not that I avoid a signature style, I just allow things to mutate […] I marvel in the differences of place, and I bring them out and I enjoy them because I think that I’m making buildings that are more rooted. For me this is the p...
68: Deem Journal
September 01, 2022 12:42 - 50 minutes - 81.2 MBDeem Journal co-founders Nu Goteh, Alice Grandoit and Marquise Stillwell discuss an expanded definition of design as a social process. “publishing is a ritual act of listening, and for us we’re really trying to orient ourselves to become better listeners, and to thus orient an audience to become better listeners, with the hope that through this listening we can arrive at a better ethics around our relationship to each other and the planet.” Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation project. ...
67: Flores & Prats
August 11, 2022 19:52 - 1 hour - 102 MBFlores & Prats are an architecture practice based in Barcelona. “The theatre and the common spaces are the same experience. Going to the theatre is not getting into a room where you suddenly forget the outside world, going to the theatre is meeting your friend at the ticket box, at the sofa going the bar, have a beer, coffee, anxious, waiting to start, and meeting the actors, and everything is a continuity[…] The theatre has exploded to occupy the whole building, not just the two performan...
Introducing: Power & Public Space
July 13, 2022 18:00 - 48 minutes - 77.2 MBIntroducing Power & Public Space, a new podcast from Drawing Matter and the Architecture Foundation. This episode features a conversation with professor Mabel O. Wilson on the Memorial to Enslaved Labourers at the University of Virginia. Listen to the full series on ITunes, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Scaffold returns with new episodes later this month. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
66: Max Pinckers
June 09, 2022 06:49 - 56 minutes - 91.2 MBMax Pinckers is a photographer based in Brussels. “The subject and themes [of my photographs] are a reflection of how I see photography, or how I want to deal with photography - the subject matter is always a mirror for the medium as well.” https://www.maxpinckers.be/ @maxpinckers Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
65: Freek Persyn
May 26, 2022 05:00 - 49 minutes - 79.9 MBFreek Persyn is professor of architecture and urban transformation at ETH in Zurich, and together with Johan Anrys and Peter Swinnen founded the practice 51N4E in 1998. “Architecture is not often talked about in terms of transience, its very much focusing always on the final product, and this final product is captured before its used - it’s trying to monumentalise or eternalise one fragment of time that doesn’t really even exist, which is the finished building before it is even in use […] ...
64: Carla Juaçaba
May 12, 2022 04:00 - 40 minutes - 55.4 MBCarla Juacaba is a Brazilian architect based in London. “I’m compelled by theatre for its impermanence, that things end, in a way that it’s not even possible to record; it’s very fascinating to see things dissipating, then that’s it. When I worked in exhibition design I was already fascinated by how despite this temporary effect, ideas live on in our minds forever - architecture can be temporary but it remains a part of our imaginary world.” Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation producti...
63: Asif Khan
April 28, 2022 06:32 - 1 hour - 99.4 MBAsif Khan is a designer of buildings, landscapes, exhibitions and installations. “It’s helpful sometimes to think that architecture is made up. All of this cannon, all of this writing, all of this schooling […] let’s just imagine it’s a religion of some sort that you’re operating within, but before that religion there were other religions, and so it’s about stepping outside of that world and seeing what else is possible.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
62: Lesley Lokko
April 14, 2022 04:30 - 1 hour - 87.4 MBLesley Lokko is founder of the African Futures Institute and curator of the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale. “I don’t see myself as being ‘the future’, but the expanded field [of architecture] that I’ve operated in for most of my life has given me something that is of use to he generation coming behind me, so that no matter how I end up making my living, I see myself first and foremost as a teacher.” Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production. For more information visit https://w...
61: James Taylor Foster
March 24, 2022 07:53 - 1 hour - 114 MBJames Taylor Foster is a writer and curator of contemporary architecture and design at ArkDes. "When I think about curatorial practice I start to think about what it means to nest in the complexity of things […] There’s an ambition to not dumb things down, but to create space for close looking and close feeling, through experiences, through objects, and through the creation or maintenance of conversations” Interlude audio is from the youtube video [ASMR] Dark & Relaxing Tapping & Scratch...
60: Paloma Gormley
March 17, 2022 05:00 - 46 minutes - 63.7 MBPaloma Gormley is a founding director of both Practise Architecture and Material Cultures, bringing together design, research and action towards a post carbon built environment. "There’s an inherent tension in the work that we’re trying to do, in that we’re trying to change the nature of authorship – there’s a real risk with the rise of technology, it follows that power, agency and authorship become concentrated into fewer and fewer hands […] One of the things that’s exciting about building...
59: Takeshi Hayatsu
March 10, 2022 05:00 - 41 minutes - 57 MBTakeshi Hayatsu is an architect based in London and founding director of Hayatsu Architects. “ …That sort of fear, and darkness beyond our control that exists in the natural world is something we’ve somehow forgotten following the modernist movement […] People tend to become arrogant – we assume we control everything – so animism and symbolism are things I’m interested in, in terms of finding ways to pay respect to nature, in a way that should really come back more now in the age of enviro...