For Episode 131 of A is for Architecture I was joined by Professor Sue Brownill, an expert in urban planning and the development of London Docklands to discuss her advocacy, research and writing. As the author of Developing London’s Docklands: Another Great Planning Disaster? (1990, SAGE Publications), Sue delves into the complex history of the Docklands' transformation and the socio-economic consequences of one of the UK’s most ambitious urban regeneration projects. Professor Brownill...

On Episode 130 of A is for Architecture, Tom Morton, architect and principal of Arc Architects, an architecture practice based in Fife, Scotland, discusses his and Becky Little’s innovative Earthbound Orkney project, a creative practice which seeks to redefine our connection to the natural world through art, design and community engagement in Orkney. In this episode, Tom shares his vision for Earthbound Orkney, which aims to highlight the rich cultural heritage and stunning landscapes of the...

⁠On Episode 129 of A is for Architecture, Dr Beth Weinstein, Associate Professor of Architecture and at the University of Arizona, discusses her recent book, Architecture and Choreography: Collaborations in Dance, Space and Time, published by Routledge in March 2024. As Beth says, recounting her awareness of this subject, ‘I think that that encounter as a 20 something year old was the first moment when it became real for me to be able to imagine that one can bring architecture and...

In Episode 128 of the A is for Architecture podcast, architect, journalist and scholar Austin Williams discusses his work and practice, and his ongoing Future Cities Project, specifically the Five Critical Essays series.  Austin says ‘the idea behind [The Future Cities Project/ Five Critical Essays] was just to say that [architectural] debates are fairly stagnant, or unidirectional, or one track’. The project has tried, in the face of this, ‘to kind of open up some debates, have, like, live...

Dr Tanzil Shafique discusses his forthcoming book, City of Desire: An Urban Biography of the Largest Slum in Bangladesh, on Episode 127 of A is for Architecture.  Published by Bloomsbury, and out in November, City of Desire describes ‘Karail, the largest informal settlement in Bangladesh [and] the production of informal urbanism through a brand-new approach rooted in deep ethnography and spatial mapping.’ There’s also, in a way a deep reading of a place as something more than just stuff. As...

In Episode 126 of A is for Architecture, Gabriel Esquivel, director of the T4T Lab, speaks about Design Technology and Digital Production: An Architecture Anthology, which he edited, and was published by Routledge in 2023. The book ‘engages and deploys a variety of discourses, topics, criteria, pedagogies, and technologies, including some of today’s most influential architects, practitioners, academics, and critics’ to present the story of ‘architecture’s disciplinary concerns in the last...

Episode 125 of A is for Architecture is a conversation with historian Dr Jessica Kelly, Reader in Design and Architectural History at London Metropolitan University. We discuss her 2022 book, No More Giants: J.M. Richards, Modernism and The Architectural Review, published by Manchester University Press. It’s an interesting story, one that mirrors the development of the profession, and perhaps even produces it to some extent. As Jess says, ’I think Richards, although he would completely align...

⁠On Episode 124 of A is for Architecture Graham Haughton and Iain White tell me about their excellent book, Why Plan? Theory for Practitioners, published by Lund Humphries in 2019. On the reason for theory for planning, Graham suggests: ‘ to a certain extent, theories sometimes can make reality. […] you could argue that some of Patsy Healy's work around collaborative and communicative planning, of new ways of trying to engage with communities in the planning process, by bringing them, giving...

Episode 123 of A is for Architecture is a discussion with Henrik Schoenefeldt, Professor of Sustainable Architecture at the School of Architecture, Design & Planning, University of Kent, about his research into the work and influence of the Scottish physician David Boswell Reid on the environmental design underpinning Barry and Pugin’s Palace of Westminster, London, UK. Initially an AHRC-funded scheme entitled ‘Between Heritage and Sustainability – Restoring the Palace of Westminster’s...

In this episode of A is for Architecture, Dell Upton, Professor Emeritus of Architecture, UC Berkeley and Professor and Chair of Art History at UCLA, speaks about his book, American Architecture: A Thematic History, published by Oxford University Press in 2019. To the question, What is American architecture? Dell suggests ‘That is a very long and vexed question, not only with American architecture, but in American culture. And it really starts from at the time of the American Revolution. How...

The title of this year’s Design History Society Annual Conference is Border Control: Excursion, Incursion and Exclusion and for this episode of A is for Architecture, three of the conference’s convenors, Dr Jessica Kelly, Professor Victoria Kelley and Professor Cat Rossi, took a bit of time to talk about it with me.  The conference blurb states: ‘Whether geopolitical, human and non-human, or digital and physical, the solidification and liquification of borders raises questions around...

Professor Nigel Cross is the podcasts' 120th guest, Emeritus Professor of Design Studies at the Open University, design researcher who played a pivotal role in establishing design as an academic discipline, Editor in Chief of the journal Design Studies between 1984-2017, developing the concept of design thinking along the way. We speak about the second edition of his book, Design Thinking: Understanding How Designers Think and Work, published with Bloomsbury in 2023. On design, Nigel says:...

Cultural historian Dr Robyne Calvert discusses her recent book, The Mack: Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the Glasgow School of Art in the 119th episode of A is for Architecture. Published by Yale University Press, the book is a detailed study of The Mackintosh Building, one of the great icons of modern architecture, and its reconstruction, engaging with a whole host of significant - and sometimes paradoxical - issues for design practice: conservation, reconstruction, authenticity, pastiche,...

⁠In Episode 117 of A is for Architecture’s landscape architect Richard J Weller, discusses his beautiful book, To the Ends of the Earth: A Grand Tour for the 21st Century, published by Birkhauser this year.  The book develops the historical practice of the Grand Tour – ‘an intellectual, cultural undertaking that was sort of a finishing school and an education for the aristocracy’ where, by travelling to the great sites of Antiquity, they would ‘buy art and take ideas and influences back home...

A is for Architecture’s 116th episode features the architect, writer, public speaker, TED-talker and all round polymath, Michael Pawlyn, discussing Flourish: Design Paradigms for Our Planetary Emergency, which he co-wrote with urbanist, curator and writer, Sarah Ichioka and published with Triarchy Press in 2021. It’s a challenge, what Michael articulates: ‘What we suggest is that we - all of us - need to get better at distinguishing the maladapted frames and stories and metaphors, and...

⁠Episode 115 of A is for Architecture is a conversation with Sofia Singler, Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow and College Lecturer in Architecture at St John’s College, Cambridge. We discuss parts of her book, The Religious Architecture of Alvar, Aino and Elissa Aalto, which she published with Lund Humphries in 2023. Sofia says “my sense is that [Alvar Aalto] really valued religion and not just Lutheranism, and Finland, […] and specifically...

⁠In Episode 114 of A is for Architecture Jane Rendell, Professor in Critical Spatial Practice at The Bartlett, UCL, discusses some aspects of her recently republished book, The Architecture of Psychoanalysis: Spaces of Transition, which came out with Bloomsbury in the spring. Jane says ‘I think what I'm more interested in is how architecture can allow us to think psychoanalysis differently, as well as allow us to look for things in psychoanalytic theory. For example, the spatial drawings of...

⁠Episode 113 of A is for Architecture’s is a conversation with Cécile Brisac, founder of Atelier Brisac, a practice based in London and Paris, with a body of work produced since Atelier Brisac's founding in 2019, and previously with Brisac Gonzalez, and that includes the Museum of World Cultures, Gothenburg, Pajol Sports Centre, Paris, the Performing Arts Center, Aurillac, France and more recently housing at Lot 04A in Batignolles, Paris and Allée du Parc, Massy, France. Describing her...

⁠A is for Architecture’s 112th episode is with the British architect, Tony Fretton. Previously founder and principal of Tony Fretton Architects, and more recently acting as a design consultant, and previously Chair of Architecture and Interiors at TU Delft, Tony’s work includes Westkaai, Residential Towers, Antwerp, The British Embassy, Warsaw, Art Museum, Fuglsang, Denmark, and the The Red House and the Camden Arts Centre, London. Speaking of his work on galleries, Tony says:  ‘I think it's...

⁠Episode 111 of A is for Architecture⁠ is a conversation with Des Fitzgerald, Professor of Medical Humanities and Social Sciences at University College Cork, about his fairly recent and quite well-covered book, The City of Today is a Dying Thing: In Search of the Cities of Tomorrow, which he published this year with Faber & Faber. Green urbanism is undergirded by an expectation – a belief? - that it will deliver on modernism’s promises of emancipated, healthful lives. The City of Today...

⁠In Episode 110 of A is for Architecture⁠ Victoria Jane Marshall, senior lecturer in the Department of Architecture at the National University of , discusses themes and methods underpinning her recent book, Periurban Cartographies: Kolkata’s Ecologies and Settled Ruralities, which she published with Oro Editions in spring this year. As Victoria notes, an increasingly public concept, the periurban describe those parts of urban peripheries that are ‘generally imagined […] as “becoming urban”...

⁠Episode 109 of A is for Architecture⁠ has architect, professor and writer, Charles Holland, discussing his new book, How to Enjoy Architecture: A Guide for Everyone, published by Yale University Press this year. As Charles says, How to Enjoy Architecture is ‘not a history of architecture, and it's definitely not a kind of polemic’. Rather, it ‘tries to open up architecture outside of a sort of standard linear history’ and is instead ‘a plea for more tolerance and pluralism, and for less...

⁠A is for Architecture’s⁠ 108th episode is a conversation with urban designer and President of the Congress for the New Urbanism, Mallory B.E. Baches.  With roots in the works of Jane Jacobs and Lewis Mumford, and later through Leon Krier and Christopher Alexander, the CNU was founded in 1993 as a ‘planning and development approach based on the principles of how cities and towns had been built for the last several centuries: walkable blocks and streets, housing and shopping in close...

⁠A is for Architecture’s⁠ 108th episode is a conversation with the architect Sam Jacob, principal of Sam Jacob Studio and Professor and head of Architectural Design Studio 3 in the Institute of Architecture (I oA) at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Formerly founding director of FAT with Charles Holland and Sean Griffiths, Sam’s work includes exceptional buildings and adaptations, exhibitions, interiors and things which, liberally distributed over the years of his practice[s], are to be...