Join us On the Steps of 36: a question-and-answer conversation that crosses thresholds into our guests’ histories, lives, influences and stories, shedding light on the person behind the work. In this episode, Ryan Dillon is joined by Ella Adu, an architect and writer whose research considers changing modes of grassroots cultural production in Britain. Adu was also the assistant curator of the AA exhibition As Hardly Found in the Art of Tropical Architecture in 2023. AirAA podcasts are...

Join us On the Steps of 36: a question-and-answer conversation that crosses thresholds into our guests’ histories, lives, influences and stories, shedding light on the person behind the work. In this episode, Manijeh Verghese is joined by Ellie Sampson, a model maker, paper cut artist and lecturer. Sampson also participated in the AA event Warburg Models: Buildings as Bilderfahrzeuge earlier this year – you can watch a recording of the event here. AirAA podcasts are conceived, recorded,...

Join us On the Steps of 36: a question-and-answer conversation that crosses thresholds into our guests’ histories, lives, influences and stories, shedding light on the person behind the work. In this episode, Ryan Dillon is joined by Martha Summers, an artist, architect and designer based in London. Earlier this year, Summers participated in the AA event Collective Efforts: Navigating Friction in Collaboration as part of the Self-Organised: Models for Learning series – you can watch a...

Join us On the Steps of 36: a question-and-answer conversation that crosses thresholds into our guests’ histories, lives, influences and stories, shedding light on the person behind the work. In this episode, Ryan Dillon is joined by Arinjoy Sen, an artist and architect whose work focuses on the politics and aesthetics of architecture and space. Sen participated in the AA event Collaborative Models as part of the Self-Organised: Models for Learning series in 2024 – you can watch a recording...

Join us On the Steps of 36: a question-and-answer conversation that crosses thresholds into our guests’ histories, lives, influences and stories, shedding light on the person behind the work. In this episode, Manijeh Verghese is joined by George Massoud, an architect, educator, cultural worker and a director of Material Cultures – a design and research practice based in London. Massoud also participated in the AA event Feminist Practice in 2023 – you can watch a recording of the event...

Join us On the Steps of 36: a question-and-answer conversation that crosses thresholds into our guests’ histories, lives, influences and stories, shedding light on the person behind the work. In this episode, Manijeh Verghese is joined by Mohamed Elshahed, a writer, curator and architectural historian. Elshahed participated in the AA symposium Beyond Eurocentrism: Rethinking the Architectural Canon in 2024 – you can watch a recording of the event here. AirAA podcasts are conceived, recorded,...

Join us On the Steps of 36: a question-and-answer conversation that crosses thresholds into our guests’ histories, lives, influences and stories, shedding light on the person behind the work. In this episode, Manijeh Verghese is joined by Sarah Ackland, an architect, researcher and host of the podcast 29% Equal. Ackland participated in the event Making Visible at the AA in 2023 – you can watch a recording of the event here. AirAA podcasts are conceived, recorded, mixed, edited and...

Files on Air is a podcast series in which contributors from AA Files read their work. In this episode, you will hear Michelle Millar Fisher and Amber Winick – authors of the book Designing Motherhood – read their text 'Birth Places: From the Bedroom to the Hospital and Back Again'. In this piece, Fisher and Winick examine the design histories of certain hospitals, birthing centres and other models of care, and trace how these systems and settings shape birth outcomes. You can read the piece...

Join us On the Steps of 36: a question-and-answer conversation that crosses thresholds into our guests’ histories, lives, influences and stories, shedding light on the person behind the work. In this episode, Ryan Dillon is joined by Elena Palacios Carral, an architectural researcher, educator and a founding director of architecture design and research platform Forms of Living. In 2023, she curated the exhibition Portraits of a Practice: The Life and Work of MJ Long at the AA. AirAA podcasts...

Files on Air is a podcast series in which contributors from AA Files read their work. In this episode, you will hear Ines Weizman – an architect, educator and founding director of the Centre for Documentary Architecture – read her text 'Synchronised by Murder: The 1930 Killing of a Berlin Clockmaker'. In this piece, Weizman examines the implications of a murder in early 20th-century Berlin, unpacking the event as a moment of historical synchronisation. The essay complements a trilogy of...

Join us On the Steps of 36: a question-and-answer conversation that crosses thresholds into our guests’ histories, lives, influences and stories, shedding light on the person behind the work. In this episode, Manijeh Verghese is joined by Emma Dent Coad, an architectural historian and councillor in Kensington and Chelsea since 2006. Dent Coad participated in the symposium The Cladding Crisis at the AA in 2023 – you can watch a recording of the event here. AirAA podcasts are conceived,...

Files on Air is a podcast series in which contributors from AA Files read their work. In this episode, you will hear Brendon Carlin – an architect, critic, researcher, and AA School tutor – read his text ‘No-House: Shameless Architecture in 21st-Century Japan'. In this piece, Carlin examines the legacy of Japan’s ‘lost decade’, Yoshiharu Tsukamoto and Momoyo Kaijima’s Atelier Bow-Wow and the ‘shameless architecture’ that illuminates the reality of certain conditions in Tokyo. You can read the...

Join us On the Steps of 36: a question-and-answer conversation that crosses thresholds into our guests’ histories, lives, influences and stories, shedding light on the person behind the work. In this episode, Manijeh Verghese is joined by architect and writer Marianna Janowicz, who participated in the Feminist Practice event at the AA in 2023. Janowicz is a member of Edit, a feminist design collective focusing on the enduring biases and hierarchies embedded into the environments that surround...

For this last episode of How to Be Good Ancestors we are changing tides. Together with artist and academic Janice Cheddie, our aim is to expand the conversation into territories of resistance to the systems unpacked in the previous episodes. What mechanisms exist to rid oneself of debt without going through the painful processes of unfair repayment?  We will explore modes of resistance, focusing on the tools and the precedents which each of us and our guest value and rely on to imagine a...

Join us On the Steps of 36: a question-and-answer conversation that crosses thresholds into our guests’ histories, lives, influences and stories, shedding light on the person behind the work. In this episode, Ryan Dillon is joined by architect and scholar Charlotte Malterre-Barthes, who participated in the Stop Building! event for the Stories about Sustainability series at the AA in 2022. Malterre-Barthes conducts research on urgent aspects of contemporary urbanisation, material extraction,...

This third episode of How to be Good Ancestors on Indonesia will zoom into the architectural scale to look at another form of debt: the act of disseminating building knowledge as a form of epistemic imposition. We will be revisiting Indonesian colonial history with architectural historian David Hutama Setiadi focusing on design pedagogy. Together we will unpack the ways in which systems of knowledge were imposed through new ways of building generated by capitalist ideology, revealing the...

Join us On the Steps of 36: a question-and-answer conversation that crosses thresholds into our guests’ histories, lives, influences and stories, shedding light on the person behind the work.  In this episode, Ryan Dillon is joined by Francisco Adriasola, an architect and graduate of the AA's Design and Make programme who curated the AA Gallery exhibition Observation, Act and Form in autumn 2022. Francisco participated in the Education and the Architectural Act event in Hooke Park in November...

This second episode of How to be Good Ancestors focuses on Burkina Faso, in a conversation with the multidisciplinary designer Richard Aina. We will travel to Lobi land in the South Western region of Burkina Faso. to look at how the artefacts produced there are held hostage by colonial power structures and modern infrastructures. Through this episode we attempt to generate a framework to shift dominant paradigms and generate a sensible architecture for the repatriation of those artefacts....

Join us On the Steps of 36: a question-and-answer conversation that crosses thresholds into our guests’ histories, lives, influences and stories, shedding light on the person behind the work.  In this episode, Ryan Dillon is joined by Kathryn Timmins, an architect, teacher and Principal Policy Officer in the regeneration team for the Greater London Authority. Kathryn contributed to an event in the AA’s New Standards series focusing on safety in 2023, in which she and the panel discussed how...

Welcome to the first episode of series two of A Line Traced, How to be Good Ancestors, in which we discuss the economic tools which perpetuate neocolonialism. In today’s episode focusing on Egypt, we are joined by Yahia Shawkat, an architect, housing and urbanism researcher and the cofounder of 10Tooba, a research centre devoted to urban politics. Shawkat will take us on a deep dive into the history of Egypt’s multiple housing regimes and their foreign entanglements, allowing us to examine...

Join us On the Steps of 36: a question-and-answer conversation that crosses thresholds into our guests’ histories, lives, influences and stories, shedding light on the person behind the work.  In this episode, Manijeh Verghese is joined by curator and writer Debbie Meniru, who contributed to an event marking the launch of the exhibition As Hardly Found in the Art of Tropical Architecture at the AA Gallery in 2023. You can watch a recording of the event here.   AirAA podcasts are conceived,...

Welcome to the fourth episode of this series of A Line Traced, which focuses on Female Pioneers in the History of Virtual Reality. The series is hosted by Paula Strunden, a transdisciplinary VR artist with a background in architecture who taught on the AA’s Media Studies programme. In this episode, Paula interviews Char Davies, best known for her groundbreaking virtual reality artwork Osmose, which combines immersive environments, with embodied interactions, and a profound connection to...

Join us On the Steps of 36: a question-and-answer conversation that crosses thresholds into our guests’ histories, lives, influences and stories, shedding light on the person behind the work. In this episode, Manijeh Verghese is joined by architect, urbanist and cofounder of Urban Symbiotics, Stephanie Edwards, who contributed to the AA’s New Models lecture series in 2021. You can watch her lecture here.   AirAA podcasts are conceived, recorded, mixed, edited and distributed from the...

Welcome to the third episode of this series of A Line Traced, which will focus on Female Pioneers in the History of Virtual Reality. The series is hosted by Paula Strunden, a transdisciplinary VR artist with a background in architecture who taught on the AA’s Media Studies programme. In this episode, Paula interviews Tamiko Thiel, a pioneer in augmented reality art and the visionary behind the design of the Connection Machine, the first commercial AI supercomputer. About this Series: This...