In this conversation Andrew Clancy speaks with the Belgian architect Kersten Geers. Kersten was educated at the University of Ghent and in ETSA Madrid, before setting up his practice (Office KGDVS) with his friend David Van Severen in 2002. This practice has from the start had a very clear position, with each project presenting itself as a typological study in a way - refined to an essential reading. Building its innovations from a close reading of history particular attention is paid to...

In this episode Andrew Clancy speaks with Dr Anna Minton. Anna investigates and writes about the politics shaping our cities. In particular she tracks how certain forms of global capital are increasingly informing more and more of what makes their fabric. Streets, squares and housing are now frequently being shaped by pressures that have little consideration of the needs of the vast majority of their citizens. Her two books 'Ground Control' and 'Big Capital' are essential reading (click on...

In this episode Andrew Clancy speaks with the Belgian architect Jo Taillieu. Jo is Professor of Architecture in EPFL Lausanne, and runs his practice, Jo Taillieu Architecten, from his home town of Ghent. He established this practice in 2004, and between 2009 and 2019 worked in partnership with Jan deVylder and Inge Vynck. In all his work, in collaboration or sole practice, Jo brings an open and curious sensibility, based on a close reading of each site and its potentials. This attitude...

In this episode Andrew Clancy talks with Professor Marilyne Andersen. Marilyne is a physicst by training, but her first love was architecture. Her research has allowed her to develop a particular expertise in daylight, which has allowed her to work in a very architectural way in her various laboratories. She explores the effect of the built environment on daylight, and on how this impacts on human behaviours, mood and well being. In this conversation we range widely, exploring her early...

In this episode Andrew interviews Andreas and Samuel from Stockholm based Hermansson Hiller Lundberg Architects. Their practice is concerned with the capacity for contemporary construction for expression - and they explore structure and a close reading of context to make characterful and beautifully considered work at a wide variety of scales. The work speaks eloquently of our time, and draws on deep traditions in architecture - seeking expressive qualities in contemporary construction...

In this episode Simon Henley interviews Milinda Pathiraja. Milinda's is a director and co-founder of Robust Architecture Workshop, a practice based in Sri Lanka, and concerned with developing new means for architecture to operate there. The term 'Robust' is key, its meaning to Milinda representing architectures ability to develop a resilience by a clear sighted engagement with the world - eschewing the brittleness that comes from autonomous conversations, and making its languages from a...

In this episode Nana Biamah Ofosu and Andrew Clancy interview Shelley McNamara and Yvonne Farrell of Grafton Architects. Nana is a tutor in the Kingston School of Art, leading studies into precedent and the lessons found in territorial Ghanaian architecture as part of her Second Year Studio. Grafton Architects are the current Pritzker Laureates, an accolade that arrives as they appear to be gathering pace with a remarkable series of university buildings completed in the last few years, and...

In this episode Andrew Clancy speaks with Simon Henley of Henley Halebrown Architects. Simon is an educator and a practitioner, and has written several books about architecture, most recently ‘Redefining Brutalism’ - which seeks to redefine the subject beyond style, and to capture its sensibility as a living language of architecture -0 encompassing robustness at its core. Today their explorations into the language of architecture are being teased out via a series of remarkable housing...

In this episode Andrew Clancy chats with the architect and educator Cathy Hawley. Cathy Haley started her professional career with the art and architecture collaborative muf, moved on to doing remarkable housing projects as a founding partner of Riches Hawley Mikhail, and now works with Public Practice to embed critical thinking about context and character into the development plans of a series of towns. Wherever she has worked she has brought a clarity of insight, valuing the unseen and...

In this episode Laura Evans and Matt Wells talk with the Historian and curator Nicholas Olsberg. Nicholas is a former director of the Canadian Centre of Architecture, and is a prolific writer. He has curated many exhibitions about architects and architecture and in this conversation shares his views about the role of the curator in this context. In particular he speaks about the need to make exhibitions which present those visiting with vivid moments of engagement with the subject - a...

In this episode Mary Vaughan Johnson and Federica Goffi Interview Alba di Lieto and William Whittaker Mary is the head of our Department of Architecture and Landcape here in Kingston, while Federica is Associate Professor and Co-Chair of the PhD and MAS Program at Carleton University. Last Summer Mary and Federica hosted the Frascari Symposium at Kingston, and it was at this event this podcast was recorded. In it Mary and Federica interview Alba diLieto and William Whittaker. Alba is...

In this podcast Laura Evans and Matt Wells interview William Burgess and Stephen Davies of 31/44 In the intro I mention our new books project. If you want to support us by pre-ordering copies of our first books please visit the crowdfunding site here https://kubacker.hubbub.net/p/REGISTER-Conversations/ Will is well known to us in Kingston as a studio tutor in third year, where he runs a unit with Kate Micklin also of 31/44. The work of the unit is a good way to understand some of the...

In this episode Andrew Clancy interviews Shiela O'Donnell and John Tuomey of O'Donnell and Tuomey. John and Shiela are as much educators as architects, and this conversation roves freely between conversations about schools, and their own work in practice. It is clear that these two worlds are interconnected and interreliant in a profound way in their lives. The work in both places has overlaps - not least a concern with close reading of site and context, and an investment in drawing out...

In this episode Bruno Silvestre interviews his compatriot Alvaro Siza. First off an apology - the sound is not as we would like it. Circumstances dictated that the interview had to be recorded in a hotel lobby, and the backgrounders noise is quite distracting - but we felt it was useful to put out anyway. Bruno is working with Siza on a project here in the UK, and grabbed this time during Sizas most recent visit. In this conversation they talk about practice, Sizes early frustrations...

In this episode Andrew Clancy and Laura Evans interview Alice Casey and Can Deegan of TAKA Architects in Dublin. Over their 10 years of practice Alice and Cian have designed a series of remarkable buildings, which clearly illustrate the concerns of the office. Most obvious there is a recurrent engagement with context, making buildings which are grounded in the forms and materials of their physical situation. There is more at work than this - most intriguingly a continual engagement with...

In this episode Louise Koopmanns and Andrew Clancy interview Gunter Vogt, the eminent landscape designer, and Chair of Landscape at ETH Zurich. He views landscape design not as an autonomous totalling discipline, but as a careful reassembly of the world. In his methods he stresses the productive tension between the necessary subjectivity of the human condition, and the availability of scientific analysis and process. In speaking with his students he observes that a field trip can at once...

In this episode Kate Ivinson and Dan Ryder-Cook both interview the London architect Amin Taha. Amin’s work, and that of the practice he established (Groupwork) is heavily invested in exploring the potentials for contemporary technology to allow a re-engagement with materiality, ornament and civic expression - particularly in the making of facades. This approach, at once playful and rigorous, has resulted in work which is beautifully detailed, robustly made and historically situated. In...

In this episode Andrew Clancy interviews Eddie Heathcote, the critic and writer. Eddie is the architecture critic for the FT, and an author of several books as well as the curator of an online resource celebrating the value of the written word in architecture (Reading Design). In this conversation we tease out the particular pressures on critics and discuss whether the golden age of architecture criticism may have passed. https://www.readingdesign.org/ --------- Credits: Register is...

In this interview Andrew Clancy and Judi Farren Bradley interview Julian HARRAP. Julian is arguably the most distinguished conservation architect working in Europe today. In the work he completed with David Chipperfield on the Neues Museum he opened up a conversation about memory, authenticity and the abiding meaning of architecture in a highly nuanced manner. This work is of interest far beyond conservation circles of course, and I think it fair to say that this building has been one of...

In this episode Andrew Clancy and Matt Phillips interview Prof Elly Mosayebi The practice she runs with her partners (Ron Edelaar and Christin Idebitzin) works from a deep understanding of the plan as a source of invention in the making of beautifully resolved housing. By a first principle interrogation of inhabitation and occupation they can arrive at plans which frequently eschew conventional geometries - to make characterful, resonant, architecture which is deeply human, gently...

In this podcast Mary Vaughan Johnson and Andrew Clancy interview Niall Hobhouse of Drawing Matter. Niall and his collection are such a valuable and important part of the contemporary architectural scene it is difficult to imagine it without this presence. Yet it is a rare and fragile thing. It is by no means obvious that a collection could be made which celebrates the doubts of creative production, and which reiterates the changing yet abiding value of the drawing as a site of critical...

In this episode Andrew Clancy interviews Fergus and Edmund of Fielden Fowles Their practice is one which foregrounds craft, and the formal histories of the language of industrial and agricultural structures as a site for discovery and invention. Their hands on approach is probably most celebrated in their own studio, located as part of a campus of structures for Waterloo city farm. Despite the contingencies of budget (the client being a charity) and the need for the buildings to be...

—————— Before introducing this episode a quick mention of the free summer school for pre A- level students we run each summer with our partners. I talk a bit about this in the introduction - if you know anyone who might be interested there is more information here. http://kingstonarchitecture.london/architectural-drawing-summer-school-24-29-august-2019/ ———————- In this episode Andrew Clancy interviews Caroline Voet. Caroline joins us from Belgium where she works as an architect and an...

In this episode Andrew Clancy interviews Ryan Kennihan. Ryan is an architect, based in Dublin, and is leader of the thesis year in TU Dublin (formerly DIT Dublin School of Architecture) there. His practice is concerned with making buildings which act in continuity with typologies, forms and materials found in their physical context. These are translated through engagement with contemporary tectonics to make an expressive architecture in which structure, weathering and craft are...