Episodes
In this episode Nana Biamah Ofasu interviews Marius Grootveld. Marius is a partner, along with Jantje Engels of the practice Veldwerk. Established in 2015, their practice is part of a broader movement in Flanders of practices interested in making work in weaving narratives from the contexts they are asked to make work. Representation, typology and precedent act as a site for investigation, and discovery. Restlessly passionate about architecture in its widest sense Marius also pursues...
Published 12/15/18
In this episode Ellis Woodman interviews Timothy Smith and Jonathan Taylor of Smith Taylor Architects. Ellis is director of the architecture foundation, and a valued thinker and writer about architecture. Jonathan and Timothy established their practice in 2010. In their practice and their teaching they investigate classicism, and its potential as a living language of architecture. They engage with this way of thinking, not through nostalgia or sentimentality, but with criticality. This...
Published 11/21/18
In this episode we are joined by Prof Hugh Campbell Hugh is a writer, a curator and an educator. His research examines the the relationship between photography, architecture and built space and the visual culture of cities. His recent publications include the edited volume Architecture 1600- 2000, volume 4 of the RIAI/Yale UP production Art and Architecture of Ireland (2014); a special issue of Architecture and Culture on Architecture and Film, edited with Igea Troiani. Forthcoming are an...
Published 10/30/18
In this episode Bushra Mohamed interviews Jaume Mayol who is a partner in TEd’A Arquitectos along with Irene Perez. Their practice, based in Mallorca is a territorial one, seeking to make its architecture from the lessons in the vernacular of the areas they build - both in the tectonics found there, and in the formal arrangements of elements. This sensibility is married to ideas which emerge from the canon, to produce a hybridity of grounded ideas rigorously resolved. A clear...
Published 08/12/18
In this episode Bruno and Sylvester and Diego Calderon interview Manuel Rocha de Aires Mateus. His practice, which he established with his brother in Lisbon in 1988 represents another pole of the deep architectural culture of Portugal. In contrast with the work of the Porto School Lisbon architects engage with more abstracted reading of type and materiality. Aires Matues are among the best known proponents of this way of thinking. Externally their buildings tend to the monolithic, with...
Published 08/02/18
In this episode Matt Wells interviews Dingle Price and Alex Gore of Pricegore Architects. Their practice, now in its fifth year, is among the more compelling recent arrivals in the UK. Much of the work of a young practice inevitably involves situations rife with uncertainty, contingency and the need to use minimal means. In this context it is remarkable that the core concerns of the practice are already so clearly and consistently established and interrogated. In common with many of...
Published 07/14/18
In this episode Andrew Clancy interviews Floris de Bruyn, one of three partners in the Belgian practice GAFPA. GAFPA's is concerned with a careful unpicking of the contexts in which their buildings are situated and in they way that they are then made. This contextual read does not extend only to the physical site, but to todays vernacular of mass produced standardised building components. This is all governed by an underlying connection with the deep architectural currents of type and...
Published 04/04/18
In this episode Andrew Clancy interviews Dr Cat Rossi. Cat is a design historian, with a socially and politically engaged approach to researching and communicating design history. Consistently provocative, insightful and nimble in her ability to weave multiple narratives, Cats work allows new light to be cast on the areas she explores. In this conversation she takes us us on a lyrical tour of the design history of Nightclubs, and their relationship to broader architectural currents, with...
Published 03/07/18
In this episode Hugh Strange interviews Beate Holmebakk of Mathey Kula Architects to speak about her work, and that of her practice. Beate is a leading figure in Norwegian architectural practice and education. Her practice has made a singular position with works that seek to establish a resonant formal presence within the remarkable landscapes in which they are situated. In considering the lineage for this work it comes as no surprise that Beate studied with Sverre Fehn and John Hejduk...
Published 02/08/18
In this episode Aoife Donnelly interviews Marcus Donaghy and Will Dimond of Donaghy Dimond Architects. Donaghy Dimonds work is characterised by robust, elemental massing which is then inhabited and tuned with a meticulous level of attention to the details of how it is made. They appear to be constantly seeking opportunities where the matter of the building can be tuned to support inhabitation - be it in how a doorway might be a good place to sit in the sun, or in how a window in a...
Published 12/29/17
In this episode Andrew Clancy interviews Job Floris, a partner with Sandor Naus in Monadnock Architects, a practice based in Rotterdam. Their buildings possesses a formal intensity which is leavened with careful attention to their materiality. Their buildings sit at ease with their place in the living tradition of European architecture and yet speak of our current time, and the ambiguities of contemporary tectonics. In their practice the history of architecture is seen as a place for...
Published 11/06/17
In this episode Andrew Clancy interviews the architect and educator Tom de Paor. Tom graduated from UCD in 1991, and established his practice that same year. Since this time he has cut a singular path, establishing a clear position through work which seeks to communicate spatially and in detail regardless of programme or location. In the work process narrative, reference, and material are frequently interwoven and infected by sensitivity to context, the material experience of construction...
Published 08/21/17
In this episode Andrew Clancy interviews the architect and educator Tony Fretton. Since establishing his practice in 1982, and by example and instruction Tony has persistently made the case for the value of quiet and thoughtful architecture. This thinking was made powerfully manifest in his ambiguous masterpiece - the Lisson Gallery - makes a reading of its London context which is at once lyrical and scholarly, and does so in a manner respectful of its programme as a small gallery, and...
Published 07/04/17
In this episode we are joined by the sculptor Maud Cotter. Maud's work, frequently exquisitely made from every day materials explores space, and the relational potential of space beyond the closed question of resolution. Her ability to articulate 'open questions' in her work and work process makes her an inspirational critic and speaker, who gets to the heart of what is involved in producing a sustainable creative practice in art or architecture. Writing of her work to date she says "We...
Published 05/23/17
In this episode we are joined by Donald Matheson and Jason Whiteley. They set up their practice in London in 2012, after some years working for Tony Fretton and Herzog & deMeuron. Theirs is an architecture of minimal means. They have a careful eye for latent possibilities in the fabric where they work, and many of their projects find their language in these observations. They build on these with typological references and an unsentimental engagement with the realities of contemporary...
Published 04/17/17
In this episode we are joined by Hans Kollhoff, who we invited to Kingston to do a workshop with unit 6 of our M.Arch, and to give a register lecture. Prof Kollhoff teaches in the ETH, and practices from Berlin in partnership with Helga Timmermann. Kollhoffs life work might be described as a quest for meaning and language in contemporary archtiecture. Writing of the Piraeus building in 1995 he said “Un­der the eco­nom­ic pres­sure to cre­ate some­thing op­ti­mal in ev­ery re­spect, ev­ery­...
Published 04/10/17
In this episode we are joined by Oliver Lutyens and Thomas Padmanabhan. The work of their practice is thoughtful and scholarly, and yet open minded and lyrical. In teasing out the fundamental tension between façade and plan they have developed a characterful and playful expressive language through a series of modest residential developments. Invested in a deep knowledge of the history of architecture, they critically examine contemporary tectonics in a search for an appropriate civic...
Published 04/03/17
In this episode we are joined by Prof Elizabeth Hatz, of the KTH in Stockholm and SAUL in Limerick. Her early built projects enjoy a lightness of touch, grounded in the deep Swedish culture of architecture and yet playful and ambiguously figurative. Her teaching gained attention for the deep connection she makes between drawing and thinking, and it is this territory she has worked in in recent years. A wide range of practitioners value her voice in drawing out the latent qualities of...
Published 03/27/17
In this episode we are joined by Prof Terunobu Fujimori and Takeshi Hayatsu. Their collaboration through the work of Unit 5 here in Kingston (run by Takeshi) is reaching a culmination this year with the making of a Japanese teahouse for the Barbican Japanese House exhibition. In this discussion we talk about how Prof Fujimori started to make buildings, and the challenges he faces as he now works on progressively larger works. We talk about the value of theory and criticism, and about the...
Published 03/19/17
In this episode we are joined by David Grandorge - an architect, photographer and academic living and working in London. As a photographer he undertakes commissioned work, collaborating with architects, artists and art institutions. He also makes work independently. His work has been shown in numerous exhibitions including the Venice (2008) and Prague (2005) biennales and has been published internationally in magazines, journals and books. He has written several published articles on...
Published 03/14/17
In this episode we are joined by the Developer, Historian and Architect Crispin Kelly. Crispin is a developer with a deep understanding of architecture, most evidenced by his studies at the AA, but more pertinently by the space he has made for thoughtful work in the risky and contested world of private development. His willingness to personally back talented architects in the making of small and medium scale work gives him an insight into our discipline tempered by the contingencies of...
Published 03/06/17
In this episode Andrew Clancy is joined by Ricardo Flores and Eva Prats of Flores Prats Architects. (NOTE: During the conversation we have an extended conversation about their Casa Balaguer project - being able to refer to the drawings and images might be useful to understand this part! http://www.floresprats.com/archive/palau_balaguer/) Flores Prats work with a lyrical precision, working into and out of the contexts where it is sited. Sites are read formally and culturally with memory...
Published 02/26/17
In this episode Andrew Clancy is joined by Christopher Dyvik and Max Kahlen of Dyvik Kahlen Architects. Their London based office was established in 2010 and operates across various scales and sectors in the UK, Holland, Germany and Norway, collaborating with clients ranging from public institutions and developers to artists, curators and private individuals. Underlying their work is a desire for objects and spaces that are comfortable and strangely familiar, as much as a fascination for...
Published 02/20/17
In this first episode Eleanor Suess and Andrew Clancy introduce the Register podcast, which is a new initiative from our department of Architecture and Landscape in Kingston. Our school is one invested in acting in continuity with architectural culture, and in cultivating practitioners who make work in a thoughtful manner, attuned to the social and physical contexts where they work. This podcast will host a diverse range of conversations with people who visit our school. Some will be...
Published 02/04/17