Scaffold (The Architecture Foundation)

Paloma 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 with natural materials is that those technical barriers – which we’ve created with petrochemical culture and their associated layers of liability – in a way a lot of that ‘technification’ goes out the window, and you’re back to a much more straightforward way of doing things.”

https://practicearchitecture.co.uk/

https://materialcultures.org/

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James 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 & Scratching [Close Whispers] by GibiASMR

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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 production. For more information visit https://www.architecturefoundation.org.uk/

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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 seeing what else is possible.”

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Carla 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 production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield.

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Freek 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 […] I would say that instead, we are talking about this whole thing – this whole process of architecture – and valuing every moment of it."

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Max 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.

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Introducing 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.

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Flores & 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 performance spaces.” 

Flores & Prats Website

@floresyprats

Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield.

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Deem 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.

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Moshe 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 pleasure of design.” 

Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield.

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Richard 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, produced by Matthew Blunderfield.

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Nicholas 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 poems

Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation project, produced by Matthew Blunderfield.

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Sam 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

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Tacita 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.

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Thomas 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.

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This 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 want a world where care is part of the landscape of existence.”

Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield

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This 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 predominant axis by which we talk about critique in architecture and art […] But you can also introduce challenging or political ideas through seduciton, or pleasure, or sensation, which is what a lot of architects from the 1960’s did”

Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation project, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield

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Thomas 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.

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Albert 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

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Albert 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

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Carmody 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."

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Julian 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

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b+ 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 positive claims that can be engaged with almost instantaneously – in a way, that’s the architectural project” 

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David 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 focus on the problems of accessibility.

Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield

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Sumayya 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, dare I say, by other origins, that come from different ways of being and different value systems.”

– SV

Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield.

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This 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 production. For more information visit https://www.architecturefoundation.org.uk/

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Karin 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

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Robin 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

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Charlotte 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 it for what it is?"

Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield

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Asli 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 a necessity for culture in society – not only as an egalitarian concept, but as an educational concept. That is something I try to stand for."

Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield.

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Ben 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 two and a half. The fact that we now have four generations of male Bowlings in the studio, coming together around the work, is a source of joy. It’s almost like we disrupted this old pattern of what fatherhood should be."

Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield

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Luke 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 trying to make sense of that thing that seems so obvious it’s almost embarrassing to talk about."

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Tony 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 was really important to me - punks were ethical, they had an idea of the world and it was about make and mend, about living in the margins, and that was the background from which I developed my practice.” – TF

Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield

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Tony 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 was really important to me - punks were ethical, they had an idea of the world and it was about make and mend, about living in the margins, and that was the background from which I developed my practice.” – TF

Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield

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Theo 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, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield

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Scaffold 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 ✌️

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RESOLVE 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.

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Tosin 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 unfolding into a more personal discussion of the contradictions that emerge between the exhibition and Oshinowo's practice.

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Book tickets for upcoming Architecture on Stage lectures by Duncan Lewis (Tuesday November 21st) and Sam Chermayeff with Jack Self (Wednesday November 29th).

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Rural 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 rural to urban migration emblematic of china’s development over the past several decades is now reversing following changes in government policy as well as massive economic and cultural shifts, which has caused Joshua and John to adapt and reorient their practice in different directions. While they still co-direct Rural Urban Framework, Josh is also director of the District Development Unit, which focuses on the growth of developing regions in Mongolia, Nepal and the Philippines, while John has established a postgraduate program at HKU called the Building Society that implements experimental building practices in traditional contexts. 

Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield.

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Hans 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 Blunderfield

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Hans 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, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield.

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Nicholas 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 engage with activist work can literally be construction, space and architecture."

Buy tickets to Architecture on Stage: A public housing manifesto (This Friday 26 January at the Barbican Centre)

Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield.

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“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 David Chipperfield, before establishing his own practice in 1996. He is best known for his work with major fashion brands and cultural institutions, and has designed retail spaces for Selfridges, Versace and Givenchy, as well as major extensions and alterations to galleries and museums including Tate St Ives, Kettles Yard in Cambridge, and most recently London’s National Portrait Gallery. 

Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. 

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Takero 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 Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. 

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Cristina 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 support

Lucien Kroll

Frei Otto

Francesc Rius – Coll De Portell Housing

Alfons Soldevila – Casa Mas Ram

Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. 

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Fernanda 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. 

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This 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 seeing what else is possible.”

Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. 

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Phineas 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 through. I think there’s a lot the we in the critical, curatorial, discursive world have to learn from architects in that regard.”

Phin's exhibition "Cascades" is on now until 1 June at San Mei Gallery

Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. 

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Takaharu and Yui Tezuka founded Tezuka Architects in 1994 and are best known for their experimental designs for schools and kindergartens, chief among them the Fuji School in Tokyo. They are currently fundraising to build a new orphanage and school in India called the Jhamtse Gatsal Learning Centre.

Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. 

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This special episode of Scaffold features a brief interview with the Austrian architect Herman Czech conducted by David Kohn in advance of Czech's 10.05.2024 Architecture Foundation lecture. The interview was recorded at Kohn's recently completed Smart's Place project in Covent garden for Baylight Properties.

Czech's lecture coincided with a major retrospective of his work, Approximate Line of Action, that has been staged by FJK3 Contemporary Art Space in Vienna.

Special thanks this week to Crispin Kelly / Baylight Properties for their support.

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This week, AF Trustee Shumi Bose moderates a discussion on the state of architectural education with panellists Adrian Lahoud (Dean, School of Architecture at the Royal College of Art), Kester Rattenbury (former Professor of Architecture at the University of Westminster), and Neal Shasore (Head of the London School of Architecture). The event was recorded in front of a live audience on 1 February 2023 at Benk and Bo in Aldgate, London.

An upcoming live panel, titled "The Rights of the Architectural Worker" takes place on the evening of Tuesday 25 June at the Barbican Centre, with speakers Bob Allies (Allies and Morrison) Charlie Edmonds (Future Architects Front) and Jane Issler Hall (Assemble), as well as members of the Section of Architectural Workers. For more information and to book your tickets, follow this link.

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Minsuk Cho is a Korean architect and designer of this year's Serpentine Pavilion.

"We have a demanding role as architects, and I think movies are a good comparison: it’s always so polarising – there are serious directors, versus blockbuster directors – but there is a way of doing both."

Show notes:

• Eun-Me Ahn - Korean Choreographer 
• Cities on the Move - exhibition curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and You Hanrou
• Jang Young-Gyu - Korean musician and composer responsible for the 2024 Serpentine Pavilion’s sound installation 
• Heman Chong and archivist Renée Staal - collaborators on the 2024 Pavilion’s “Library of Unread Books” 
• Won Buddhism Wonnam Temple by MASS Studies 
• Madang, traditional Korean courtyard
• References: Bruno Taut & Buckminster Fuller 
• 2006 Serpentine Pavilion by Rem Koolhaas with Cecil Balmond 
• 2010 Shanghai Expo Pavilion by MASS Studies
• Crow's Eye View: The Korean Peninsula – 2014 Venice Biennale Korean Pavilion co-curated by Minsuk Cho 
• Gottfried Semper’s Four Elements of Architecture (1851)
• Eduard Glissant - Philosopher and poet from Martinique 
• OM Ungers’ 1978 essay on Berlin’s Green Archipelago 
• Bong Joon-ho - Korean director (Host, Ok-ja, Parasite)
• Park Chan-wook - Korean director (Old Boy, the Handmaiden, Decision to Leave)

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Florian Summa and Anne Femmer are founding directors of the Leipzig based Summacumfemmer and guest professors at the University of the Arts in Berlin.

The practice's built work includes San Riemo (2020), a co-operative housing development in Munich designed with Büro Juliane Greb. Summa and Femmer were co-curators of Open for Maintenance, the German contribution to the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale.

“[Teaching architecture] doesn’t work when you don’t have real problems, and so this is the strategy we find most useful for us right now: leave the university, leave the institution and go to the problems directly. This prevents you from just talking and mapping and analyzing things, and having the whole thing just remain a conversation within the institution. What we liked about the Venice project was that the most successful projects were the ones that went directly to the workshop – thinking while making.” – SCF

*Join Florian and Anne at this year's Architecture Foundation Summer School (11-15 September). To learn more and register, click here.*

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The Architecture Foundation gratefully acknowledge the Delegation of Flanders to the UK for their support in producing this episode.

Recorded on site at Horst Arts and Music Festival in Vilvoorde, Belgium on Saturday 11 May 2024, episode 108 includes conversations with Mattias Staelens, founder of Onkruid and the inspiration behind the Horst Festival, and Carole Depoorter, Horst art and architecture programme coordinator. It also features a panel discussion with Stefanie Everaert (Doorzon & Stand van Zaken), Serban Ionescu, Ambra Fabi and Giovanni Piovene (Piovenefabi).

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Petra Blaisse is a designer and founding partner of Inside / Outside.

Blaisse started her career in 1978 at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, in the Department of Applied Arts. From 1986 onwards, she worked as freelance exhibition designer and won distinction for her installations of architectural works. Gradually her focus shifted to the use of textiles, light and finishes in interior space and, at the same time, to the design of gardens and landscapes. In 1991, she founded Inside Outside. The studio worked in a multitude of creative areas, including textile, landscape and exhibition design. From 1999 Blaisse invited specialist of various disciplines to work with her and currently the team consists of about ten people of different professions and nationalities.

A new monograph of Blaisse's work, called Art Applied, was published earlier this year by MACK. Edited and introduced by Fredi Fischli and Niels Olsen, with newly commissioned texts by Penelope Curtis, Christophe Girot, Rem Koolhaas, Charlotte Matter, Fatma Al Sehlawi, Jack Self, Laurent Stalder, Helen Thomas, and Philip Ursprung.

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This episode was recorded live at the Barbican Centre's Frobisher Auditorium on 25 June 2024, with panelists Bob Allies of Allies and Morrison; Charlie Edmonds of the grassroots activist group Future Architects Front; Cristina Gaidos + Maia Rollo of the recently formed union Section of Architectural Workers; and Jane Issler Hall + Owen Lacey of the the architecture collective Assemble. 

Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. 

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dorsa is a collective architecture practice founded by Yufei He, James Horkulak and Pan Hu in 2021. In their own words, they "seek to capture multiple and parallel realities concealed within our time, and employ whichever medium necessary to create optimistic narratives for an empathic future."

Support the Architecture Foundation by becoming a Patreon Member.

This episode was generously supported by the Swiss Embassy in the UK.

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Edward Jones is the co-author, along with the late Christopher Woodward, of the Guide to the Architecture of London, which, originally published in 1983, is now in its fifth edition and has become the definitive guide book of the subject. In 2017 the guide book became the basis of an app - called the London architecture Guide, and one of the Architecture Foundation’s most ambitious projects. earlier this year a range of entries was added by Jones alongside a new generation of authors, and it was on this occasion that we met to talk about the guide book’s legacy and its evolution. 

“What matters hugely to me is that architecture has a role to play in public life. That’s what this book is about - to celebrate excellence in architecture, and to be somewhat critical of things we don’t argee with…there should be a debate about architecture in the city” – Edward Jones

Show notes: 

Arcades, the history of a building type by Geist, Johann Friedrich (1983)

College City, Colin Rowe (1978)

John Rocque's map of London, Westminster and Southwark (1746)

London The Unique City by Steen Eiler Rasmussen (1934)

Gilbey House, Serge Chermayeff, London, 1937

Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. 

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Art writer and former Spike columnist Dean Kissick stops by the pod to discuss his most recent article "The Painted Protest: How politics destroyed contemporary art" – published in the December 2024 issue of Harper's.

Read Dean's article here.

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Gonçalo André Pires is an architect and co-founder, together with Pedro Santo Saraiva, of Studio Sotnas, a practice based between Aarhus and Lisbon.

"While in the 90s and 2000s there were a lot of idealistic inventions and visions that wanted to be forced into being, now it’s more about reassembling and reorganising existing meanings and values in the things that we might we already have at hand, understanding that it’s more about discovering than inventing. We’re interested in bringing meaning to a building from the components that are essential to it." – GAP

Show notes:

“Modern architects have been harping continually on what is different in our time to such an extent, that even they have lost touch with what is not different, with what is always essentially the same”“Modern architects have been harping continually on what is different in our time to such an extent, that even they have lost touch with what is not different, with what is always essentially the same”

• Aldo Van Eyck, first published in the Team Ten Primer, late 1950s

John Young’s apartment 

Jaques Herzog, House for an Art Collector 

Architecture and the Sciences by Antoine Picon (2003)

The Savage Mind by Claude Levi Strauss (1962)

Mechanisation Takes Command by Siegfried Gideon (1948) 

Salome Lamas (contemporary Portuguese filmmaker) 

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badweather, founded by Oli Brenner, Sophie Mei Birkin and Leo Sixsmith in 2019, are an architecture and scenography collective based in London.

badweather’s work represents a strand of contemporary practice that became more visible in the wake of the pandemic, and one distinct from the climate survivalism, social moralism, and poetic despair that has come to dominate much of architectural discourse today.

Instead, the few projects that badweather has completed — lightweight and ephemeral constructions made from off the shelf components, primarily for nightclubs and festivals — reflect a generation of architects who, in an era defined by scarcity and polarization, are seeking aesthetic exuberance and new forms of collectivity precisely while contending with the limitations of the present. 

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Alison Crawshaw, whose practice encompasses architecture, landscape, urban design, and installations, is on the pod this week.

In our conversation we focus on two key projects of hers that bookend her practice to date, and that share a philosophy of working with existing conditions rather than imposing top-down transformations. 

The first project, from 2012, called the politics of bricollage, which Alison developed during her time as a Rome scholar in architecture, examines the outskirts of that city to highlight small-scale, user-led interventions shape the built environment outside formal planning processes. 

The second project, called open Havelock, which was just recently completed, transforms undercroft garages in London’s Havelock Estate into a series of community rooms instead of demolishing them, in a bid to repurpose overlooked urban spaces. 

Both projects acknowledge the role of everyday users as co-creators of urban space, and push for a more adaptive, bottom-up approach to urbanism, suggesting grassroots tactics for future urban development. 

Support the Architecture Foundation by becoming (or gifting) a Patreon membership. More details here.

Scaffold was recently noted as one of the top feedspot architecture podcasts.

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Dima Srouji is a Palestinian architect, artist, and researcher born in 1990 in Nazareth. She holds a Bachelor of Architecture from Kingston University (2012) and a Master of Architecture from the Yale School of Architecture (2016). ​

Srouji's interdisciplinary practice explores the ground as a repository of cultural narratives and potential collective healing. She employs various media—including glass, text, archives, maps, plaster casts, and film—to interrogate concepts of cultural heritage and public space, particularly within the Middle East and Palestine. Her collaborative approach involves working closely with archaeologists, anthropologists, sound designers, and glassblowers. ​

In 2016, Srouji founded Hollow Forms, a glassblowing initiative in collaboration with the Twam family in Jaba’, Palestine, aiming to revitalize traditional glassblowing techniques. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the Corning Museum of Glass in New York, the Sharjah Art Biennial, the Islamic Art Biennial in Jeddah, and the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati. Her pieces are part of permanent collections at institutions such as the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and the Victoria & Albert Museum. ​

Srouji has contributed to academic discourse through her writings in publications like The Architectural Review and The Avery Review. She currently leads the MA City Design studio at the Royal College of Art in London, focusing on archaeological sites in Palestine as contexts for urban analysis. ​

In recognition of her contributions to art and architecture, Srouji was awarded the Jameel Fellowship at the Victoria & Albert Museum for 2022-2023. ​Through her multifaceted work, Srouji challenges conventional narratives, offering new perspectives on cultural heritage and identity within contested spaces.​

Support the Architecture Foundation – visit https://www.patreon.com/ArchitectureFoundation to find out how.

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Late last year a new museum opened its doors in Lagos, Nigeria, called The John Randle Centre for Yoruba Culture and History. It is among a new generation of African cultural institutions – including the Bet Bi museum in Senegal, by Mariam Kamara, and the Museum of West African Art in Benin City by Adjaye Associates – which in different ways attempts to reimagine both the form and format of the contemporary museum from an African perspective. 

This week we speak with Seun Oduwole, who lead the design of the John Randle Centre. Oduwole is a Nigerian architect and the Principal Architect at SI.SA, a Lagos-based firm he founded in 2015. He earned his architecture degree from the University of Nottingham and gained experience at Hopkins & Partners, Benoy, and Sheppard Robson. Upon returning to Nigeria, he worked at Shelter Design Partnership and later became a partner at Brown inQ before establishing SI.SA. ​

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This episode was originally aired in Novemebr 2022.

"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." – Tacita Dean.

Tickets are now available for Architecture in the Age of Artificial Intelligence – a landmark panel taking place on 2 June at the Barbican Concert Hall.

Support our work by becoming a Patreon Member or Practice Supporter

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Michael Meredith is a co-founder with Hilary Sample of MOS, an architecture practice based in New York.

MOS is an acronym derived from Meredith and Sample, with the "O" serving as an abstract, connective element. The name, much like the practice itself and the cultural moment it emerged from in the early 2000s, captures a playful tension between irony and sincerity. It's a subtle nod toward global architectural giants like SOM or OMA, while genuinely embodying Michael and Hilary's playful and collaborative spirit.

A hallmark of Meredith and Sample’s work is their ability to balance intentional imperfection with technical precision. They've described their practice as embracing a philosophy that's "horizontal and fuzzy," deliberately moving away from the conventional "tall and shiny" image typically associated with architecture firms. It's a metaphor reflecting their preference for an architecture that's smaller, less bureaucratic, more experimental, and ultimately more alive.

Michael's podcast Building with Writing Stan Allen: https://open.spotify.com/show/7CUtD3SnpyKxWUmsNnDmSw

Michael's 2025 Princeton Syllabus: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aU1IqdLYJmcldMAzgnxrwOczO1TIrTtCejEziyxZ4-U/edit?tab=t.0

Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. 

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Carlo Ratti is is an Italian architect, engineer and educator, and the curator of the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale.

As the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale opens its doors, we speak with this year’s curator, Carlo Ratti—architect, engineer, and a leading thinker at the intersection of design, technology, and urbanism. Under the theme 'Intelligens: Natural. Artificial. Collective.', Ratti explores how new forms of intelligence—from machine learning to natural ecosystems—are transforming not just the spaces we build, but the tools and processes we use to conceive them. In this episode, he reflects on the Biennale's curatorial vision, and the questions it raises about architecture’s evolving role in an increasingly interconnected world.

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To mark the 25th Anniversary of the Tate Modern this week, the Architecture Foundation's Director Ellis Woodman speaks with two key figures behind the museum's conception: Nicholas Serota and Jacques Herzog.

Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. 

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Patrick McGraw is the editor and publisher of Heavy Traffic magazine. Based in NYC, designed by Richard Turley and featuring contributions as varied as Sheila Heti, Keller Easterling and Dean Kissick, Heavy Traffic understands and reflects the mood of contemporary life in a way that fiction is increasingly well suited to. 

Literature has the ability to capture our now terminally online consciousness. Architecture, on the other hand—a cultural form that once stood for whole epochs—has in recent decades become anachronistic, divorced from the virtual world that increasingly holds us captive. 

Patrick’s trajectory is interesting because he originally studied architecture before making a shift into journalism and eventually leading a literary magazine. In our conversation we try to bridge this gap between the world of architecture and fiction.

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William Scott is a self-taught artist based in Oakland, California. Scott works out of a gallery and studio called Creative Growth that advances the inclusion of artists with developmental disabilities. (Scott was born schizophrenic and is also on the autistic spectrum.) Scott Frequently describes himself as an architect, reinventing the social topography of a gentrified San Francisco, as a utopian city he calls ‘Praise Frisco’ in works that combine architectural design with civic responsibility to describe his desire for a more equitable society. The first significant survey of Scott’s 30–year practice was recently exhibited at Studio Voltaire - a London-based not–for–profit arts organisation.

Notes:

videos:

Michael Maltzan & David Ogunmuyiwa with Nana Biamah-Ofosu: The World and the City

RESOLVE and PoOR Collective with Nana Biamah-Ofosu: The Cultural Meaning of the City

Tom DiMaria and Matthew Higgs on the Work of William Scott

articles:

The Turner prize and the rise of neurodiverse art

Roberta Smith and Holland Carter - Best Shows of 2021

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Takeshi 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 environmental crisis.”

The "Red School" architects mentioned in this episode include:

Takamasa Yoshizaka

Yuko Saito

Osamu Ishiyama

Terunobu Fujimori

Keisuke Oka

Other references: Genpei Aksegawa – Leader of "Rojo street observation society"

Ferdinand Cheval – architect of the "Ideal Palace"

Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation project

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