ALL GOOD VIBES – Détails, épisodes et analyse

This new series of podcasts was born as an idea to maintain an open dialogue with architects and designers. The short podcasts will share, through a virtual chat, engaging and interesting insights of works, ideas and thoughts of the most significant representatives of this artistic panorama [these two worlds], from promising young people to famous, renowned ones. All the multidisciplinary aspects that are connected with these two worlds will be examined, focusing particularly on environmental and social sustainability. The encounters will be led by two hosts, Christiane Burklein and Virginia Cucchi, as narrative voices. Two women who, belonging to different ages and different backgrounds, will provoke conversations more intense and compelling. The encounters, two a month, of about 15 minutes, are sponsored by the International platform Floornature and Iris Ceramica Group Foundation

SET Architects, a team of young architects, will entertain our audience, imprinting a fresh, innovative tone to our first virtual encounter. With their extremely precise though very concise language they evoke the notes of a precious, carefully crafted environment that is gradually disappearing. Simplicity, a key note of their creative process, combined with sustainable materials and reverence to context and identity, envisions and casts a flexible and resilient contemporary style of living. Rewarded with important recognitions, it will be for sure not a surprise if they will conceive very soon special projects that will stand out for their originality and expressiveness. Andrea Tanci, co-founder with Onorato di Manno of the firm, will be with us, as representative of Set Architects.

Tszwai So is a London based architect whose work ranges from architecture, public arts, visual arts, installations, and writing to filmmaking. He is the co-founding Director of Sphe-ron Architects. He teaches at the University of Westminster.
Tszwai So and the practice have been nominated for and won many awards. He was named a rising star in British Architecture by the RIBA Journal in 2016. He was named the best UK young architect under 40 in 2017 by the American Institute of Architects.
The Belarusian Memorial Chapel, in London, commissioned by the Holy See of Rome and completed in 2017 - the first wooden church built in London since the Great Fire in 1666 - had been nominated in 2018 for the EU Prize for Contemporary Architecture - the Mies van der Rohe Award. The same year, the church won the Religious Building of the Year award at the 2018 World Architecture Festival held in Amsterdam.
In his work, Tszwai is always aware of the power of emotions. Last year, the exhibition “Emotional Architecture” at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge gave an insight in emotions related to the world of architecture, too often neglected in our always more digi-talized world. A world where parameters and thus machines and AI, are becoming the driving factors, leaving human needs behind.
Together with Tszwai we will explore why emotionalism is becoming an always more ur-gent topic in a moment in which reality and the virtual are already indistinguishable. Still, nobody seems much to care about that, although it will have enormous consequences on our lives.

Dr. Stellios Plainiotis is the founder and CEO of NEAPOLI, an Environmental Design & Engineering consultancy firm with offices in Kuala Lumpur and Seoul. Considered as one of Asia’s leading Sustainability experts, he has spent over 20 years in academic, policy and private sectors across the Europe, South East and East Asia. He has consulted over 80 important construction projects which include Crystal Palace Park and Hoxton Square in London, Rohansky Ostrov Masterplan in Prague, Issam Fares Institute in Beirut, Kuala Lumpur International Airport 2, TRX, Menara PNB, the Petronas Cititowers in KL and the multiple award winning project PKNS HQ, reaching prestigious awards as the recipient of the Europa Award for Sustainability 2017 (Best Sustainability Leader). He will shares with our audience his expertise in designing consciously and respectfully, thinking about sustainability as a more integral whole. Tropical lifestyle and urbanism will be some of the topics he will touch, above, the problem of affordability housing crisis connected to the Green Building Movement. He is the co-author of the first Chinese Guidebook “Design for Sustainability”, which is now used as a textbook at the Tongji University, Shanghai and the University of Nottingham (UK).

John Marx, AIA and Chief Artistic Officer, is since 1999 Principal and responsible for developing Form4 Architecture’s design vision and philosophical language. Form4 is an important architectural office based in San Francisco. John has has led projects for Silicon Valley tech giants, such as Netflix, Citrix, VMware, Google, and Facebook, and has an international reach that includes designs in India, Korea, Taiwan, and Ireland.
In our podcast we talk about his projects for Burning Man, this year in a virtual version only where he proposed the Museum of no Spectators. He explains the spirit of Burning Man where creativity and togetherness makes great things happen.
And we couldn’t forget about his talents with delicate watercolor drawings and touching poetry.
Talking to John Marx is always an enriching experience because he is so much more than an architect: he advocates for art, philosophy, and poetry in the thoughtful making of place through the emotional power of form with an awareness that architecture is a balancing act between self-expression and collaboration. Artistically, Lyrical Expressionism has been the focus of this exploration.

Clément Blanchet is a French architect, teacher and critic, actively practicing in the fields of architectural theory, urbanism and cultural investigations. After working for over 10 years with Rem Koolhaas as Associate and then Director of OMA France, Clément Blanchet in 2014 founded his own firm, Clement Blanchet Architecture, CBA, in Paris. The studio is an international architecture and urban design practice which bridges together multidisciplinary and multicultural actors. The mission is to rethink architecture and urbanism to derive clear, durable and coherent solutions, informed by diverse points of view. Structured as a laboratory, CBA investigates the process of analysis of context and data, with a concern towards ecology and environment, to confer robust projects across multiple scales and typologies. Clement will talk to us about some of his recent projects, ecology and competitions, as a way to experiment with ideas, not afraid to learn from ‘failures’, an incentive to perseverate with a good dose of tenacious commitment, not seeking an alignment with homologation, a common trend of today’s society.

Richard England lives on an island, Malta, where he was born, a geographical area that has influenced his work with great resonance toward an architecture of silence, of spirituality and meditation. He graduated from the Polytechnic of Milan in the 1960s, and practiced in the studio of Gio Ponti, who at that time was also the editor of Domus magazine. The atelier was an opportunity for him to meet exceptional personali-ties: Albini, Michelucci, Mangiarotti, Scarpa, Giancarlo De Carlo, Moretti, Richard Neutra and Pier Luigi Nervi. A multitude of great passions, from poetry, literature, music, photography, art, and sculptures, have always accompanied his universal vision of architecture and life. Richard England is considered not only a great architect, but also a wonderful writer, artist, academic and Honorary Member of World Architecture Community. He will share with our audience stories and anecdotes filled with extremely interesting en-counters.

In our podcast, we have spoken to many architects who gave a deep insight into making architecture. We also started looking into the other activities that help to get the architects’ message around, from photographers and critics to PR.
But there is still the elephant in the room: what about the perception and imagination of architecture. That is a crucial question if architecture isn’t meant to be done for its own sake but wants to fulfill its social function. Happily, some architects are looking into these aspects. One of them is our guest today, the German architect and philosopher Julian Franke.

Winka Dubbeldam is a Dutch-American architect, founder of the New York-based Archi-tectonics, a firm that operates on multiple scales of investigation, ranging from object design, buildings to complex urban systems and urban planning. In 2006 with the partnership of Justin Korkhammer, new offices were opened in Netherlands and China. The studio works with a collaborative, multidisciplinary approach, combining task-specific intelligent and performance methods to reach a strong identity. Through deep research, extensive prototyping and digital craftsmanship, Archi-tectonics creates efficient, optimized and sustainable, healthy buildings with custom-tailored and cutting-edge technology, while preserving at the core of design a unique character embracing versatility and poetic precision. Winka Dubbeldam is widely known for her award-winning projects, using hybrid sustainable materials and smart building systems, always refined and elegant.