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.

Adib Dada is a young Lebanese architect and founder of theOtherDada [tOD] Regenerative Consultancy & Architecture firm, which mission is - since 2010 - to activate sustainability and resilience thanks to projects across architecture, living systems, and art.
He is one of those professionals with a heartfelt environmental commitment. In our podcast, we talk about his various initiatives in Lebanon in a challenging moment for the country where the climate crisis and the urgent need for actions have to consider a complicated social and political situation. We explore his project Beirut RiverLESS, which aims to regenerate the deteriorated Beirut River.

SO – IL (Solid Objectives – Idenburg Liu) is a Brooklyn-based architecture firm founded by Florian Idenburg and Jing Liu in 2008. The couple represents one of the most inter-esting and original names among the young generation of architects. The philosophy that animates their work aims to dialogue with different cultures and countries, open to the world without any geographical borders. Their projects expand from North America, Asia, Europe creating an authentic interaction with the environment and the community. Well known for their research about innovative use of materials, they are authors of the Manetti Shrem Museum of Art for the University of California, Davis (2018), the award-winning Kukje Art Gallery in Seoul, Korea and the recent Las Americas, an affordable social housing, in Léon, Mexico. In 2010, the firm won the MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program with its playful, interactive installation Pole Dance, receiving a widespread at-tention. A generous production of temporary installations is an integral part of their de-sign. Their suggestive unexpected ludic scenography combined with poetic lyricism, en-gages the audience, making people more aware and responsible towards urgent topics. The Museum of Architecture and Technology, MAAT, Lisbon, during the past year has organized “Currents- Temporary Architectures”, an exhibition dedicated to 12 of them. Many other prominent cultural institutions as the Museum of Modern Art and Guggen-heim Museum have showcased their work. Awarded with extensive recognitions and prizes, including the Emerging Voices award from the Architectural League, they have been featured on many publications, as New York Times, CNN and Frankfurter Allge-meine.

FFV was founded in 1999 in Berlin by Scottish native Leigh Sachwitz. In 1993, received her architectural diploma from the Glasgow School of Art, she arrived in the post wall city, a gigantic playground for creative people where nothing was impossible. She worked in an architect office by day, she helped create makeshift clubs, bars, art spaces for the night using all sorts of materials, light and projections. Later she would add sound and video. Her visuals, sights and sounds are ephemeral and bang on trend, mixing media and technologies, yet they create visceral experiences.
From Leigh’s first slides in Berlin’s temporary spaces in the early 1990’s, she and her ever growing FFV family have developed quickly further, with all the new technologies evolving that never cease to amaze Leigh. She is delighted every time she can try and create something entirely new, such as using live 3D mapping to choreographed visuals, 3D projections to a live performance, GPS motion tracking, always looking into tomorrow’s latest trends, making FFV a multitalented organism of limitless creative potential, working all over the world, from music to architecture and events.

Leigh will bring her good vibes as trained architect, working now over 20 years as an artist with light, one of the most important ingredients of architecture itself, as a layer to add meaning and emotions to the environment, to enhance our spacial experience and creating something unique. Following her motto: “Emotions trigger memories”.

https://www.florafaunavisions.de/

In our podcast, we talk with Matt Wittman. Together with Jody Estes, he founded Wittman Estes, a Seattle based integrated design studio since 2012 focused on the idea that buildings and landscapes can be combined into a unified expression. The firm is best known for innovative housing — single-family to multi-family — that provides a rich experience to the users and is in tune with the natural environment.
Wittman Estes's projects are often published on Livegreenblog because they focus on sustainable solutions without neglecting our inherent need for beauty and a powerful connection to their context. The vibes of their projects are always balanced and respectful versus nature. They show a real understanding of the surroundings they fit in. We spoke with Matt about "the awareness of the outside", rooted in his childhood, growing up on a ranch in close contact with nature.
This "awareness of the outside" also translates in Wittman Estes' approach to urban densification that they call "courtyard urbanism." A solution to densify cities that comes with a human scale, thanks also to new regulations in Seattle that allow building Detached Accessory Dwelling Units (DADU's), aiming for more urban density in people's backyards without building bland towers.
Matt explains his idea of "poetic pragmatism," which is about creating functional and beautiful architecture integrated into its context. Simple constructions, where prefab solutions are welcome. His work is inspired by the modernist tradition of integration with nature and "doing more with less," which enhances the projects' intrinsic sustainability.
Matt received his Master of Architecture in 2003 from UC Berkeley, where he was awarded the Gerson Prize for Design Excellence, and taught architecture and design studios.
His work has won numerous awards. Before founding Wittman Estes, Matt was an architect in the Seattle office of Bohlin Cywinski Jackson.
Matt, a licensed architect in the State of Washington and a LEED accredited professional is currently a visiting critic at the University of Oregon and University of Washington Departments of Architecture.

In our podcast, Alessandro Melis shares his idea of architecture, embracing notions and transversal contaminations coming from evolutionary biology, neurology, paleoanthropology, and all those specialized fields complementing his research. Anticipating a foretaste of the Italian Pavilion for the Venice Bi-ennale 2021, as curator, he will guide us on a journey through his ‘mini lab’, a jungle inhabited by strange creatures, filled with cyber tones, to be part of a Resilient Community. He will explain how to find an ‘exaptation’, resilience by abandoning anthropocentric behaviours and establishing a new alliance be-tween man and nature, accepting to be part of a multi species coexistence, based on respect, equity and inclusiveness. To face the serious, alarming fu-ture challenges that we are fearing, a radical change of perspective might im-print a new ecological architecture, focused on variability, diversity and redun-dancy.
A deterministic and obsolete linear logic, a rigid taxonomy that foresees the idea of architecture grounded on the rigid dichotomy artifice-nature should be replaced by an heteronomous approach, a more flexible vision, open to a real synergy of contributions and forces. And the architect in this new scenario should play the fundamental strategic role of rebuilding and regenerating mul-ti-disciplinary relations, ‘connecting the dots’ between various other fields. We need creativity, as neuroscience explains us about ‘associative thinking’, ac-cepting visionary inspiration from the outside world, as the artistic one, listen-ing to mass media different communication languages, endowed with expres-sive means more adequate to the speed of the contemporaneity, as science fiction narratives and films, comic books, manga, and graphic novels.

In this second part, we talk together with Alessandro Melis about the different forms of expressive arts, expanding the architecture discourse with radical visions, and utopian-dystopian scenarios embraced in the world of mass media, literature, comic books, graphic novels, manga, films, sci-fiction, and cyberpunk. Industrial and Creative Arts have always conferred an additional value and a greater resonance to architectural design, as Alessandro explains, even if they have not always been adequately evaluated especially in the Italian cultural panorama. They have proven to be an essential tool, appropriate for the speed of the contemporaneity and of our dynamic continuously changing contexts. Considering architecture as the reference point of a vast interdisciplinary commitment, we have to accept with complete openness contaminations without barriers, building a bridge between the futuristic and realistic sides of the world. Often what could sound too innovative or could contradict our certainties, ‘para-dogmas’ as Alessandro defines them, has the tendency of not being accepted. It is instead important to reflect that, if we want to be truly resilient, we must listen to the polyphony of diverse artistic languages, not belonging only to the same sector.

We talk to Eva Castro, who with her fascinating lab, Formaxioms, found in 2019, part of a cluster of SUTD, Singapore University of Technology and Design and ASD, Architecture and Sustainable Design, intents to promote and deepen research on speculative narratives through the exploration of artificial realities, VR/AR, computational and advance technologies. The work she is carrying out with her students, focuses on the ecology of liquid territories, reimagining new realities for 'post', 'trans', 'hyper' anthropocentric scenarios to address the future rising ocean level along the coastal areas of the South China Sea. Her ideas are always projected into the future, utilizing the aid of the digital crafts, she challenges conventional topographies, spatial codes and infrastructures forms, to propose new models and methodologies to shape new-natures or alternatives styles of life. Attesting to forward thinking, her latest installation created for the Singapore National Gallery, launched as a prototypical platform Negentropic fields, in collaborations with a really wide ranges of different artists, intends to consider both Virtual and Augmented realities and environments that go beyond the limitations of a merely representational tools, realizing new hybrid spatial experiences.

Michael P. Johnson’s wanderlust, thirsty curiosity, as he will tell us, to explore and experience a sort of nomadic life never in one place, has allowed him to deepen friendships with exceptional, extremely stimulating men, that we could define visionary. Doing so, he had the chance to assimilate and share their openness and futuristic way of thinking. Among these exceptional encounter there will be the one with Bruce Goff, an eccentric but extremely intelligent man, who cultivated many different forms of passions from art to music, receiving the title of chairman in the School of Architecture at the University of Oklahoma, despite being self-taught. The encounter over the years turned into a long term friendship. A long time written correspondence will imprint the relation with another famous man of the desert, Paolo Soleri, who at that time was working on his Arcosanti. Michael in several occasions will visit the ideal city under construction, sharing Paolo’s ideas against the insane, ruinous frenzy for the automobile and growing consumerism. Their passionate conversations focus on the aspiration towards an architecture more ecologically and environmentally respectful. Michael, as Aris Georges states, with an absolutely true and objective praise, is one of the few “artists who have never drawn a line between their life and work”. He has amply demonstrated his commitment both in architecture and in life, actively dealing with social and political struggles, marching alongside Martin Luther King, advocating for woman rights, for Native Americans, experiencing the attempts against oppression by the revolutionary movement, Black Panthers.

Maciej Jakub Zawadzki after working for several years at two international renowned offices, Bjarke Ingels Group BIG in Copenhagen and MVRDV in Rotterdam, decided to establish his own practice MJZ. He will share with us how this wealth of experience shaped his professional career, leading him to realize his own firm in Poland. Deeply imbedded in his office’s DNA is an attentive concern towards a sustainable and resilient design, with a conscious awareness for ecological and climatic issues. Technology and digital craft play an important role to enhance everyday living conditions. Maciej’s architecture, human-centered and community inclusive, addresses important contextual problems from climate change, water retention, disaster mitigation, green strategies, to circular economy and socially responsive design. We will talk about ‘Gardens of the Future’, a recent proposal he has done for an urban farm and natural food production center in Poland. Referring to his design approach focused in implementing greener energy, he will illustrate his interesting concept about a power station for a future battery-car run city. Part of the conversation will be also dedicated to the proposals to transform highly-traffic and polluted highways, fragmenting the dense metropolis, as the heart of Warsaw, Seoul, and Atlanta, into green-woven corridors, able to blend urban and social fabric. And to conclude, he will give an anticipation of LURE, the latest laboratory for Urban Research and Education founded in 2021, that applies digital modeling, robotics, AI and technological systems for future constructions.

Carla Juaçaba is a young Brazilian architect who gained international attention in 2012, realizing, in occasion of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development Rio + 20, in Rio de Janeiro, her temporary Pavilion Humanidade, conceived together with the theatre film director Bia Lessa. The solution of using scaffolding bases, available on side, making a support structure a building all by itself, was her extremely original, unconventional answer to the requirement of a sustainable proposal. The material 100% reusable gave her also the chance to realize a really spectacular, impressive sculptural presence, drawing a crowd of over 220,000 visitors across two weeks, and above this the opportunity with the porous pattern to intentionally make people physically feel the strong wind along this 170m long suspended walkway above Copacabana beach, emotionally perceiving their fragility in front of such powerful natural scenario, pushing them to reflect on consequences of irresponsible behaviors on the environment. Winner with the project of the first edition of the international prize ArcVision Women and Architecture 2013, Carla captured again the global attention, with another equally courageous creation: the Vatican Chapel, proposed for the Holy See Pavilion, in occasion of the Venice Architecture Biennale 2018. The linear and essential mirrored sign remains today, in between other proposals of the Pritzker award-winning architects Norman Foster and Eduardo Souto de Moura, as part of San Giorgio Maggiore island heritage. Rewarded the first prize of AREA Architectural Review Emerging Architecture Award 2018, she will deepen, during the podcast, her works that often cross-pollinate between different realms, finding synergic contamination from theater, art, and scenography, and important figures as Peter Brook, Richard Serra and Lina Bo Bardi.

Ray Calabro, FAIA is a principal in the Seattle studio of Bohlin Cywinski Jackson. Across a 25-year career with the practice, Ray’s work emphasizes the relationship of a building to its surrounding landscape; he believes that architecture is a thoughtful response to the culture and spirit of each place.

Ray brings a depth of experience and great enthusiasm to a broad range of building types, leading teams in a collaborative design process to achieve extraordinary, award-winning buildings, including civic and cultural destinations, corporate headquarters, academic buildings, and private residences across the United States and Canada. Ray is also a curatorial leader within the practice and has been instrumental in the creation of its celebrated monographs, including its most recent publication Gathering.

Our conversation covers a range of projects and themes underpinning Bohlin Cywinski Jackson’s work and process. The firm’s philosophy is deeply rooted in the understanding of people, place, and materials. Its work acts as a catalyst for change, embracing spatial complexities, pragmatism, and the latest advanced technologies with refined, and elegantly crafted poetry. Ray offers a closer look at some of Bohlin Cywinski Jackson’s unforgettable projects, including the iconic Apple Store on New York’s Fifth Avenue, the Manetti Shrem Museum in California’s Central Valley, and the High Meadow studio and cabins at Fallingwater. Bohlin Cywinski Jackson is a collaborative practice that, as a cultural pollinator, doesn’t work as a totemic, hierarchical structure, but as an integrated practice that welcomes the cross-pollination of ideas.

On this episode, Jennifer Newsom and Tom Carruthers, partners in work and life, co-founders of their own Minneapolis-based studio, ‘Dream The Combine’, two young and courageous voices, will share with us some of their intriguing, enticing site-specific works. Their installations, characterized by high creative unconventionality, embrace conceptual art, architecture, and cultural issues, exploring powerful narrative complexities, cross-pollinated and contaminated by the most diverse expressive languages from film, theatre to scenography. Caught the public’s attention with their winning project, ‘Hide&Seek’, for the 2018 MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program, they often utilize mirrors as an effective visual means to de-construct and re-construct environments, challenging perceptual certainties and highlighting urgent need for changes. “Through structures that disrupt assumed dichotomies and manipulate the boundary between real and illusory space”, they try to arise awareness as through immersive journeys. Their giant steel structure-sculptures, as luring, seductive stages capture the audience, reaching a real participatory interaction of the public.

Sandra Barclay and Jean Pierre Crousse, co-founder of Barclay&Crousse Architecture, will talk about the period spent in Paris and the decision to come back and work principally in Lima, Peru. What has meant and still today means to work there. As attentive, respectful preservers of regional resources and local craftsmanship, they work transforming limitations and restrictions into enticing qualities of their architecture.
About their realizations, we have focused on the pluri-awarded ‘Place of Remembrance’, an emblematic work, contrasted by the government but passionately supported by the Nobel Prize writer Mario Vargas Llosa and the people. Many formal ‘imperfections’ narrate, as evident clues, the collaborative, choral work. And then on the ‘Paracas Museum’, in the Paracas desert, as replacement of the original museum, almost totally destroyed in the 2007 earthquake, a respectful gesture that reminds Land Art artists . Follows the ‘Edificio E’, University Campus in Piura, characterized by a ‘deceptive simplicity’ revealing an unexpected complexity, a relevant example of intervention that, born from local contingencies, reaches a global impact. The conversation continues about their concept of ‘generous architecture’ and the dialectical relation between vastness and intimacy, especially in their residential works, concluding on their approach extremely 'faithful to the essence of the building, leaving aside any formal obsession and any prominence of authorship’.

Our new guest will fill the atmosphere of this new encounter with her energetic and extremely vibrant character. Beyond her apparent docile compliance, which is a bit a characteristic from her Asian origins, she hides an iron will and an extremely resolute character. Very talented and endowed with great originality and analytical skills she has achieved prestigious awards at a very young age, as AIA Young Architects Award, Emerging Voices Award and the Young Architects Forum Award by the Architectural League of N.Y. and the honour to be mentioned on some of the most authoritative architectural magazines. She will tell us about micro-housing and ‘spaces in between’, a topic she has always dealt with since the beginning, facing the crucial problem of living space in our contemporary crowded metropoleis. Environmental sustainability in a tropical country will be another interesting point that will be touched in our virtual chat.

Matlide Cassani’s work intersects the borders of architecture, installation and performance. Her research explores pluralism of religion as it manifests itself in contemporary non-traditional spaces. After her graduation she was involved as a design consultant for the GTZ, a German association for technical cooperation, in Sri Lanka, for a project of reconstruction and development post tsunami. It was during this experience that she started meticulously observing and deepening her interest in spatial implications of ‘cultural pluralism’, with a particular attention to the ways displaced people maintain their identity after moving from one country to another. This exploration led her to realize diverse curatorial works, as ‘Countryside worship’/‘A celebration Day’, in occasion of Monditalia at the XIV Venice Architecture Biennale, about the Indian Harvest Festival that brings together thousands of Sikhs settled in the city of Novellara, in the Pianura Padana. A testimony of authentic cultural hybridization. She will talk about her solo exhibition “Sacred Spaces in Profane Buildings” at the Shorefront for Art and Architecture, New York and another recent initiative “It’s just not cricket”, which, chosen as pretext the sport field like aggregating space, acts as a magnifying glass of the story concerning a complex territory, the controversial relationship between neighboring countries and the recent importance of the town of Brenner, the border town, during the recent migratory crises. Our conversation will finally conclude touching her performance “Everything, Order and Disorder”, a joyful collective celebration conceived for Manifesta12, event held in Palermo and centered on the capital’s syncretism of cultures, part of the European Nomadic Biennial and her participation to this current 17th Venice Architecture Biennale.

Grimshaw Architects is a worldwide known firm, founded in 1980 by Sir Nicholas Grimshaw, an architect who has dedicated his entire career with unchanged coherence to innovation and sustainability, receiving perhaps one of the highest number of recognitions. Guest of our podcast as representative of the practice is Andrew Whalley, part of the company since its earliest days, since 1986, Deputy Chairman in 2011 and succeeded Sir Nicholas Grimshaw in 2019 as Chairman of the global leadership structure, actually embracing offices in Los Angeles, New York, London, Paris, Dubai, Melbourne, and Sydney. Involved in a wide range of award-winning projects, including education, performing arts, transportation and workplace, he talks with us about his interesting experience alongside the passionate and pioneering character of his principal, sharing some of their most famous milestone works.

The spectacular Eden Project in Cornwall and the singular story leading to its realisation, the intervention of the Fulton Center transit hub in Low Manhattan, N.Y, become an authentic catalyst for development and growth, exemplary conjugating city’s history with innovation,Via Verde, a social, affordable housing scheme in the South Bronx that many years in advance has proposed sense of community and social well-being until the recent intelligent, net zero carbon sophisticated Pavilion for the Expo Dubai 2021, represent some pleasant moments of the conversation. Cross-disciplinary collaborations, the meaningful long-lasting modernity of even old projects, nature as inspiration and beauty above essentiality and functionality of an attentive sustainable holistic approach are part of the topics deepened in the course of the podcast.

Our guest is Hiroshi Okamoto, co-founder together with Bing Lin, of OLI Architecture PLLC, a New York-based practice with offices in Shanghai and Paris, whose expertise consists of civic and cultural structures, education, healthcare, and residential international design. Their approach, attentive to create unique buildings merged with the cultural environment of the site, focuses on contextual studies using physical, digital, and parametric models. Hiroshi will share his experience, over a decade, spent working alongside I. M. Pei, as Site Representative and Project Architect, following many important projects as the Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, the Museum of Islamic Art, Doha and the Chapel at Miho Institute of Aesthetics in Shigaraki, Japan. He touches some significant moments of his experiential path, until, once established his own practice, he will realize important works, as the Art Museum for the local-born Chinese writer and painter, Mu Xin. Located in the historic water town of Wuzhen, the complex, a ’delicate lakeside addition’, embodies an enticing presence, representing a vibrant living portrait of the artist. Again in Wuzhen, another excellent example of Okamoto’s respectful, sensible intervention: the North Zone Silk Factory finds a new life becoming a fascinating container of International Contemporary Art, contributing to a new perspective about globalism and localism. Several considerations are reserved to the relation between architecture and art/sculpture, due to the long collaboration between the architect and Richard Serra, leading to the most recent LX Cross Pavilion, attentively studied to the smallest details for hosting one of the famous sculptures, becoming an “art piece” itself.

Alison Brooks, founder of her own London-based practice, Alison Brooks Architects, ABA, is regarded as one of the leading architects of her generation, the only architect of the UK to have won all three of the RIBA awards. Born and grown up in Canada, she studied architecture at the University of Waterloo, and after graduating she decided to move to UK, where at the beginning she worked with the designer Ron Arad, becoming a partner in the firm. On this episode, she will share moments of this initial journey, from her collaboration with Arad until 1996, when she set up her own practice. Influenced by her pervious artistic experience, yet remaining, as part of her character, always very pragmatic and spatially concerned, she conceived the VXO private house, followed by a long series of other residences, Fold House, Wrap House, Mesh House to her most recent Windward House, each characterized by a strong identity and personality. Her biggest commitment as an architect is, as she likes to say, to ‘heal’ precarious conditions, outdated uses, spaces and meanings of public housing and urban areas, and this passionate concern has led her to realize generous residential developments, as the Ely Court, Accordia and Newhall Be, aiming to promote inclusiveness and social diversity. For this year’s Venice Biennale, she exhibited a beautiful, extremely scenographic stage, ‘Home Ground’, part of a long-term investigated and still open research about how housing defines the way we live together in cities, inviting the audience to share new conversations. Some of these themes and ambitions take on consistency and breathe in other projects as the Cohen Quad in Oxford for Exeter College, in the heart of the university neighborhood, and in several of her new, still on-going proposals as the Maggie Center, Cancer Caring Centre at Musgrove Park Hospital, Taunton. ‘Ideals then Ideas’, title of a monograph published in 2017, characterizes her architectural ‘ethos’, synthesizing her work’s aspirations. Authenticity, Generosity, Civicness and Beauty are the four ideals at the base of her gesture, an architecture of specificity, nurtured by social, political, cultural and artistic ideals, that doesn’t deny subjectivity.

Christoph Hesse, graduated from ETH Zurich, after a year of study at the MIT, in 2007 received a Master of Architecture in Urban Design with Distinction from Harvard University. In 2008 he decided to return close to his native village to set up his own independent practice, Christoph Hesse Architects. His projects are all approached with great respect for the natural environment and its resources, with attentive concern about energy-saving or energy generating strategies, recycling or reusing existing materials, embracing local methods of construction and artisan skills. The conversation starts with ’Open Mind Places’, an open-ended project, strategically organized as a journey along 9 installations, ‘follies’, conceived like stations of pause and reflection. Simple signs that in choreographic sequence, as charismatic sculptures, with very precise, distinct character, harmoniously blended as integral components in the rural territory aim to convey educational messages about an ecosystem in danger, reconnecting the community with their natural environment. Christoph’s deep conviction in creating self-sufficient environments with a precise identity, focused on what he calls a system-changing approach, led him to realize projects as 'Villa F’ in Sauerland, a residential house incorporating a completely independent biomass waste to energy system. The realisation has become a kind of catalyst model that has inspired a collective response toward a more adequate use of resources. Finally some considerations will be reserved for a quite unusual initiative, 'Ways of Life’. Invited by a local developer to revitalise a beautiful, pristine green area, facing a lake, designing residences, Christoph has generously decided to involve 19 different studios of about his generation, a very heterogeneous group, proposing each an own individual interpretation of an ideal way to life in the countryside.

Benedetta Tagliabue, currently director of Miralles Tagliabue EMBT, international architecture firm founded in Barcelona in 1994, with office in Shanghai and in Paris, has received prestigious awards for her works as the RIBA Stirling Prize in 2005, the National Spanish Prize in 2006, City of Barcelona prize in 2005 and 2009, and the RIBA Jencks Award in 2013 as acknowledgment of her major contribution internationally to both the theory and practice of architecture. Extremely active in the academia, she has been a visiting professor at Harvard University, Columbia University and Barcelona ETSAB, lecturing regularly at architecture forums and universities, and part of jurors around the world, the Princesa de Asturias awards and since 2014 member of the jury of the Pritzker Prize.
Her professional beginning, the close collaboration with the husband and working partner, Enric Miralles, a kind of legendary figure, a man endowed with a particular charismatic and strong personality, will be the starting point of our conversation. A journey together that will represent a reciprocal growth, giving opportunity for many famous realizations, and will bring Benedetta, Italian, born in Milan, to deeply understand and love Spain.
In EMBT works is recurrent the research of sophisticated combinations and unusual applications of materials, with the frequent collaboration of talented artists, as Toni Cumella, coming from a long ceramist family tradition, for the Parc Dels Colors, 2002, Diagonal Mar Park, 2003, and Santa Caterina Market in 2005, until one of the most recent projects, Plateau Central Masterplan and Housing, at the periphery of Parisian suburbs, presented for this 17th Venice Architecture Biennale, that sees the contribution of the famous street artist JR.
“Living within a market - Outside space is also Home”, title of the installation, intends to emphasise the value embodied by an abandoned area transformed into a colorful plaza, similar to Santa Caterina Market in Barcelona, that will encourage the community’s participation and integration between the residents.
There is a frequent expression of Benedetta ’little by little’ that characterises some of her attempts, born as aspirations without any certainty of success but gradually developed into important projects, as for example the adventure in China, crowned by several gratifying, important projects, as the recent Conservatory of Music in Shenzhen, first prize winner in an international competition.
Kálida Sant Pau, part of an international network of hospitals created by the Scottish Maggie’s Foundation, finished almost a year ago, represents another moment of our talk, having been for Benedetta an occasion to reimagine healthcare and hospital facilities, providing patients with spaces full of light, in between greenery and nature, able to transmit a warm, serene atmosphere. And above this intervention, she will speak of another laudable and important initiative conceived in 2011, the creation of the Enric Miralles Foundation, whose goal is to promote experimental architecture.

This week a Copenhagen based architecture practice, EFFEKT, co-founded in 2007 by Sinus Lynge and Tue Foge, will be represented in our podcast by the young Daniel Veenboer, expert in Sustainable Urban Development. Focused on bridging architecture, technology and ecology, EFFEKT has proposed extremely innovative and interesting works, that speak about social inclusion, community participation inside a preserved natural habitat. They have recently polarized the international attention with the beautiful, green captivating installation, ‘Ego to Eco’, that is currently exhibited at the Architecture Venice Biennale.
We will start our conversation talking about the wide spread respectful tendency in Denmark among the generation of young architects towards community and a social well-being, closely connected with nature and I will reserve a space to deepen how the second volume of a book series, titled ‘Co-creating Architecture’, entirely dedicated to the firm, has introduced the team as a collective of ‘empathic designers’ who practice ‘co-creation’. We will dwell on several alluring realizations, as the Forest Tower, conceived in enchanted natural contexts to promote educational experiences, bringing people, and in particular children, in close contact with a pristine nature and we will continue with the strategic environmental approaches adopted for the harbor front of ‘Middelfart’ and the new green spaces of ‘Gellerup’. We conclude our chat on topics as prefabrication, mentioning ‘The Urban Village’, a project for IKEA in synergic collaboration with SPACE10 ; circular architecture and economy, with regard to the recent intervention ‘Basarpladsen’ and ‘ReGen’, a new, exemplar self-sufficient model for a sustainable future.

Daliana Suriawinata and Florian Heinzelmann, partners both in work and life, along with Tobias Hofmann in 2009 established their own-independent architecture firm, SHAU, operating in the Netherlands, Germany, and from 2012 also in Indonesia. Their efforts in Indonesia are dedicated to preserve with small but extremely important interventions the character of a society at risk to be erased by aggressively inappropriate urban developments. Creative and original initiatives nurture their socially responsible architecture, while passive climatic design strategies and material experimentation characterize their environmental commitment. Together, they will share an extremely interesting project, contemplating a series of mini-libraries, spread through Indonesia, spontaneously growing as vital community’s gathering places within the poor neighborhood. Simple and modest in size, yet surprising for their incredible ingenious versatility, they have been able to overcome even the greatest economic constraints, in order to bring people closer to culture, but also to offer an open space for encounters, life and activities’ sharing.
Several parks, as one of the most famous Alun Alun Cicendo, are part of their public interventions, all characterized by dynamic, multi-programmatic plans in order to satisfy the multiple demands of the collectivity at large.

Thomas Coldefy is the Principal of Coldefy & Associés Architectes Urbanistes (CAAU), and together with his wife, architect Isabel Van Haute, they contribute to the international success of the firm that has offices in Lille, Paris, Shanghai, and Hong Kong, managing prestigious, complex projects at both regional and international scale. Thomas will share with us his rich experience abroad, working at renowned firms, as SOM and KPF in New York, Michel Macary and Tadao Ando in Paris, before returning to follow his own practice. In 2006 the studio won an important International competition and realised the Hong Kong Design Institute, followed by a series of important assignments from Bao’an Artistic and Cultural Center in Shenzhen, the innovative offices Wonder Building, Fondation de Chine in Paris, the future giant greenhouse Tropicalia, currently exhibited at the International Architecture Venice Biennale, requalification and renovation of the industrial buildings Rigot-Stalars and Peugeot Garage to the recent selected proposal for The National Pulse Memorial & Museum in Orlando, Florida.

Born in a family of architects, Bernard Khoury is one of the most authoritative voices in Lebanon. Idealistic and romantic, a soldier who doesn’t renounce to fight for his ideals, he expresses through his works a language of rare ethical consistency and absolute freedom against unacceptable orthodoxies. After studying in the US at Harvard, in 1991 he returned to his native country, where the civil war was only officially declared over and spent a number of years passionately involved with a series of experimental projects, as ‘Evolving Scars’, in the confident attempt to have a part in the re-construction of Beirut.
His first assignment didn’t involve any public reconstruction but paradoxically came from the entertainment sector: a night club in a particularly difficult and delicate key location, severely marked by evident war wounds. He was anyway, even if deeply disappointed, capable to solve the challenging task reaching a compromise that for its explosive unconventionality still today, over twenty years later, keeps intact the same strength. And it was from that moment that he started his brilliant professional career, becoming one of the most interesting and stimulating architects in the international panorama. Awarded with important recognitions, his projects have been extensively published and exhibited. Co-founder of the Arab Center for Architecture, he has been also architect and co-curator of the Kingdom of Bahrain’s national pavilion at the 14th International Architecture Venice Biennale in 2014.

Laura Iloniemi, native Finnish, is an expert for communication in the field of architecture. She has worked with architects for over twenty years, advising them on how to lead and support their promotional efforts with a curatorial approach, informed by her education in architectural theory and museology. She focuses on the branding aspects, starting from the identity of the architect and their practices since marketing - knowing how to sell yourself - seems to have become an absolute essential after the various crises in the building industry. (what makes it very interesting to talk to her in this special moment). Laura is author of several important books. Her first one, written in times where nobody seemed to be aware of the power of images, in 2004, with the compelling title “Is it all About Image?: How PR works in Architecture”, while “The Identity of the Architect: Culture and Communication” she guest-curated for Wiley, was published in 2019.
She will share her insights into the world of architectural communication.

Kathrin Gimmel together with Jakob S. Christensen and Jan Y. Tanaka is one of the founders of JAJA Architects. The practice, a Copenhagen-based collective of international architects, stretches across a diverse range of backgrounds, from Norway, Switzerland, Japan and Denmark. Founded in 2008, they have been able, even if quite young, to distinguish themselves as one of the leading emerging firms in Denmark. Their works embrace a playful, fun and explosive character that, pushing the boundaries of pragmatic and functional solutions, proposes new hybrid spaces, exploring new ways of living together.
Park n Play, emblematic of their strong desire of social inclusiveness and sharing, transforms a dull, grey multi-story parking garage, facing the harbour, in the middle of the urban context, into an extremely attractive red coloured, plant filled presence, culminating with a rooftop playground.
Game Streetmekka Aalborg, an industrial structure, a former eternit laboratory turned into a new dynamic street-lab, dense of activities is another appealing proposal, ‘seeking to weave as many relationships as possible between what is there and what is to become’. Deeply concerned about sustainability and mobility, Kathrin will give some hints on the crucial points of their ideal architecture aspiring to satisfy the needs of a ‘desirable city’.

Tatiana Bilbao, founder of Tatiana Bilbao ESTUDIO, is one of the leading and most thought-provoking Mexican voices. Following her profession since the beginning as a means to improve social well-being, she has never renounced this aspiration. Passionate of her native country’s culture and traditions she has always strived to implement local construction techniques, regional materials and resources, combined with her ability to be modern. Author of projects in Mexico,
China, Europe and the United States, she has received many awards and her works, internationally published in the most renowned magazines, have been exhibited in prestigious museums and galleries, as at the Centre Pompidou, that in 2010 acquired three of her projects for their permanent architecture collection. Our conversation focused on her intense militant involvement in a community-driven design, in the attempt to offer living spaces that everyone could adapt and shape according his own needs, wishes and expectations. A bottom-up architecture that aims to create a dialogue with the users, with the hope to give everyone the possibility to express their own identity.
She will talk also about a recent housing project in Monterrey, that sees her proposing new patterns and models in the effort to modify dysfunctional tendencies evident in the high residential sector. Part of our talk has been reserved to some other projects: ‘Culiacán Botanical Garden’, Mexico, emblematic example of her will to foster a spontaneous appropriation of the place by people, ‘Research Center Of The Sea’, in Mazatlán, Mexico, an immersive dialogue with nature and ‘Pilgrim’s Route’, a 117 kilometers long religious, devotional walk, project for which Tatiana has provided a master plan and two specific site-installations, inviting other 7 architects and artists to participate with their own creations.
And in conclusion I liked to add my consideration about her pragmatic and, at the same time, poetic realization, able to express a kind of magical realism.

Christoph Ingenhoven, founder and principal of ingenhoven architects, is an authentic representative of a sustainable, green architecture. His responsible buildings, realized in different parts of the world, have received the most prestigious awards, according to the highest international certification standards. A deep concern about the impact on the natural environment and the people liveability is the common denominator running through all of them. The firm develops projects varied in scale and typology, with a special core competence and extensive experience in the design and implementation of high-rise.
Christoph Ingenhoven, graduated with a double degree in engineering and architecture, founder member of the German Sustainable Building Council (DGNB), member of the North Rhine-Westphalia Academy of Sciences and Arts, has worldwide lectured, been a juror in many international competitions.

Our conversation starts deepening Christoph’s early interest and passion in sustainability, in times when this issue was not as crucial as now, dwelling on his choice about two universities with different addresses, one more technological and the other more artistic, with the opportunity of important encounters, as the one with Hans Hollein, who encouraged his love for drawing. The cultural ambience in which he grew, with the opportunity of close relations of friendship and work with exceptional men, as Otto Frei, constitutes an extremely fascinating part of his life. Another step will be dedicated to the reasons that led him many years ago to coin and also copyright the term supergreen®, as a wider sustainability concept, with reference to his experiences with rules and public administrations around the world.
An ample space has been reserved for two exemplar models of an excellent binomial combination of sustainability and lifestyle: Marina One in Singapore, ‘a vertical garden quarter’ intended for commercial and office activities, and Kö-Bogen II, part with its sloping green facades of 8 kilometres of green of an extensive urban renewal plan, people-oriented, in the heart of Düsseldorf.
Another really complex and challenging intervention is represented by the transformation of the existing Stuttgart main terminus station into a new, contemporaneous zero-energy, light-flooded underground station, awarded the Global Holcim Gold Prize for Sustainable Construction.

Sean Godsell, Melbourne-based architect, is known especially for his residential architecture, single-family houses mostly built in exceptional places where they seek to reach a gradual, progressive mimetic adaptation with the surrounding landscape, as the architect’s hand-drawn sketches masterfully emphasize just with a few lines.

Sustainability and an obsessive tension towards a concise sobriety are the common notes shared by all his works, characterized by an apparent deceptive simplicity: essential industrial, minimalist forms that reveal at a closer view sophisticated construction techniques. His realizations from the smallest to a larger scale are bespoke-works, fine crafted pieces, all exquisitely detailed.

Part of the podcast will be dedicated to some of his single-family houses, mostly embedded in amazing, pristine natural environments: the ‘House on the Coast’ that, attuned to the virgin context, encourages pauses of reflection and ‘Peninsular House’, involving the viewer in an authentic seductive game, anticipated by a sequence of glimpses in a slow theatrical progression. Some considerations will be reserved to the skin wrapping Design Hub, for RMIT University in Melbourne, a sophisticated, complex technological realisation conceived in 2007, an envelope emulating the performances of human skin, capable of dynamically modifying the geometric configuration of the facade, ensuring the best comfort and energy efficiency.

We will conclude with two temporary structures, the Vatican Chapel, in the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, conceived in occasion of the International Architecture Venice Biennale, a proposal of apparent nude simplicity, result of an elaborate engineering construction, part of a religious experience-making, and the MPavilion that, resembling with its fully automated outer skin a flower in the park, has in 2004 inaugurated in Queen Victoria Gardens, Melbourne, a series of annual summer pavilions by the most renowned international architects.

On a final note, we will focus on Godsell’s active social involvement, with reference to ‘Future Shack’ and a series of prototype pieces of urban furniture proposed as possible temporary shelters for the homeless.

Li Hu, guest of this appointment, is a brilliant, young architect, who has worked for almost a decade at Steven Holl Architects in New York, becoming a partner in the practice, opening and leading Holl’s office in Beijing, responsible for some of the most influential projects completed in Asia. In 2005, Li Hu and his partner, Huang Wenjing, co-founded their own studio, Open architecture. Despite their age they have a great number of important projects internationally published and awarded. Three monographs embrace their work. Teacher at Tsinghua University School of Architecture and Central Academy of Fine Arts and director of Columbia University GSAPP’s Studio-X Beijing, Li Hu frequently lectures at numerous universities, speaker at academic conferences and critic at universities worldwide.

We talked about the distinctive language they have been able to forge, after the long studying and working experience in the United States. We touched several topics of their prolific, coherent production, characterized by great fluidity and porosity, with deep concern towards an authentic dialectic interaction with the natural context, as exemplary demonstrates the pluri-awarded ‘Gehua Youth Cultural Center’ in Beidaihe. Several projects about school, the public ‘Garden School’ and the private ‘QINGPU PINGHE International School Campus’, a “village-style” campus, propose a new paradigm for contemporary Chinese educational architecture, able, against “hierarchical” structures, to promote openness, socialization inside and outside the buildings, merged as much as possible into nature. Some considerations have been spent about ‘Pingshan Theater’, a statement that, suggesting an unconventional idea of theater, critically questions a kind of self-referential architecture.

‘TANK Shanghai’, a dilapidated five-hectare industrial site, with 5 gigantic aviation fuel reserve tanks along the banks of the Huangpu River, revitalized into a cultural center with an art gallery, bookshops, cafés, restaurants, is a great example of a museum with no borders or boundaries, a blend of landscape, art and architecture freely accessible to everyone. Our conversation have touched, as conclusion, the ‘UCCA Dune Art Museum’, a powerful gesture carved inside beach dunes, intended to raise awareness towards a precious, compromised environment and the last magic, poetic creation, the ‘Chapel of Sound’, a concert hall that, mimicking the sedimentary, surrounding mountains, acts as a ‘chapel without religion’.

Filippo Pagliani and Michele Rossi, co-founders of Park Associati, are the guests of this appointment. The Milan-based firm, born in 2000 as a small group of collaborators, is currently represented by a large team and their interventions, focused initially on renovation of post-war buildings bearing the signature of famous architects, are actually embracing a wide range of sectors, from hybrid residential buildings, multifunctional retail spaces and restaurants to urban planning and interior design. Pagliani and Rossi are both professors at Politecnico of Milano, often lecturing, participating to conferences and debates.
The porous and flexible ambience of their studio, an old former telephone factory, in the center of the Città Studi area, conceived as a large open-space for exchange of ideas and collaborations, with no hierarchal separation, offers a reflection about urban future working and domestic spaces that promise to be increasingly more limited. The conversation lingers on their respectful regeneration of important, historic presences, like La Serenissima, former Campari edifice, an approach able to ensure a life cycle of the buildings without altering their identity, anticipating already many years ago the efficiency of reuse and recycle in accordance with severe environmental issues.
Two works, Salewa Headquarter and the Cube, exemplify the philosophy of the practice, that relates to each project privileging the complete autonomy of experimentation over constraints and limitations tied to a specific style.
The recent winning masterplan ‘MoLeCoLA’, intending to transform and heal a deeply-neglected, degraded area of Milan will be another topic of interest, followed by a series of questions on 'INLEGNO. Cambiare prospettiva per costruire il futuro, volume just published, that synthesises a 2-years long research of Park Associati with the German engineering firm Bollinger + Grohmann, about wood and the need to change a perspective to build the future.

Guest of this appointment is Gonça Pasolar, co-founder with Emre Arolat of EAA-Emre Arolat Architecture, one of the most renowned firm of Turkey, Istanbul-based, with offices in London and New York. The practice, characterized by a wide range of realisations from urban masterplans, airports to residential, cultural buildings and workplaces, has been acknowledged with prestigious recognitions as the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, the RIBA International Excellence, selected by the Mies van der Rohe Award. Gonça has received the European Center for Architecture’s 40 under 40 award and the nominee for one of the five AJ’s Women Architects of the Year Award in 2015.
Our conversation, after indulging on the beginning of the practice, focused on İpekyol Textile Factory, winner of the Aga Khan Architecture Award 2010, project attesting an innovative will for a more democratic architectural approach towards environment and people’s well-being. EAA urban residential projects, re-proposing with contemporaneous terms the soul of a tradition, and the great number of summer residences and resorts, sharing a common genetic with the amazing environment where they are located along the coast, represent another occasion of reflection.
Topographic context, respected in its natural morphology, generates developments of great fascination as Sancaklar Mosque, a special project, very courageous, in its unconventionality and extremely sincere gesture. Deterrents can sometimes be transformed into opportunities for extremely interesting, original solutions, as the Museum Hotel Antakya, conceived suspended a few meters above remarkable archeological findings. Homage to industrial heritage is another challenging and fascinating aspect of their work and America has recently opened to them the chance of a new adventure.

Guest of this appointment is Jay Valgora, founder and principal of the Manhattan-based STUDIO V Architecture. He is an architect passionately dedicated to preserve and revitalise the relevant narrative of an heritage at risk of disappearing with particular interest for former abandoned industrial districts. Received a Bachelor of Architecture degree from Cornell University and a Master of Architecture degree from Harvard he was a founding member and Design Director of Rockwell Group and Design Principal at Walker Group, until he decided to start his own practice in 2006. The firm embraces multiple services from master plans, to commercial and residential. Their projects have received important recognitions, as AIA awards, International Design Award, Architizer A+ Awards, Architectural Record Award, being featured in prestigious publications including The New York Times, Architectural Record, Dwell, Wall Street Journal, New York Magazine, Crain’s New York, and Architect’s Newspaper.

The conversation starts focusing on the circumstances that led a child, grown up in Buffalo, former industrial New York City’s waterfront site, where the father was working in the steel mills, to the great fascination for a large collection of gigantic, iconic grain elevators until conceiving ‘Silo City’, a vision and proposal of an impressive adaptive reuse intending to link the silos and re-connect a community, winner of Future Project of the Year 2021 at World Architecture Festival. Another project polarizes the discussion: the really beautiful and meaningful rehabilitation of seven adjoining red brick former coffee warehouses, the Empire Stores, left languishing for over half a century along the Brooklyn waterfront, transformed into a dynamic community hub, successfully combining old and new and strategically reconnecting community and waterfront.

Several important considerations are exchanged about 10 abandoned oil tanks along the East River in Brooklyn, which have been subject of a contention lasting years between Studio V, supported by many other environmentalists, landscape architects, scientists, activists and artists, intending to keep and adapt the majestic, luring industrial structures into a public park and the divergent position of those who didn’t want to maintain them. Digital design constitutes another aspect explored by the practice to reach experimental structural solutions, like the facade of a Casino, former historical Yonkers 'Hilltop Racetrack'. The conversation concludes with a truly important and captivating message Valgora divulges, talking about ‘Last Utopia’, a book he will publish soon. He speaks of the necessity to find again optimism and the indispensable new role that architects are expected to play in a time of great anxiety and uncertainty.

Anders Lonka, one of the three founder partners of ADEPT, a young Copenhagen-based firm with office also in Hamburg, is the guest of this new appointment. After a rich, extensive work experience at MVRDV, Diller Scofidio+ Renfro, New York and Cebra, he taught for several years at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture and from 2006 he dedicates himself, with his young multidisciplinary team, to an architecture focused on developing a real interaction with the city, as a large community, synthesised in the concept ‘place over building’.
Our conversation starts sharing his professional beginnings and considering the difficulties that young architects have to face, deciding to run an own practice and we continue by deepening the concept of an architecture as open process rather than a defined typology, which is fundamental in their design approach. The new Aarhus School of Architecture, a flexible and innovative ambience conceived to become an active, experimental incubator for architectural exploration, with the ambition to evolve due to the mutual influence of the surrounding urban environment, the street and the people, is another topic of interest followed by Braunstein Tap-house, a distinctive proposal that, above is extremely attractive formal expression, embodies an important story, born according to the possibility of a limited lifespan. Sustainability, a ‘must’ in every intervention of the practice, is analysed in relation to innovative solutions they have adopted, including the upcycle of leftover construction materials extended from Aarhus School building to the external hardscape. The polycentric human-scaled vision for a typology of new sustainable urbanism related to 80 ha urban development in Cologne, Germany, suggested by their new winning proposal, WoodHood, expands their concept of sustainability. Stadtmuseum, an intervention just started, concerning the transformation of a protected building in central Berlin, left for more than 20 years neglected, and the strategy internally adopted of ‘a box in the box’ conclude our talk.

Guest of this appointment is Todd Saunders, considered one of the best interpreters of pristine Northern arctic landscape. Founder and principal of Saunders Architecture, Bergen-based studio in Norway, he has been ranked one of the ‘5 Greatest Architects Under 50’ by Huffington Post and 89 on the top-100 list of the best architects in the world.

His architecture, mostly residential and cultural works, national park landmarks, minimal contemporaneous sculptural statements, touches respectfully the ground, dialoguing with magnificent natural settings, developing powerful intense interaction between site and people. Widely internationally published, with two dedicated monographs, his realisations have been recognized by prestigious awards, as the Nomination for the Mies van der Rohe prize for best contemporary European Architecture, Architectural Review Award for Emerging Architects, Winner of Building of the Year for Archdaily.

We start our conversation from a kind of nomadic life that has characterised his undergrad and postgrad university’s years and the curious coincidence that brought him, animated by a restless desire for travelling and doing experiences in new places, to live and work in a city in Northern Norway with a lot of affinities with his hometown, in Canada. An aspect of particular interest is represented by his early obstinate and resolute ambition to realize an architecture he believed in that led him to several unexpected, exciting opportunities: the spectacular, impressive long wooden Aurland Lookout, hovering 650m, above the scenic Norwegian fjords, named one of the new 7 architectural wonders of the world and his involvement in the important charitable art program envisioned in support of Fogo, a small Island off the Northeast coast of Newfoundland, Canada. We focus on the noble mission intending to help the declining economy of the poor local fishermen community, offering economic and cultural resilience and on his several interventions scattered along the island, artists’ studios, cabins, lookout points, based upon the inherent cultural and physical assets of the place. We deepen in particular

Fogo Inn, rated best hotel in Canada for four years, and the third best in the world, that well embodies his concept of authenticity in architecture. Always remaining within a meaningful, philanthropic-based architecture’s framework, Saunders anticipates the fantastic project in progress in Fedje, Norway, an island the same size as Central Park: a wide plan that promises a series of interventions, including a hotel to preserve another small community of 540 people in danger of disappearance. As conclusion we touch the challenging relation between architecture and natural landscape, analysing the topic through the respectful language of a series of retreat homes built in another remarkable, superb environment at the foothills of Canada’s Rocky Mountain.

James Finestone is Director at Arup Architecture Europe. He is a multidisciplinary leader, experienced in low energy design, masterplanning and the role of Architecture in cities. As well as overseeing the development of the teams in Arup’s European offices, he has recently been involved in a number of sports stadia projects around the world, masterplans in Italy, Turkey and China, Science and Industry projects including Jaguar Landrover, Nestle and Equinix and many commercial projects. He was trained as an architect but has recently also gone back to student life in parallel with work to complete a masters in Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence for the Built Environment.

Guest of the podcast is Marlon Blackwell, co-founder and principal with his work and life partner Meryati Johari of Marlon Blackwell Architects, MBA, in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Recipient of many, prestigious awards as the 2020 AIA Gold Medal, one of the highest honour, recognizing architects with enduring impacts on theory and practice, member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, another of the most important recognitions of artistic merit in the United States, he didn’t change a rare quality, continuing to demonstrate a generous spontaneous availability and accessibility. Brilliant intellectual and speaker he communicates with the same direct, intelligent simplicity of his works, minimalist gestures, embodying the strength to express a richness of services, never penalised by budget’s constraints. Practicing architect and passionate educator, Chair in Architecture and Distinguished Professor at the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design at the University of Arkansas, in merit of his contributions to the field of architecture and dedication to students, he has received the Gold Medal recognition, selected the 2020 Southeastern Conference, SEC, Professor of The Year, faculty’s highest honour, named one of DesignIntelligence magazine’s '30 Most Admired Educators’. Visiting professor and lecturer at famous international institutes, he has been equally successful with his works, receiving more than hundred awards, worldwide published by magazines and books and two monographs dedicated.
The conversation opens, dealing with his very ‘nomadic’ life until he decided to permanently reside in Fayetteville, a place rich of a beautiful nature but not of an equally distinctive architecture and he explains his opportunity to develop a language that, in respect of local traditions and culture, has made him possible to transform the ordinary into powerful and meaningful experiences, perfectly responding to a ‘glocal’ character.
The authenticity of an architecture that, using simplicity as universal language, aspires to make modest things great is become the essence of his practice.
Collaboration, support of a synergistic participation of multiple actors, is another vital force of his approach that is analyzed about Shelby Farms Park, in Memphis, Tennesse. The deceptive playful simplicity of Harvey Pediatric Clinic, a pluri-winner project and the simple but sophisticated elegance of the interior of a vast fast casual ramen restaurant in Bentonville, Arkansas, brilliantly exalting the dissonance between refined craftsmanship and industrial past constitute two different aspects particularly interesting of his portfolio.
We dwell finally on the involvement he devotes with passionate and enthusiastic commitment to both the educational mission and practical profession, injecting vitality and greatly ennobling and dignifying everything he does.

Dong Gong, founder and Design Principal of Vector Architects, Beijing-based firm, one of the most interesting and authoritative figures among Chinese architects, globally applauded with important recognitions, is our guest in this podcast. After his Bachelor’s and Master’s at the Tsinghua University, he spent about seven years in US, for another Master of Architecture at the University of Illinois and working at the offices of Richard Meier and Steven Holl in New York. Practicing architect and academic educator, he has seen his extremely brilliant career acknowledged by prestigious local and international rewards. Elected as the Foreign Member of French Academy of Architecture in 2019, appointed as the Plym Distinguished Visiting Professor at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Visiting Professor of Polytechnic University of Turin, Italy, he has been teaching design studios at Tsinghua University and Central Academy of Fine Arts since 2014. Guest speaker and critic at prominent academic and professional institutions around the world, he has been invited to various major exhibitions, including the first Chinese architecture exhibition at MoMA New York; the 2018 “FREESPACE” Venice Biennale. The firm has been awarded the “RIBA International Awards for Excellence” for two projects in the same year, 2021, “100+ Best Architecture Firms” selected by Domus (2019), nominated for the Swiss Architectural Award (2018); overall winner of“Archmarathon Awards” in 2016; and “Design Vanguard” selected by Architectural Record (2014) and the projects, collected as a monograph in the renowned architectural journal AV Monographs, have been widely published in Casabella, Arquitectura Viva, The New York Times, A+U, Detail, The Architectural Review, L'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui, Lotus, Domus and many others.

Opportunity of the conversation is offered by the current exhibition at the MoMa, N.Y, dedicated to the new generation of independent Chinese architects Dong Gong belongs to, deepening the passionate commitment he has always demonstrated towards resource-consciousness and awareness of social and cultural traditional values, leading his own practice working independently from state-run design institutes.
We dwell on his architecture of deceleration and more contemplation, against a too fast urbanisation that a decade ago has dramatically transformed a vernacular, familiar context into a generic, unemotional and alien environment and on the respectful attempt of his interventions seeking to guarantee continuity with the past, offering emotionally involving experiences for the people.
Urban and natural landscapes have demonstrated his innate and attentive sensibility decoding and deciphering the energies of multiple, diverse sites: Suochengli Neighborhood Library, a regenerative intervention related to a typical Chinese courtyard-block, in the historical district of Yantai, a port city in northern China, is an evident testimony of revitalization, based on a brilliant dialogue reactivated between past and present. The Captain’s House, famous, award-winning work related to a house that sit on the rocks, on a cliff by the sea, on the Peninsula of Beijiao Village, in Fujian Province, represents another extremely significant intervention that, motivated by the need to address conditions of deterioration of the building, has provided a series of unexpected and unrequested important, valuable additions on an aesthetic-emotional level and from a social point of view. Light is another element that plays a fundamental role in his architecture, often revealing an intense aspiration to break limitations and boundaries as exemplary suggests the small Seashore Chapel, in close contact with the infinity of the ocean or intending to help meditation, relaxation and enjoyment as in the Seashore library.

Guest of the appointment is Ico Migliore, co-founder with Mara Servetto of Migliore+Servetto Architects, Milan-based practice, with offices in Seoul and Tokyo. The studio embraces a wide range of projects on different scales from architecture to urban design, from interiors to communication, collaborating with an extensive spectrum of international companies in the field of fashion and design, realizing permanent and temporary installations and exhibitions around the world. Awarded important international prizes, they alternate research and teaching activities. Ico Migliore, is actually professor at the Design Department of the Politecnico di Milano and Chair Professor at the Dongseo University in Busan, South Korea.
Our conversation starts referring to the long, important experience of both the partners, before as students at the Politecnico di Torino and then as assistants at the Politecnico di Milano, alongside Achille Castiglioni, a man with great personality internationally recognized as a master of design, focusing in particular on the critical relevance of searching and transmitting identities.
The recent intervention for The Human Safety Net Foundation, in Venice, at the Procuratie Vecchie, consisted in organizing the entire third floor, headquarters of the association, including interior, multimedia design and an interactive exhibition path, has represented a second interesting moment of our talk. Further considerations then focused on the privileged role played by light and technology in the creation of the dynamic and emotional paths of their expositions and the capability to encourage wider public participation. Dwelling on the fascinating research dedicated on the expressive use of light,”α-cromactive”, the kinetic, permanent installation, realized for Intesa Sanpaolo skyscraper in Turin, is selected as emblematic example of this investigation. “Blue Line Park” and “Waterfront Door / Into the Ocean’’, both urban renewal attempts in terms of authentic sustainability, in Busan, South Korea, respectively aspire to reconnect different urban areas and to strengthen the concept of city as a "collective home”. As conclusion, a special mention has dedicated to Ico’s passion for designing and his beautiful sketches.

Guests of the podcast are Joy Meek and Chris-Annmarie Spencer, principals of Wheeler Kearns Architects, Chicago-based studio, founded in 1987 by Dan Wheeler, joined in 1991 by another founding principal, Larry Kearns. Both recipient of significant recognitions, Joy and Chris-Annmarie represent two brilliant voices of an authentic collective structure, a team supported by the aspiration to work in chorality and design inclusive spaces. The practice, embracing a wide range of typologies with attentive dedication to sustainability and a long, close collaboration with nonprofit, mission-driven organizations, has been, in recognition of the outstanding achievements produced over time, twice named by AIA Chicago’s ‘Firm of the Year’, honoured with five AIA Chicago Design Excellence awards in 2020, Driehaus Award, while their work is included in the permanent collections of the Chicago History Museum and the Art Institute of Chicago.
Dan Wheeler is also professor of architecture at the University of iIlinois and has received, in quality of mentor, and inspirational figure the 2017 AIA Illinois Nathan Clifford Ricker Award for Architecture Education.
The conversation starts with a reflection on some thoughts by Dan Wheeler about his idea of architecture and continues with the personal experiences Joy and Chris-Annmarie went through after their first encounter with Dan, deepening their passionate involvement at service of people, in the effort to activate inclusive, meaningful social spaces.
It appears inevitable to dwell on the difficult context of a city like Chicago, where their interventions mainly take place, addressing how they strive to bridge deep social gaps.
Authors of many educational projects, they express the firm’s philosophy, intending with every proposal not just to offer only one solution but multipurpose occasions for cross-pollination between program types and uses, focusing on ‘Granor Greenhouse’, an exemplar, recently completed work .
The conversation continues with a similar nonprofit project, ’Marwen’, in the different field of arts, able to create inclusive atmospheres and to encourage artistic talents.
‘The Night Ministry’, a renovation providing a new home, healthcare and human connection to members of the Chicago community experiencing homelessness or poverty, is another important initiative embracing vital aims, including involvement and awareness-raising of young, since from early adolescence, towards social responsibilities.
‘The Momentary’, the new catalyzing multidisciplinary contemporary art destination of Bentonville, with its inclusive mission and vibrant cultural experiences concludes this interesting encounter.