Interviews With Architects, Artists & Designers

Luke Jones and George Gingell are hosts of the podcast About Buildings and Cities. "We’re interested in getting into things that are obscure [in architectural history], but we’re also interested in looking at things that are super obvious. […] Taking Gaudi for example, he’s the world’s favourite architect, and he’s also curiously elusive and totally unfashionable - like kitch embarrassing tea-towel stuff. At the same time, he is such a strange and virtuosic designer. We’re interested in trying to make sense of that thing that seems so obvious it’s almost embarrassing to talk about." Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ben Bowling is Professor of Criminology at at Kings College London, and the son of the celebrated painter Frank Bowling, whose studio he now manages. "Frank always wanted children, but did not want to be a father, because of his own father’s violence; by being an absent father through my infancy and childhood, Frank allowed me to re-write the script of fatherhood."One thing that is joyous about working in the studio is being able to involve my son, who’s now in his 30’s, and his son, who’s two and a half. The fact that we now have four generations of male Bowlings in the studio, coming together around the work, is a source of joy. It’s almost like we disrupted this old pattern of what fatherhood should be."Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Asli Çiçek is an Architect and writer based in Brussels, whose work focuses on scenography and exhibition design. "Culture is not a luxury. I don’t like populistic discussions about what culture should be or how history should be flattened to a quick communication. I think it’s fantastic to not understand everything at once, to keep the fascination for history and culture alive in museums […] "There is no shame in having culture. If there’s a debate I silently follow, it’s that there is a necessity for culture in society – not only as an egalitarian concept, but as an educational concept. That is something I try to stand for."Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Charlotte Cooper is the author of Poundbury: a Queer Tour of Monarchy, published earlier this year by 33 Editions. "One of my bugbears about Poundbury is that it’s not an honest place – it’s pretending to be something that it isn’t. They talk about how green it is, how it is invested in traditional building techniques, but it’s also breeze blocks, it’s plastic, it’s a great place to park your car […] My question is, if you could, what would bring the truth our of Poundbury, what would show it for what it is?"Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Robin Winogrond is a Landscape Architect based in Zurich."I try to never look at what I expect to see, but to see in a raw way, in an uninformed way, I try to read space and atmospheres in the most unschooled way I can, to soak up as much knowledge as I can." – RWScaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Karin Templin is an architect, educator, and author of the book At Home in London: The Mansion Block, co-published by The Architecture Foundation and MACK. This book is first in a series on types of London housing, reflecting on the place of the home in the city in the light of its longstanding housing crisis. To find out more visit mackbooks.co.uk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode originally aired in April 2022. Lesley Lokko is founder of the African Futures Institute and curator of the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale.“I don’t see myself as being ‘the future’, but the expanded field [of architecture] that I’ve operated in for most of my life has given me something that is of use to he generation coming behind me, so that no matter how I end up making my living, I see myself first and foremost as a teacher.”Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production. For more information visit https://www.architecturefoundation.org.uk/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sumayya Vally is a Musilm South African architect, and founder of the practice Counterspace. “Architecture is abstract, and I think what I’m doing in my practice is making a concerted effort to find different sources for the origins of that abstraction. I think what has happened in the cannon and in the profession more broadly is that we’ve inherited so much that we don’t deeply question…I think the languages that we’ve inherited could do with being supplemented or oven being overtaken, dare I say, by other origins, that come from different ways of being and different value systems.”– SVScaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

David Gissen is a New York-based author, designer, and educator who works in the fields of architecture, landscape, and urban design. His book, The Architecture of Disability (University of Minnesota Press, 2023) has been praised as “an exhilarating manifesto” and a “complete reshaping about how we view the development and creation of architecture.” The Architecture of Disability offers a critical perspective on histories and futures of buildings, cities, and landscapes — beyond a sole focus on the problems of accessibility.Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

b+ is a collaborative architecture practice that operates across different media and formats. The practice seeks to engage with challenges of eco-social transformation and adaptive reuse, and to contribute to the societal transformation with ecologically and economically viable answers.“Why does the political right have better propaganda than the left? It’s perhaps because the right is situated in the 'no' – the 'yes' is much more difficult to propagandise. It’s therefore necessary to find positive claims that can be engaged with almost instantaneously – in a way, that’s the architectural project”  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Julian Opie is an artist based in London. We create models to deal with the world and to function in the world. It’s how we perceive the world and our own life and existence, drawing from the world a language that can then be shared and used to talk about existence – JOScaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Carmody Groarke is an architecture practice based in London."This idea of thinness [of surfaces] has to do with pragmatism and thrift, but it's also a contemporary challenge of buildings – now that we've disassembled the monolithic way of traditional construction we have to consider the making of walls in a different way, and yet we enjoy that discipline of making the most with the least." Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Albert Williamson Taylor is a design engineer and founder of AKT II.“The goal has always got to be the project – the design – everything else is just an inconvenience. Even deciding to start a practice was very much that. It’s a means to an end, and the end in my view is being able to contribute with your abilities, rather than what’s expected of you.” – AWTScaffold is an Architecture Foundation podcast, produced by Matthew Blunderfield Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Albert Williamson Taylor is a design engineer and founder of AKT II. “The goal has always got to be the project – the design – everything else is just an inconvenience. Even deciding to start a practice was very much that. It’s a means to an end, and the end in my view is being able to contribute with your abilities, rather than what’s expected of you.”  – AWT Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation podcast, produced by Matthew Blunderfield Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Thomas Demand is an artist working in Berlin and Los Angeles"When architects look at my work it’s like when you show your work to your mother – she looks at something completely different than when you show your work to your peers. Architects are not “Mother”, but they see different aspects of my work than the art world do.”Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode was recorded in October of 2020, and originally aired in July of 2021. Esther Choi is a New York-based multidisciplinary artist and writer trained in photography and architectural history and theory. “[In Le Corbuffet] I was trying to experiment with whether or not you could introduce a critical message into a circulation network that was unsuspecting, which is why the idea of “soft power” is so interesting to me […] We’re used to negational critique, and that’s been the predominant axis by which we talk about critique in architecture and art […] But you can also introduce challenging or political ideas through seduciton, or pleasure, or sensation, which is what a lot of architects from the 1960’s did”Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation project, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode originally aired in October 2020Sara Hendren is an artist, design researcher, writer, and professor at Olin College of Engineering.“Disability knocks at the foundations of individualism […] If needfulness is actually universal, and if slowness is also part of life, and if dependence is partly what makes us human, that actually changes everything in terms of our ideas about the social contract […] The giving and receiving of care is in all of our lives; I think we really do want a world where care is part of the landscape of existence.”Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Thomas Heatherwick is a designer and founder of Heatherwick Studio in London."I’m inspired by people who don’t try to impress other people in their profession [...] The people who really matter are the public who you are doing projects for. What actually matters, In the big picture of time, is what matters to the people around us." Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tacita Dean is a visual artist who works in Berlin and Los Angeles "The direction in which I’m going is never fixed. Because I don’t know where I’m going, I’m very able to change direction. . . only at the very end of the process does all this nascent information suddenly have resonance – only in the singularity of the final work does the impact of this desperate journey make any sense."Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sam Chermayeff is an architect based in Berlin."The success of all interiors are specifics – specific wobbles, specific things in the way, specific dirt behind the ears of a house […] It’s wildly inefficient way of designing […] and it can drive people crazy, but the notion that you can provide this joyous instability for people – I want to offer that to everyone." Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.