Interviews With Architects, Artists & Designers

Nicholas Gardner and Saša Štucin founded the design practice Soft Baroque in 2013, and are currently based in Ljubljana. “For us, the satisfaction of buying something pales in comparison to even pushing a button and hitting print on a 3D printer or hitting play on a CNC machine – there is a fascination that we have with making things work and making something in three dimensions [...] It feels like the type of urge that could replace our consumer desires.”Link to Nicholas Gardner's tag poemsScaffold is an Architecture Foundation project, produced by Matthew Blunderfield. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Richard Wentworth is an artist based in London. "Without feeling sorry for myself, I feel like a bit of a misfit […] I don’t really have a tidy sense of where [I belong]. I want to be effective. I would be a bit bored if I died and no one ever mentioned me again – not because I want them to say “do you know he was such and such” – I’d like to be the grit in a lot of shoes, and I’d like that grit to be useful across quite a lot of subjects."Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation project, produced by Matthew Blunderfield. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Moshe Safdie is an architect based in Boston who first came to prominence through his Habitat 67 project, a modular housing prototype constructed for the Montreal Expo in 1967. Safdie's memoir, If Walls Could Speak, has just been published by Atlantic Books.“It’s not that I avoid a signature style, I just allow things to mutate […] I marvel in the differences of place, and I bring them out and I enjoy them because I think that I’m making buildings that are more rooted. For me this is the pleasure of design.” Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Deem Journal co-founders Nu Goteh, Alice Grandoit and Marquise Stillwell discuss an expanded definition of design as a social process. “publishing is a ritual act of listening, and for us we’re really trying to orient ourselves to become better listeners, and to thus orient an audience to become better listeners, with the hope that through this listening we can arrive at a better ethics around our relationship to each other and the planet.”Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation project. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

Flores & Prats are an architecture practice based in Barcelona. “The theatre and the common spaces are the same experience. Going to the theatre is not getting into a room where you suddenly forget the outside world, going to the theatre is meeting your friend at the ticket box, at the sofa going the bar, have a beer, coffee, anxious, waiting to start, and meeting the actors, and everything is a continuity[…] The theatre has exploded to occupy the whole building, not just the two performance spaces.” Flores & Prats Website@floresyprats Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

Introducing Power & Public Space, a new podcast from Drawing Matter and the Architecture Foundation. This episode features a conversation with professor Mabel O. Wilson on the Memorial to Enslaved Labourers at the University of Virginia. Listen to the full series on ITunes, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Scaffold returns with new episodes later this month. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Max Pinckers is a photographer based in Brussels.“The subject and themes [of my photographs] are a reflection of how I see photography, or how I want to deal with photography - the subject matter is always a mirror for the medium as well.” https://www.maxpinckers.be/@maxpinckersScaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Freek Persyn is professor of architecture and urban transformation at ETH in Zurich, and together with Johan Anrys and Peter Swinnen founded the practice 51N4E in 1998. “Architecture is not often talked about in terms of transience, its very much focusing always on the final product, and this final product is captured before its used - it’s trying to monumentalise or eternalise one fragment of time that doesn’t really even exist, which is the finished building before it is even in use […] I would say that instead, we are talking about this whole thing – this whole process of architecture – and valuing every moment of it." See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Carla Juacaba is a Brazilian architect based in London. “I’m compelled by theatre for its impermanence, that things end, in a way that it’s not even possible to record; it’s very fascinating to see things dissipating, then that’s it. When I worked in exhibition design I was already fascinated by how despite this temporary effect, ideas live on in our minds forever - architecture can be temporary but it remains a part of our imaginary world.”Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Asif Khan is a designer of buildings, landscapes, exhibitions and installations. “It’s helpful sometimes to think that architecture is made up. All of this cannon, all of this writing, all of this schooling […] let’s just imagine it’s a religion of some sort that you’re operating within, but before that religion there were other religions, and so it’s about stepping outside of that world and seeing what else is possible.” See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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/ See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

James Taylor Foster is a writer and curator of contemporary architecture and design at ArkDes. "When I think about curatorial practice I start to think about what it means to nest in the complexity of things […] There’s an ambition to not dumb things down, but to create space for close looking and close feeling, through experiences, through objects, and through the creation or maintenance of conversations” Interlude audio is from the youtube video [ASMR] Dark & Relaxing Tapping & Scratching [Close Whispers] by GibiASMR See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Paloma Gormley is a founding director of both Practise Architects and Material Cultures, a not-for-profit organisation which brings together design, research and action towards a post carbon built environment."There’s an inherent tension in the work that we’re trying to do, in that we’re trying to change the nature of authorship – there’s a real risk with the rise of technology, it follows that power, agency and authorship become concentrated into fewer and fewer hands […] One of the things that’s exciting about building with natural materials is that those technical barriers – which we’ve created with petrochemical culture and their associated layers of liability – in a way a lot of that ‘technification’ goes out the window, and you’re back to a much more straightforward way of doing things.”https://practicearchitecture.co.uk/https://materialcultures.org/ See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Takeshi Hayatsu is an architect based in London and founding director of Hayatsu Architects. “ …That sort of fear, and darkness beyond our control that exists in the natural world is something we’ve somehow forgotten following the modernist movement […] People tend to become arrogant – we assume we control everything – so animism and symbolism are things I’m interested in, in terms of finding ways to pay respect to nature, in a way that should really come back more now in the age of environmental crisis.”The "Red School" architects mentioned in this episode include: Takamasa Yoshizaka Yuko Saito Osamu IshiyamaTerunobu Fujimori Keisuke OkaOther references: Genpei Aksegawa – Leader of "Rojo street observation society" Ferdinand Cheval – architect of the "Ideal Palace" See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The European Prize for Urban Public Space is an observatory of European cities that recognises the best works to create, recover, transform and improve public spaces in Europe.Matthew recently spoke with the prize’s director, Judit Carrera, to find out more.Registration is open for submissions from 20 April to 17 May 2022. The conditions of entry and everything you need to know to take part in the Prize are available at www.publicspace.org See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This episode originally aired on 23 April 2020. It was recorded in person in at the Kingston School of Art in December of 2019. Clancy Moore architects have been nominated for a 2022 EU Mies Award, and will be presenting their work at the Barbican Centre on 23 March 2022 as part of the Architecture on Stage series. To book tickets visit https://www.architecturefoundation.org.uk/architecture-on-stage-clancy-moore---Andrew Clancy is a director of the Dublin-based practice Clancy Moore, and Professor of Architecture at the Kingston School of Art.“There isn’t an Irish style, and I don’t really think there is an Irish tectonic, but there is a space for a particular type of plural conversation in Ireland - one that uses multiple engagements with the history of architecture that comes from our slightly marginal location […] It allows architects to act with territorial intent, with great sincerity, and with no attempt at cynicism or anything like that […] I think that as the world moves to being one where people do m

This episode originally aired on 9 April 2020. It was recorded in person in a noisy hotel cafe, so the audio quality is variable (it gets better after the first few minutes). It's one of my favourite conversations. If you haven't heard it yet, enjoy!- Matthew ---Francesca Torzo is an Architect based in Italy.“In all of our projects there is always a construction experiment, but that is never the purpose. It seems that we just land there, to find a solution that is able to combine severable variables. Most of the time the most sensitive variable is silence - this naturalness where you don’t need to see all of the effort.“ See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Founded by Lara Lesmes & Fredrik Hellberg, Space Popular is an experimental design practice that has made its name in exploring the architectural potential of digital space.“Architecture is a communication medium, and we believe that in our lifetimes we will be able to experience architecture at the speed of the spoken word; you will be able to create and experience space at the speed at which you form and communicate your own thoughts. It maybe seems scary, but we’re going to inch towards that slowly and once we are there, we will have an infinitely more productive way to communicate with each other.” See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Ryan Scavnicky is an educator, architectural theorist and founder of the practice Extra Office. He's also been described as "the godfather of the architecture meme." “I think of theory way more as a practice and I think of criticism way more as a practice than as this thing that floats around in books – the theory is the feed; the theory is the hive mind meme page; the theory is the tiktok account – I think those are all bonafide methods of the production of contemporary architectural theory” See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Lee Ivett is an architect, educator and founder of the participatory architecture, art and design studio Baxendale – a practice best known for developing low-budget socially-led projects within communities across the UK.“For me, just being in a place and registering it through your own human experience – your own emotional experience, your own physical experience - I started to understand that that was far more informative, and that your own instinct, reactions and discomforts were far more informative, and actually could be a mode of research - a more empathic, situated, lived mode of research - than some of the more normative modes of analysis and research that you’d find in an architecture school.” See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.