Guest of this appointment is Kirsten Ring Murray, one of the principals and owners of the internationally renowned firm Olson Kundig Architects. Founded in 1966 by Jim Olson, the practice, Seattle-based, with a new office in New York City, during the five decades of its existence has enormously grown, expanding its portfolio beyond residences, which was a distinctive part of their realizations, covering more than fifteen countries on five continents, from amazing natural locations to crowded urban contexts. Their versatile full-service design besides residences, often for art collectors, includes museums, academic and commercial buildings, hospitality, interior design, master planning and landscape. The narrative and the design approach, contemplating the relationship between dwelling and landscape and encouraging the connection between people and surroundings continue, whether in a natural habitat or in an urban metropolis, bringing context to its existence and purpose, creating an experience of place, even along the street. Careful consideration of topographical and climatic conditions, use of materials worked in close collaboration with craftsmen and artists, leaving frequently, on purpose, visible maker’s hand signs are the main ingredients, contributing to tell an authentic story of the place. The firm recognized by the AIA with the National Architecture Firm Award, has been named 4 times one of the Top Ten Most Innovative Companies in Architecture by Fast Company and included on the AD100 list 14 times. The owners have been honoured with some of the nations and world’s highest design awards: Jim Olson, the Seattle AIA Medal of Honor, Tom Kundig a National Design Award in Architecture from the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, an Academy Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, inductions into Interior Design Magazine’s Hall of Fame and the AIA Seattle Medal of Honor, only to mention a few. Their works published worldwide by the most prestigious magazines, on the covers of The New York Times magazine, ARCHITECT, Architectural Record, Architectural Digest, Wall Street Journal are collected in four monographs. Our guest, Kirsten Ring Murray, has realized a range of project types, nationally and internationally published, and awarded. She has received many AIA Honor Awards, in recognition of her contributions, playing a particularly relevant role in the firm’s culture, expanding the boundaries of the corporatist spirit, pioneering programs, and injecting vital energy into core activities. The conversation starts exploring a background that may have led Kirsten to become an architect. Grown up, experiencing various places West of United States, passionate about drawing and reading, with a keen interest in science fiction, was particularly attracted by the environment as landscape, by an organic architecture tendency emerging at that time in Colorado, with the main attraction for Paolo Soleri’s arcology and curiosity in the experimentation of arts and craft of Modernism. Joined the studio in Seattle in the late ‘89, a studio of 11 and now of over 250 people, she was drawn by different reasons as the firm’s legacy grounded on craft, integration of architecture and art and always felt very comfortable in a place, where conversation and dialogue were highly appreciated and the individual expression unusually respected and encouraged. Challenging and active, the practice has over the years maintained this distinctive note, believing in the importance of debate and considering a precious opportunity to work with different personalities, many individual voices in a synergistic effort. Great contribution to strengthen teamwork collaboration and to open a dialogue with the external community goes to Kirsten, who has promoted a series of original and successful initiatives, especially through [storefront], a common space, part of their office building, transformed into an authentic laboratory of exchange and experimentation. We dwell then on the physical ambiance of their studio in Seattle, able to transmit with an extraordinary legibility an identity, mainly based on a continuous evolutive process and we analyze, in this regard, their capability to translate the peculiar character and core values of a company and its team in every workspace they realized. We dedicate a special reference to the recent LeBron James Innovation Center at Nike World Headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon, a new construction, that brilliantly communicates the brand's agenda of speed, innovation, craft, fostering collective collaborative spirit and to the conversion of a historic building into a new dynamic, healthy and versatile environment, in the respect of individuality, for a provocative New York City Media company. Search for custom-made solutions, kinetic elements, exposed ‘mechanical wizardry’ and exquisitely refined, detailed finishes, visually and emotionally engaging, is an important peculiarity of the practice, especially of Tom Kundig, often referred to as a 'maker architect’ and Kirsten explains the relevant and fascinating potentialities that this creative ‘pre-digital’ process embodies. Architect as a ‘mediator’ between nature and built, able to offer continuity between indoor-outdoor and authentic immersive, intimate experiences in the place, mediating rationality and poetry is another integral aspect of their design approach, that we explore in regard to residences, especially in magnificent and powerful natural contexts, as Slaughterhouse Beach, in Maui, Hawaii. Among extraordinary, at top commissions that have involved Kirsten, from practitioner to principal, there is an affordable condominium, conceived almost 15 years ago, 1111 East Pike, that, despite the economic constraints, still impresses for its innovative and fresh unconventionality, its visual appeal and flexible internal solutions, revealing a passionate commitment to enrich with any architectural gesture everyone's life. We conclude the conversation with a particularly rewarding project, Paradise Road Housing at Smith College, five apartment units arranged around a central courtyard, forming a community not only between students but between the campus and the larger Northampton community. A LEED® Gold housing complex intended for self-sufficient seniors and students, celebrating inter-generational social interaction and connections.

Guests of our appointment are two brilliant and leading architects, Shirley Blumberg and Marianne McKenna, co-founders in 1987 with other two partners, in an egalitarian collaboration, of KPMB Architects, a Toronto-based studio. The firm, enormously grown and become one of the most authoritative in Canada, internationally recognized for the important public buildings realized across the country, United States and Europe, has always coherently remained committed to the main shared beliefs in equity, diversity, and inclusion, cohesion and open dialogue, expanding over the years the leadership team, naming new partners alongside the founders.Their impressive portfolio embraces a wide range of sectors, from education, healthcare, scientific research, arts and culture, corporate, hospitality, recreation, and mixed-use development.The works, porous and accessible, sensitively responsive to the context and needs of the people, highest standards of quality, efficiency, and sustainability, have for over three decades enriched the social fabric, strengthening communities and receiving over 400 prestigious acknowledgments, including 18 Governor General’s Medals, one of Canada’s highest honours. Collected in three monographs, they are extensively published. My guests have both enormously contributed to the success and notoriety of the practice with award-winning realizations, recognized for architectural excellence and social impact. Blumberg, author of projects as the Centre for International Governance Innovation Campus in Waterloo, Ontario, the renovation of Princeton University, New Jersey, the Remai Modern Art Gallery, Saskatoon, Canada, involved in social justice programs, has founded Building Equality in Architecture Toronto, BEAT, an initiative to promote equity for women in architecture, and led Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI), framework of the firm’s practice. McKenna, named among Canada’s most powerful women, and the first to receive last year the Design Futures Council (DFC) Lifetime Achievement Award, has as well realized brilliant and noteworthy works, as the Royal Conservatory TELUS Centre for Performance and the renewal of the Massey Hall in Toronto, The Rotman School of Toronto and The Bradley School in New York. They have been both invested as Officers of the Order of Canada for their involvement in architecture and community. It’s from their compelling stories, both grown up, experiencing different geographical and cultural ambiances, Marianne the rapidly transforming atmosphere of Montreal and Shirley the inequitable climate of South Africa, during the period of great social and political ferment of the years ’60, that starts our conversation, and we continue by deepening the reasons that have influenced their decision to become architects. Toronto, at the time, was transforming into one of the most socially progressive, pluralistic cities, a livable, walkable, safe place, become the city of Jane Jacobs, escaping the fate of many American cities, deprived, through urban renewal, of their downtown neighbourhoods. It was there, in the studio of an American architect, Barton Myers, that over several years a deep affinity grew and bonded Shirley, Marianne and other two young architects working at the office. ‘Hungry’ to do something different and significant, the two women and two men established their own firm, an unusual hybrid, collaborative model for the time. A kind of ‘ecosystem’, that has perpetrated until these days, based on healthy competition, great respect of each other and a lot of open dialogue.Taking inspiration from a description by Roland Barthes about a perfect resonance, well adapting to their architecture, we focus on one of the firm’s main ambitions, to create buildings of high resonance with people and communities’ needs and aspirations. We analyze some of their most famous interventions on heritage cultural buildings and their talent to open them, making them able to change the urban context, greatly impacting the quality of people’s life.Complementary and sympathetic additions have allowed them to transform the rigidity and impenetrable enclosure of famous universities and campuses, injecting, in the respect of the old, new meanings and narratives, and more inclusive messages.They are currently involved in a great number of projects about affordable housing, that guarantee the best environmental and sustainable conditions and promise to broaden the community of people who will benefit from them. Another enormous master plan, Downsview Framework Plan, in collaboration with Henning Larsen Architects and SLA Architects, is currently on-going, intending to reimagine 520 acres of a former military airport in North Toronto into a place for connected neighbourhood, based on city-nature and inspired by the concept of the “15-minute neighbourhood”. Passionate commitment to build a culture of diversity and inclusion has seen the firm, and Shirley in particular, working in upgrading terrible conditions of Northern indigenous people, with a series of prototypical housing, conceived in close collaboration with leaders and community members of Fort Severn First Nation and in a recent winning proposal, Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, developed, teaming up with two aboriginal, an artist, Jordan Bennett, and an activist, Elder Lorraine Whitman, and young local architect, Omar Gandhi.Our conversation concludes on the sounding relevance represented for both of them by architecture: an opportunity for changing and improving with sensibility society, for Marianne, and an amazing privilege for giving with generosity people a choice and making life better, for Shirley.

Guest of this appointment is a young Korean architect who, endowed with a distinctive personality, has realized interesting works marked by a loud identity. Jo Jinman, graduated from Hanyang University, Seoul, with a later degree from Tsinghua University, Beijing in 2014 and founded his own, eponymous practice, Jo Jinman Architects.He has participated to national exhibitions and won several competitions, acknowledged with the ‘National Young Architect Award’ by the Ministry of Culture, Korea, 2015, ‘Korea Public Building Prize', 2016 and ‘Korea Progressive Architect Awards’, 2017, by the Ministry of Land and Infrastructure, ‘Seoul Architecture Award’, 2018, by Seoul Metropolitan Government, World Architecture Award, 2019, World Architecture Community, 'Emerging Architect Awards’ and 'Design Vanguard’, 2019, from Architectural Record.His architecture, against the limitations of a simple function, explores challenges and expectations of society, proposing energetic spaces, open to be adopted and developed over time by the people themselves and mostly seeking a continuity between indoor and outdoor. A complex simplicity characterizes his work, aiming to offer new, alternative possibilities and creative solutions.He has worked for several years as Public Architect, for Seoul Metropolitan Government, dedicating his efforts to implement connections between people, city, and nature. Adjunct Professor at the Hanyang University of Seoul (2013~2020), and in 2022 at Taylor’s University, Malaysia, he has recently published ‘Notes of a provocative architect, Jo Jinman.’The conversation starts from the period of his post-graduation, a moment represented in Seoul by a massive building development, mainly represented by economic speculations, and his need to reflect about his future responsibilities as architect towards society. A change of environment has brought him to Beijing, for a Master at Tsinghua University, and a working experience at IROJE Architects & Planners, and after some years to OMA, Rotterdam, as senior architect: two different experiences that have positively impacted his formative growth. Return back to Seoul, in 2014, he established his firm, realizing several public interventions, according to an idea of architecture continuously evolving and transforming, eliminating barriers, especially between nature and people, and encouraging relationships. An architecture able to offer hybrid spaces where unplanned things happen. Naesoop Library, a public space open to four completely different sides, growing from a hill, spontaneously fragmenting and adapting its shape to the complex topographical situation, emphasizes, attuned to his design’s philosophy, the permeability between inside and outside and the potential to enhance multiple functions, breaking the traditional paradigm of a library as austere environment of silence.We focus then on a research he led years ago, as public architect for Seoul Metropolitan Government about leftover spaces still available for public interventions in the dense Seoul central area, that has identified a series of empty highway underpasses, offering a possible multifunctional network of reconnections in the urban fabric.Two other projects, Riverside Apse, a small iconic café, and Changshin Quarry Viewing Gallery, a simple but impressive, cantilevered observation deck, have been conceived as gestures to bridge past and present, with concern about historic parts of the country, in need not to be forgotten.The special unique identity of K2 office tower, imposing its striking, refined silhouette in a congested part of Seoul, is Jo Jinman’s response to the challenging difficult limitations of a narrow site. A harmonious monolithic presence, balancing complexity and simplicity, an extremely creative, elaborate work of technology and craftsmanship, cloaked by a light mantle of repeated, perforated thin cement louvers.Restrictions and demanding situations are for Jinman particular stimulating starting points, that he brilliantly solves with extremely original and pleasant solutions, as in the case of other two residential projects, Layered Terrace House and Nine Wall House, both addressing multiple needs of three-generation families with special minimalist and elegant, distinct formal languages, embracing nature, light and various dynamic creative possibilities able to enrich daily life of the residents.

Guest of the appointment is Fernando Rodriguez, a young architect, co-founder in 2008 with Pablo Oriol of FRPO Architects, Madrid-based studio. After some years of experience at other firms and with a group of friends, they were led to establish their own practice by winning the important competition of the City of Justice, in Madrid. From that moment, they achieved brilliant results and recognitions, such as awarded Europe 40 UNDER 40, selected participants of the Golden Lion Venice Biennale Spanish Pavilion (2016), participants at the Spanish (2007, 2013, 2021) and the Ibero-American Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism (2006, 2014), finalists of FAD Awards International, of Architectural Record Design Vanguard (2012) and Architectural Review Emerging Architecture Awards (2019), nominated for the Mies van der Rohe Awards (2015) and this last Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize (2022). Their works in Spain, Mexico and the US, often winners of national and international competitions, embrace masterplans, private residences and public housing, cultural, mixed-use and industrial buildings. Their architectural gestures, characterized by formal simplicity and essentiality, include most of the times rich and complex programmatic compositions, organized with great versatility and flexibility. Attractive volumes and powerful plain geometries, conceived with technical rigour as innovative, creative ensembles of light structures and light materials, according to an idea of adaptability and obsolescence, address important issues as minimal impact, material savings and energy efficiency.Fernando Rodríguez has studied architecture at the Madrid Polytechnic, ETSAM, and at the Technische Universität of Berlin. He teaches at the Architectural Design Department of UPM ETSAM. He has also taught and has been guest critic at other international institutions, such as FAU PUCP Lima, Technische Universität Berlin, IE School of Architecture and Design and Universitat Internacional de Catalunya. The conversation starts from their recent winning proposal for the international competition ‘Magnifica Fabbrica’, an ambitious project envisaging the regeneration of an extensive peripheral area of Milan, famous for its industrial past, and the creation of a multi-use complex to host laboratories and exhibition spaces of Teatro alla Scala. We deepen the aspirations animating their regenerative vision and process inspired by a balance between technology, culture and landscape in the perspective of a reconnection with the urban living fabric. The establishment of a new industrial paradigm will open the production of Teatro alla Scala to the public, avoiding the idea of a close museum, and an extremely interesting sustainable program, based on a circular concept of water cycle, inspired by traditional Milan's agricultural fields, will link the Fabbrica with the landscape through a series of lagoons, water gardens, that will allow people to share a natural process of phytopurification.We then focus on the small pavilion created as flexible structure, providing all the conditions for aging without altering its character that was selected to be part of the Spanish Pavilion, in the occasion of the 15th International Architecture Venice Biennale. Fernando explains the importance of this small statement that, above dealing with scarcity of resources, represents an emblematic conceptual abstraction, able to express a complexity of issues with maximum simplicity.Estacion San Jose, a permeable, flexible, multiple mixed-use, public infrastructure, in the city center of Toluca, offers an occasion of relevant considerations with its clear and gentle contemporary formal radicality, able to merge in the complex urban fabric without loudly screaming.Lightness is an integral part of the firm’s vocabulary, expressed by the use of light materials, like polycarbonate, thin perforated metal screens as the completion of light structures with the aim to consistently address above aesthetic purpose, more ‘ethical’ aspirations.A series of wooden houses in different woodland locations, MO House, on the outskirts of the city of Madrid, and M1 and M2 Houses, in a mountainous location of Oregon, represents at 10 years of distance, a deep experience about the exploration of new material for construction.A powerful, wild natural context is the frame of an equally powerful gesture, one of their first projects. OS House, a black box, wrapped by zinc shutters, on a high, rocky cliff of the Bay of Biscay, dominating the view of the sea, surprises for the harmonious consonance that develops between its bold idiom and the rugged plot of land. For the conclusion of our conversation, we dwell on the proposal conceived in collaboration with the renowned studio Selgascano for the Spanish Pavilion, Expo 2022 in Dubai. An innovative, ultra-light, ultra-removable, ultra-transportable and ultra-sustainable virtuous pavilion, an extremely light steel structure suspended from nine air-inflated cylinders of recycled ETFE, exploring the largest possible volume with the least amount of material. An authentic, paradigm of minimal impact, material savings and energy efficiency, a significant choice evoking a captivating and revolutionary chapter of history, featured by the inflatables.Along with the satisfaction of the on-going ‘Magnifica Fabbrica’, a series of more than 30 eco-energy power plants around Spain and a network of interventions, ultra-sustainable small residential housing in a degraded area of Madrid, are deservedly enriching the portfolio of the young studio.

Guest of this appointment is Michael Leckie, founder in 2015 of Leckie Studio Architecture + Design. After a Bachelor’s degree in genetics, Michael received his Master of Architecture at the University of British Columbia, UBC, practicing for several years at Patkau Architects, having later a collaborative work experience with a colleague.The young multi-disciplinary practice, based in Vancouver, embraces different typologies, single-and multi-family residences, renovation, hospitality design, boutique-interiors mainly realized across North America. Essentiality and simplicity characterize their energetic realizations, displaying an attentive sensibility towards details and the act of making.Awarded several times as emerging firm by the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada, and the Institute of British Columbia, Leckie Studio has won in 2019 Architizer A+Awards, shortlisted for Dezeen and Frame awards, winning recently the 2022 Architectural Record's annual Design Vanguard. The projects of the practice are widely featured in publications including FRAME, Arcade, Wallpaper, Azure, among others.A side project company, The Backcountry Hut, established by Michael and a partner, complements the practice, creating prefabricated modular prototype shelters, flat-packed sustainable structures, simple to be assembled and easy to be transported. The conversation starts from the long journey that has led Micheal to study architecture, after a series of interesting experiences, as an undergraduate degree in genetic and microbiology and an adventurous, nomadic life, a network of knowledge and experimentations that have contributed to the individual character of his work.We speak about the initiative of realizing prefabricate, mass-customizable small-scale cabins, a challenging opportunity of hands-on approach, creative design for young architects and about a new shift that the production is gradually witnessing. For a series of contingencies, economic factors and a diffuse rethinking of certain existential values, people seem motivated to consider alternatives to the increasingly densified and prohibitive urban situation, re-evaluating more liveable and affordable suburban areas and the economic cabins, easy to be assembled by any common person with no construction experience, offer an attractive complement of this new, possible model of life.Full House, a multi-generational residence in Vancouver, a flexible space, plenty of green and natural light, proposes another interesting topic, appropriately responding to our urban dystopian scenario. The attention focuses then on a recent realisation, the University of British Columbia Arts Student Centre, winner of this year's Architectural Record’s Vanguard award, an iconic, contemporary and essential gesture, well expressing the core mission of ‘common ground’ it embodies, promising an innovative and collaborative active space. We then explore the whimsical, special atmosphere created for a new-born cosmetic clinic, a beautiful, soft, monochromatic ambience evoking freezing moments of cosmic geological silence, inspired by the ‘Quarries’ of the famous photographer Edward Burtynsky, and the surrealist works of Matthew Barney. An interior particularly original and appropriate for the treatments of the clinic, well expressing the brand’s identity, and its core values.Micheal concludes by explaining his idea of an aesthetic driven by pragmatic considerations and his aspiration to a biophilic design, in respect the client’s expectations.

Guest of the appointment is a prominent figure in the Columbian architectural scenario, Giancarlo Mazzanti, who has dedicated part of his professional life to confer a new identity, a quality environment, and social welfare to poor, unprivileged areas of his country, demonstrating that architecture can offer effective opportunities for a social redemption. Graduated from the Universidad Javeriana de Bogotá, he completed his postgraduate studies in architectural history, theory, and industrial design at the University of Florence in Italy, founding shortly afterward his practice, El Equipo de Mazzanti, in the city of Bogotá.He realized very young the famous ‘Spain Library’ in the city of Medellin, followed by a wide range of projects from schools, libraries, sports facilities, museums, masterplans and installations, that have gained wide national and international recognition.Awarded many times first prize and honorable mention in occasion of the most renowned Biennals, from the Venice Architecture Biennal to the Colombian, the Ibero-American and the Pan-american, he has won among other important recognitions, the Locus Foundation’s Global Award for Sustainable Architecture, Paris, and has the honor to have his works included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, MoMA, in New York, the Museum Georges Pompidou in Paris, and the Carnegie Museum of Art, CMOA, in Pittsburgh. He believes in an architecture as action and, as an authentic activator and mediator, proposes multi-program public spaces that stimulate and foster relationships and interactions.The conversation starts from that architecture of social value that has always seen him involved in the attempt to mend situations of severe inequality and marginalization, trying to understand how he had the chance to play a relevant role with his interventions in a difficult country like Columbia, for long time dominated by the violence of drug-wars and a diffuse, extreme poverty. We speak then about one of his first works, the simple but extremely iconic and brilliant gesture that characterizes the Spain Library, an architectural act considered by Mazzanti of real value, because not limited only to one function but embodying, as a hub of new opportunities, the potentiality to multiply public uses according to the needs of the poor neighborhood.The intriguing synergy between the topography of the terrain and the organization of his works is another fundamental part of an architecture that, above suggesting familiar presences, aspires to grow organically with the context. The famous Four Sport Scenarios, a fusion of poetry and great flexibility, a porous public building conceived to host the 2010 South American Games, with the uninterrupted sequence of undulating profiles of its roof bands, coated in several shades of green, plays on the idea of a large green canopy, perfectly integrated with the surrounding mountainous landscape. Working on the modularity system of the bands has helped to envisage and propose an adaptability that, in consideration of the rapidly changing society we are experiencing, fits, almost with the same qualities of a tree, to new situations. A building able to expand and develop over time also without the author.This operative strategy, finalised to deepen modules, aggregations of patterns, far from rigid functional programs, has been applied with prototype configurations to many elementary schools, as Timayui Kindergarten and 21, Atlantico Kindergarten, 21 different plots, in north of Colombia, in a region vulnerable to floods, responding to diverse topographical or programmatic requirements, with very limited budgets and timeframes.Two other exemplar proposals, the attractive tree-like canopy, made of translucent polycarbonate dodecahedron modules, of Forest Hope, a small but particular significant sign able to provoke a multi-generational response in a depressed periphery of Bogota, lacking of basic, public infrastructures, and Pies Descalzos School, a more ambitious realization, conceived as a modular sequence of intersected hexagons, with patios, trees and public spaces, dominating from the top of a hill an equally harsh reality of a community living in miserable conditions, have both opened a dialogue with people, gaining their trust and confidence in effective, possible changes in their unfortunate existences.According to an idea of architecture not as an object in itself but capable for using Mazzanti’s words, to “trigger behaviors and new dynamics, encouraging people to act in ways they will never think to act”, the fundamental approach of the practice to every project is the involvement of the community, in processes of co-creation, giving an effective voice to their hopes and expectations. The experience has significantly imprinted one project in particular, Marinilla Educational Park that, ensuring an authentic, vibrant interactive, social scenario based on encounters and exchanges, preserves a cultural identity.Another important topic, how to encourage a de-contextualization of the traditional cold, aseptic environment of healthcare centres, arises from a proposal of more than 10 years ago, suggesting a green and liveable atmosphere for healing experience, a vision that has been later implemented for the refurbishment of the Fundación Santa Fe, a hospital in the centre of Bogotá,The conversation concludes by touching the concept of ‘play’ and the relevant role it performs in all works as a contribution to a more human and creative architecture, far from rigid and controlled programmes of functional efficiency.

Guest of this appointment is the American architect Rick Joy, renowned for his climate responsive and landscape sensitive works. Originally from Maine, after studying and performing music for years as a professional drummer, he moved to study architecture at the University of Arizona,working after his degree in Phoenix, at the office of Will Bruder, a special, inspiring architect, particularly attentive to sustainability, who was a student and then an apprentice of Soleri at his Cosanti studio. In 1993, fascinated by the desert of Arizona, Rick Joy decided to stay permanently in Tucson, establishing his own practice Studio Rick Joy, SRJ. His first projects, mainly local residences in the Sonoran Desert, essential sculptural signs cohabitating with the flora and fauna of the context, have almost immediately gained global attention for their conceptual and sustainable approach. Ultra-luxury resorts and residences followed over the years in the most enchanting and pristine corners of the world, from the mountains in Idaho, the forests in Vermont, to the desert in Utah, or along the Pacific Coast in México, and his intimate encounter with nature has continued to transmit with generosity breathtaking experiences.Visiting professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Rice University, University of Arizona and MIT, he is extensively lecturing. He has received prestigious international recognitions, as the 2002 American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Architecture, the National Design Award from the Cooper-Hewitt Museum 2004, inducted in 2019 into the Interior Design Hall of Fame. His realizations, awarded and featured in international publications, are collected in two dedicated monographs, the recent “Studio Joy Works” and “Desert Works”, with introduction of Juhani Pallasmaa and foreword of Steven Holl.The conversation opens, recalling an important decision that saw him leave his music career and his home-town, in the heart of Maine, to study architecture at the University of Arizona, in Tucson, a totally opposite, far away city, in the Southwest of the country.The encounter with an absolutely new environment, so powerfully inspirational in its natural manifestations, as the desert, has provoked a visceral connection translated by an architecture that, according to the famous critic Juhani Pallasmaa, privileges the verb over the noun, letting the place determine and dictate the choices. The Tucson Mountain House, one of Rick Joy’s exemplar houses, a small one-family residence, set in a site of the desert surrounded by mountains, embraces in its apparent simplicity and rigorous selection of materials all those features, that evolved over time, have remained consistent with the concept of deep respect and close, mutual exchange between architecture and nature.We focus on his capability to transcend materiality, supporting more abstract experiences: all his houses, skillfully integrated into the natural setting, seem attuned to specific performances, evoking, through sensory inputs and constantly changing effects of light, emotional narrations connected with the place. We deepen the Desert Nomad House that, with its three boxes wrapped in Corten steel emerging from the earth, visualises a story of desert-abandonment made of rusty remains scattered here and there, and Tubac House, an almost atmospheric stage.His studio, in a historic barrío of Tucson, anticipated with a sort of tension in crescendo, familiar to a drum player, represents with the special atmosphere he has been able to create another beautiful story, enriching the working environment with inspiration and intimate serenity every day.The alchemy of his hospitality vocabulary, from Amangiri Resort, cradled in a secluded, untouched valley of a canyon in Utah and perfectly camouflaged with the striated Rocky Mountains on the backdrop, to the new, recent One&Only Mandarina, perched on the cliffs along a one-mile pristine beach in Riviera Nayarit, Mexico, with their deliberate simplicity, and obsessive dedication to an absolute integration with pristine, spectacular contexts, constitutes another captivating subject, for the unforgettable experiences they reserve.From virgin coasts and verdant wide expanses, we move to the crowded urban reality of Mexico City, where Tennyson 205, a five-story apartment building, stands with its interesting carved like sculptural facade and sleek external clean-lined concrete structure, reserving, despite the elegant but severe exterior, an abundant vegetated inside, with lush courtyard gardens and planters boxes, authentic luxury, for the architect that can’t be renounced.We touch then an important public experience, Princeton Transit Hall and Market, part of the redevelopment of Princeton University’s campus in New Jersey, an elegant statement that above linking past and present, is representing an extremely successful, inclusive gesture, with great satisfaction of the author. We conclude with that particularly generous and rewarding relation he loves to entertain and cultivate with his international team of young people, coming from the most diverse parts of the world.

Guest of this appointment is Morten Rask Gregersen, co-founder in 2003 with other two partners of NORD Architects, a Copenhagen-based firm, established with the aspiration to make socially relevant architecture, capable of engaging the community and creating inclusive environments. Aware of some radical changes that are affecting our society, continuously evolving, they devote substantial efforts investigating alternative solutions, suitable to the new living conditions that are gradually emerging. Their projects, based on great empathy and respect towards diversity, embrace a relevant number of healthcare realisations, learning environments and public housing.‘Co-create’ characterizes their approach, implying a broad participation of consultants and experts, with the aim to reach the best solutions and provide solid bases for the future implementation, along with the spontaneous involvement and a sense of ownership by the future users.Their works featured in two dedicated books, have been published in leading international magazines and recognised with the Mies van der Rohe Award in 2011 and 2013, respectively for their Natural Science Center and Center for Cancer and Health, along with other acknowledgements, as the City of Copenhagen Excellent Building and Urban Space in 2012.Morten Rask Gregersen is regular speaker and lecturer in academic as well as other contexts, both in Denmark and internationally.The conversation starts by deepening the idea of ‘co-creating architecture’, an ideal, according to which the office was conceived and founded as an open practice, far from traditional introverted models. At that time the team was particularly involved in democratic refurbishments of complex social areas, a commitment remained unchanged over the years. We then explore that concept of healing architecture they support and encourage, epitomised by one of their earliest and most famous works, the Cancer Center in Copenhagen, exemplar of an innovative design, striving to shift the focus from illness to cure, without stigmatising the patient, offering through a welcoming, familiar ambience positive future perspectives.Vardheim Healthcare Centre, in a municipality of Norway, a new centre embracing various healthcare programmes, is another project of interest among the new generation of their welfare public proposals, rejecting the appearance of a massive, intimidating institution. The organisation of the human-scale architecture, reproducing the typology of a village constituted by small entities, develops opportunities of cross-fertilisation of knowledge between different specialisations, inspiring a homely atmosphere. Two Alzheimer’s Villages, respectively in Oslo, Norway, and in Dax, France, address with sensitivity and emphatic attention the delicate conditions of people affected by memory’s problems. Both the environments dignify this situation with small clusters of houses rich of green courtyards and recreational activities, re-creating a micro community and intending to maintain a continuity with the normality of the previous everyday life.Several considerations are reserved to their selection of natural materials, their responsible sustainable approach foreseeing efficient, long lasting design solutions.Fusing learning environments with urban spaces and local community’s life is another purpose they try to implement coherently with all their interventions, convinced that school has to be more open, an active place inside and outside, where creativity, synergy and healthy relations with the community evolve. The importance of learning especially in practice, through shared knowledge is a pivotal training element highlighted by the new school in the historic Meatpacking District of Copenhagen. Another open learning platform, the Natural Science Centre, realised in central Denmark, just at the beginning of their practice, emphasises with its intentional iconic shape the value of new methods of teaching natural science, inspiring young generations to learn this discipline immensely relevant for our future.The conversation concludes mentioning a new complex of student housing, in Gellerup, Aarhus, a poor, difficult residential area currently under redevelopment, where they are trying to reserve as much area as possible to give young residents the opportunity to initiate and be engaged in some activities.

Cazú Zegers, guest of this appointment, is a leading architect in the Latin America panorama. Finished her studies at the Pontificia Universidad Católica in Valparaíso, Chile, she founded her own Santiago-based studio, Cazú Zegers Arquitectura, distinguishing herself, since the very beginning of her independent practice, with a special idiom, closely connected with local culture and territory. Her first house, Casa Cala, a compendium of poetry and territory, embracing, according to her methodology, a gesture, a figure, and a form, was rewarded the prestigious Buenos Aires Biennal of Architecture recognition in 1993. Convinced of the fundamental importance for Chile and Latin America to find and develop an own expression, representing their greatest value, their territory, landscape and traditions, she has elaborated a proper local language, combining vernacular with contemporary references, proposing new narratives of high impact, with low-tech sustainable building solutions. Her light way to inhabit the space perpetrates the profound respect that indigenous people nurture towards their natural habitat.Her distinctive architecture, ranging from private residences, large hotels and sacred buildings to territorial planning, ruralization and multicultural projects in close interaction with local communities, has been internationally published, acknowledged the Grand Prix of Versalles, the National Geographic Unique Lodge of the World and the Latin American Grand Prize for Architecture, among others. Extremely active, Cazú Zegers has been founder and promoter of many initiatives and organisations, as A.I.R.A. Workshop, the Foundation and Center for Geopoetic Studies, later re-founded as a Foundation +1000, creator of “invisible workshop", referencing the invisibility of women artists in Chile, named for her determined involvement among the Latin American architects who break down barriers by Forbes Magazine in 2020. Frequently lecturer in Chile and abroad, visiting professor at Yale University, Chile Brand Ambassador in 2018, she has been selected part of Architecture A-List of ELLE Decor, awarded the Dora Riedel distinction for her innovative work, opening new paths in the profession.Passionate of arts, she has chosen architecture and we start the conversation focalising on the need she urgently felt, many years ago, for a practice more open, rekindled by multiple, different energies. We dwell on her interest in an ethno-architectural investigation, a passion she has cultivated since very young, travelling and sharing time and experiences with indigenous communities and we reserve then a series of considerations about difficult situations, as prejudices against women as architects, that have led her to react with great determination and positivity, founding her own independent practice and introducing with success her own idiom, establishing for other women an extremely encouraging and significant example. Casa Cala, her first house built, rewarded the Buenos Aires Biennal of Architecture recognition, is emblematic of her new conceptual reflection on an architecture nurtured by nature. Object of another important reflection is Kawelluco ruralisation, an extensive land of over 1000ha, between forests and a river, of which only 400ha has been developed, leaving the rest as park, minimising roads for cars and implementing tracks for horses. Zegers’ efforts to preserve the natural context, almost completely self-sufficient, supporting culture, and helping the survival of local community, show, after more than 20 years, the farsightedness of her sustainable vision, guaranteeing today an area, only 15 minutes from an important city where it is possible to feel the experience to be in the wilderness.Kawelluco is a seismic territory, like large part of Chile, and to inhabit in a light and precarious way is a paradigm that must drive selection of materials and construction systems, as demonstrate the simple, minimal structures, immersed in the forest, adopted by Cazú. The love-story between Cazú and Chilean nature has inspired another famous, extremely seductive romance between her architecture and landscape. In a powerful, magical natural corner of Patagonia arises, like one of the many dunes created by the strong wind, Hotel of the Wind, an addition that, perfectly harmonised with the spectacular context, interacts as an ‘old fossil’ with the pristine, uncontaminated setting.Other two houses are explored as strongly representative of an architecture able to transform and ‘whisper’. House Emerald, conceived for the mother, a structure open, at the core and along the four sides, to the landscape, embodies and transmits the aspiration to live completely free, without restrains and enclosures, while Casa Soplo, the so called ’ Whisper House’, seems to nourish a conversation with the emotional part of the inhabitants. The conversation concludes touching her active involvement in collaborative, educational programs for young, as the Andes Workshop, an experimental exercise she has conceived with Grupo Talca, offering experiences for students, graduated architects, combining the opportunity to approach local culture and processes, living and working 2 months with a multidisciplinary team, in contact with the community.

Guests of the podcast are two young Mexican architects, Loreta Castro-Reguera and José Pablo Ambrosi, co-founders in 2010 of their Mexico City-based architecture and urban design studio, Taller Capital, TC. Deeply concerned about a dramatic water problem that is afflicting Mexico, and the capital in particular, a water management system insufficient to solve extensive and frequent floods during the rainy season and, at the same time, unable to satisfy the water’s need of a population of more than 22 million residents, they have started a relevant research-based exploration, since the first years of the university, that has led them to develop solutions capable to transform water management and culture. As integrative support of the underground hydraulic drainage engineering system adopted for the city, one of the largest in the world, their philosophy, centered on the efficiency of ‘hydro-urban acupuncture’, has inspired small interventions, integrating retroactive soft hydraulic infrastructures with public space, as recreational parks, implemented with low budgets in areas of dense populated, neglected peripheries. Their research, started from the academia, has continued with the support of important scholarships and prizes, and with the collaborations with universities and other institutions.For the important challenges they addressed and their sustainable and innovative approach, they have received prestigious awards such as the Global LafargeHolcim Award Gold 2018 and LafargeHolcim Award Gold 2017 for region Latin America, shortlisted for the 2020 Architectural Review Emerging Architecture Award, and winners last year of the Architectural League’s annual Emerging Voices, finalists for the World Prize of the 2020 Quito Architecture Bienial and recipients of the silver medal at the 2017 Mexico City Bienial for their Eco Pavillion installation.Loreta, after a Master in Architecture form Mendrisio Academy of Architecture and a Master in Urban Design with Distinction from the Harvard GSD, has been invited as guest professor and speaker to several institutions in America and Europe and has written essays and articles for several magazines and books.We start our conversation with curiosity from my side to deepen the main reasons that have led Mexico City, born like a settlement on water, to confront this crucial, paradoxical situation of excess of water during the rainy season and severe scarcity of drinking water. We dedicate then attention to their innovative, resilient approach to water’s management, focusing on a project in Nogales, Represo, that, far from the coerciveness of a hard system, integrates infrastructural solutions with recreational, interactive spaces, offering a new paradigm of adaptability and trying to get the idea accepted of respecting natural rhythms.We dwell then on the other two parks, realised one in Tijuana, Baja California, and the other, Parque Bicentenario, in Sierra Guadalupe, plus the Parque Hídrico Quebradora, still under construction, all adopting different systems of water management but sharing a common concept, intending to combine place of treatment and recreational place for people.The aesthetically appealing act of respect paid to marginalised and ignored neighbourhoods by these public water treatment-parks, attentively curated, despite limited budgets and the austerity of materials, always local and most of the time recycled, represents another crucial point, able to confer an identity to these severely lacerated urban and social fabrics, engaging the community, restituting dignity and nurturing a sense of belonging.Loreta and José talk also about the great determination that has led them to realise their Eco Pavilion, a meaningful installation conceived with the deliberate intention to raise public awareness about the giant underground drainage tunnel system of Mexico City and the Hydric Pavilion, another interesting opportunity, strategically manipulated, for divulging water culture.We conclude talking about a small intervention in the town of Juchitan Oaxaca, affected by a terrible earthquake happened in 2017: a project of great respect toward the community, embodying multiple opportunities of rebirth and their attempt to offer, with their residential works in Mexico City a daily life more in dialogue with nature even in the congested context of the megalopolis.

Guest of this encounter is Pat Hanson, an architect who is considered one of the most dynamic from the new Canadian school, founder in 2005 of gh3*, her own Toronto-based firm, a multi-disciplinary practice that, embracing architecture, urban planning and landscape, has realised brilliant institutional, infrastructural and residential projects, where the three different disciplines integrate, meaningfully complementing each other.Their environmentally and socially sustainable works, extremely relevant for their effort to reach low-carbon objectives, have achieved international recognition, awarded, among many acknowledgements, four Governor General’s Medal in Architecture by the Royal Architecture Institute of Canada (RAIC), the highest recognition for building architecture in Canada, 6 Canadian Architect Award of Excellence and Merit, and an honorable mention, selected as World's Most Innovative Companies of 2020 in Architecture by Fast Company. Pat in 2016 was also mentioned by ArcVision Prize for Women in Architecture. Currently she serves on the Waterfront Design Review Panel, Toronto and is a senior advisor for Building Equality in Architecture, Toronto (BEAT). She has taught at University of Toronto and University of Waterloo, often lecturing in Europe and North America.The conversation starts deepening a strategy that Pat, as expert communicator, resorts to with her architecture, for stimulating civic awareness and nurturing public participation, with reference to Borden Park Pavilion and Stormwater Facility.We focus then on Stormwater Facility, a rainwater harvesting and treatment infrastructure, that, as leading environmental intervention, talks about the future of urban hydrology with a powerful sculptural monolithic statement, but doesn’t forget the past, taking inspiration from a poetical image of water against a stone well, and Pat elaborates on this integration of pragmatism and poetry recurrent in her works.Boathouse, a dream house-studio for a photographer, a perfect synergy between nature and built environment, conceived in an enchanting corner, at the shores of the Stony Lake in Ontario, responds to the architect’s ideal of a building open towards natural context and environmentally self-sufficient.Exemplar of this aspiration and commitment to minimise environmental footprint is anotherpluri-awarded project of great environmental and sustainable relevance, The Borden Park Natural Swimming Pool, the first chemical free public outdoor pool, based on hydrobotanical filters, realised in Canada, more than seven years ago.We dedicate then some considerations on how the practice prioritizes the importance to confer dignity to civic buildings, mentioning the challenging retrofitting of Windermere Fire Station and Kathleen Andrew’s Transit Garage, a 50,000 m2 powerful, long rigorous sign, wrapped by a skin of stainless steel, able to elevate a conventionally utilitarian building and to offer a ‘political gesture of collegiality through architecture’.June Callwood Park, winner of an international competition in honour of a famous Canadian journalist, author, and social activist, is the final project we talk about, highlighting the originality of the conceptual approach, inspired by one of the last voice messages of the journalist, translated as voice wave pattern with great creativity into the physical reality of the park, with meticulous attention to details and variety of thematic areas and selection of materials.

Guest of this appointment is Horacio Cherniavsky co-founder in 2017 with his work and life partner, Viviana Pozzoli, of Equipo de Arquitectura, a young studio based in Asunción, Paraguay. They are both practicing and teaching architects and, despite the young age, have already developed a number of brilliant works, receiving significant recognitions: selected by the Latin American Architecture Biennial 2019 to exhibit their work in Pamplona, Spain, they won with UHP Synagogue one category of the XXI Pan-American Biennial of Architecture of Quito, Equador, finalist with another work Caja de Tierra, winner of the Frame Awards 2019 as Small Office of the Year, finalists of Architectural Review Emerging Architects Awards 2020, they have been chosen by ArchDaily as one of the Best New Practices of 2021. Their projects, mainly result of winning local and international competitions, have been extensively published by architectural magazines and digital platforms. Criteria for responsibly building and deep respect for the context in its pre-existence inform their conceptual approach and realisations, celebrating an affordable architecture socially accessible and suitable to the harsh conditions of their subtropical climate.Our conversation starts, trying to understand the complex and difficult historical vicissitudes of Paraguay, a country of magical beauty, remained for long time ‘the periphery of the periphery’, experiencing poverty and cultural isolation, and we continue deepening the aspirations of a generation of Paraguayan architects, to which Equipo de Arquitectura belongs, driven by desire to preserve, feed and evolve a tradition, aspiring to a social and cultural transformation. A movement based on affordability, self-sufficiency and the creative exploration of a limited palette of materials. Horacio traces back his first experiences, leading him to the specific choices that characterise his practice, explaining what it means to be coherent with the principles embraced in a country undergoing rapid expansion.A quote of Louis Kahn, “The sun did not know how great it was until it hit the side of a building”, and a basic equation, “Dreams + Necessity + Available resources” introduce with originality and poetry Earth Box, their 45sqm workspace, an extremely beautiful presence, a dream materialised around two trees, incorporated, as always, with reverential respect into the development, where light is the element that intensifies and shapes space. The naked walls of the monolithic structure in the colour of red clay are built of rammed earth, a traditional technique, perfectly responding the climate conditions and offering several other advantages above the superb integration with the natural context and the unique atmosphere and textural experience that reserves.Its physicality seems to perfectly satisfy a wish that Juhani Pallasmaa expresses in ‘The Eyes of the Skin’, ‘re-sensitize architecture through a sense of materiality, hapticity, texture’. This ‘primordial architecture’, as Horacio defines it, allowing to appreciate colours, smells, to stimulate experiences related to our senses, has inspired the creation of the suburban block of the Child Care Center, a place rich of patios and vegetation, as the architect informs, conceived to mould a sensitivity since early childhood, ‘where kids learn by playing and play to learn’. Openness and porosity are characteristics that imbue all the firm’s architecture and a constant dialogue between natural and artificial, emphasised by minimising architectural interventions, is a fundamental axiom nurturing daily life in all their residences, as the ‘Patios House’ and the ’Intermediate House’ well demonstrate. Art, music, philosophy, literature and film are often used by Horacio as references to support and illustrate his interventions, and focusing on KingFish, a small project that is an authentic showcase of different use of material and construction possibilities about recycling, results particularly interesting the reference to the ‘Shadow Sculptures’ of the two artists Tim Noble and Sue Webster, assemblages of rubbish, scrap metal that, backlit, project amazing silhouettes and profiles, an extremely original and important message about the beauty that ‘waste’ can reserve, if used with creativity and competence.Our conversation concludes reflecting on an inspiring, brilliant work, the Synagogue at the Hebraic Union of Paraguay, realised following an international competition's winning proposal, an impressive transformation of an old existing construction, reached through few precise gestures and few materials expressed in their true nature and most authentic strength.

Guest of this appointment is Soo K. Chan, founding principal and design director of SCDA Architects, a multi-disciplinary firm integrating architecture, interior, landscape and product design. The practice, established in Singapore in 1995, has realized projects across five continents, from master planning, resorts and hotels, high-rise luxury residences, commercial and institutional buildings, and private homes, receiving prestigious awards, three Royal Institute of British Architects International prizes (RIBA)including for International Excellence, three American Institute of Architects (AIA) International and AIA NY Awards, the Singapore President’s Design Award, the SIA-Getz Prize for Emerging Architecture, and nine Chicago Athenaeum awards. The works presented also at the International Venice Architecture Biennale, have been extensively published in international magazines, collected in several books and monographs. Designer also for famous companies, as Poliform, Soo Chan has created the brand Soori, embracing a line of refined furniture, and identifying a new lifestyle for hospitality and residence, whose pilot project is the tropical resort Soori, in west Bali. Extremely elegant architect, grown up in Asia and educated in America, on several occasions developer of his realisations, he has interpreted Eastern culture and aesthetic with particular, modern sensitivity, introducing a new-tropicalism, able to adapt to globalism.After a consideration about the different geographical and academic environments that have shaped his cultural growth, with experiences between Asia and US, leading to find his own architectural language, we linger on features and criteria that distinctively characterize, even evolving, his architecture, aiming to re-create in verticality a lifestyle peculiar of single houses, since Lincoln Modern, one of his first residential high-rises in Singapore, built in 1999.Indoors and outdoors mostly merge together, through porous interventions that blur boundaries and encourage interaction between the parts: Soori Bali resort, on the edge of the ocean, in a magic corner between mountains and rice fields, expresses this aspiration of Soo Chan, translating though its formal language, reduced to the essentiality, the authentic soul of the place. One question concerns why he felt the need to play the role of developer, in addition to that of architect, interior designer and landscaper, another regards how the design emphasizes the sensorial experience, reinforcing through a hierarchical composition of ambiances the tension towards the powerful, magnificent presence of the ocean. Skyterrace@Dawson, a re-conceptualization for social housing, commissioned to SCDA in 2006 by the Singaporean Government, recipient of prestigious recognitions, suggests other interesting considerations. Five residential towers, ranging from 40 to 43 storeys, linked by sky landscaped bridges and featuring lush greenery, offered a sustainable and high-quality environment and an innovative multigenerational opportunity of life, setting a paradigm for later low-budget public housing. Deepening Soo Chan’s lifestyle ideal embracing natural elements, even in cold climate, we dwell on his elegant and refined recent residential condominium Soori High Line, a few blocks from the prominent New York High Line, in the art district of West Chelsea. The conversation concludes on Tenda, one of the last projects, apparently the counterpart of Soori Bali, a series of simple, sustainable accommodations.

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.

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.

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 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.

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 particularFogo 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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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’.

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.

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.

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.

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’.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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’.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

George Ranalli is a renowned New York-based Architect, who has founded his practice in 1977. For over 40-years, he has worked on a diverse range of projects from civic masterplans, institutional and public buildings, private residences and interiors, as well as, product design. Alongside the studio, he has spent a long academic career: Professor of Architecture at Yale University, and later Dean of City College, for over 16-years, at Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture. His architecture is characterized by meticulous attention to detail, tradition and craftsmanship. His work has been displayed in famous museums and his exhibitions have travelled the world. Anne Valentino, Ranalli’s life and work partner, is a specialized Neuropsychologist and Professor, and for more than 35 years, as Associate Partner of the firm, has added her contribution on spatial organization of interiors and as an expert in human behavior in relation to the built environment. A couple who truly complements one another: their practice constitutes a really interdisciplinary partnership between behavioral science and architecture.

“Everything is Urbanism” with Irene Luque Martín, MVRDVOur guest today is Irene Luque Martín. She is Project Leader at MVRDV Urban Studio, one of the eight studios of the Dutch architectural firm in Rotterdam and is a PhD in Planning and Urban Technologies awarded Cum Laude and with an ‘International Mention’ during her stay at the Centre of Urban Studies at the University of Amsterdam. She is an active member of several institutions such as ISOCARP, Complex System Society and AESOP where she is part of coordination team of the Young Academic (YA) network, as well a visiting scientist at the University of Twente. Her main role in these institutions is to bring academia outcomes into daily practice methods and research.Looking at her thesis and current expertise, focused on understanding the role and application of urban technologies (Geographical Information Systems, artificial intelligence, urban simulations and visualization tools) in urban planning, she is the ideal guest to talk about the future of our built environment as a whole. Because if we look closer at urbanism, we soon understand why one of MVRDV’s claims is actually “Everything is urbanism”. What was also the motto of Winy Maas, when he was the Guest Editor of DOMUS in 2019. MVRDV Urban Studio, lead by Studio Director Enno Zuidema, is active in many different countries and with a broad range of projects, that go from participatory masterplans in Germany including proposals for the resilience of the San Francisco Bay Area to the Supervision for the center of Eindhoven to research on Urban Air Mobility (UAM), where Irene has been involved.https://www.mvrdv.nl/https://www.mvrdv.nl/about/team/19694/irene-luque-mart%C3%ADn

Richard Hassell is an Australian-born architect and artist who has lived in Singapore since 1989. He is the co-founding director, alongside Wong Mun Summ, of the Singapore-based architectural firm, WOHA. Known for their dedication to environmental and social issues, they tackle problems of the 21st century with innovative new design and urban solutions. Their work embraces diverse highly influential projects, from residential towers, resorts and hotels, public housing and institutional buildings, to masterplanning. It has been the Aga Kahn Award for Architecture in 2007 to establish their reputation and notoriety as authors of naturally ventilated skyscrapers for urban tropical context. Many other prestigious international achievements have followed, attesting the precious contribution of their projects, as milestone of sustainability. Richard will share his expertise, talking about topics today so much at heart, sustainability embodied in ‘high-density high-amenity’, ‘macro-architecture and micro-urbanism’, and, as a leader of outstanding skyscrapers, he will talk about his vision on how we can build, embracing more responsible, healthier choices, blending living green with vernacular traditions.

Erieta Attali was born in Tel Aviv and has a PhD in photography. She currently resides between New York and Paris, photographing the work of contemporary architects from around the world.She has been teaching in some of the world’s leading universities, including Columbia University in NYC, the Technical University of Munich (TUM), The University of Tokyo amongst others and she began her career in the ‘90s as a leading expert in archaeological photography using UV and IR radiation technology. About 20 years ago she came across the work of the Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, and since then she has focused on architectural photography. She crafts images with a unique style, working with film and a Linhof camera, that means big format, with a panora-mic 6x12 cm back. One of the basic ingredients of Erieta Attali’s photographs is natural light. She is prepared to wait for hours and even days for just the right light. And her choice of analogue photography takes her into a domain that we could define as slow photography. An insightful and comprehensive ap-proach that is far from the frenetic pace that dominates our overloaded consumption of images, flattened out into rapid sequences on digital media. It is not by chance that looking at Erieta’s wonderful images one can feel the presence of time. In our talk she anticipates her new research on cities and the interaction with people that started actually in Paris during the lockdown and gives new perspectives on urban space. She also tells us also about her upcoming exhibition projects with new concepts as well as her upcoming aca-demic activities.

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.

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.

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.

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/

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.

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