Archinect Sessions

Since North Carolina passed the controversial bill known as HB-2 at the end of March—requiring transgender people to use bathrooms that coincide with the sex listed on their birth certificate, and forbidding city or county legislatures from passing counter-measures that protect against LGBT discrimination—the state has lost an estimated $40 million in business investment, and researchers project that total annual costs due to the bill could tally $5 billion. On May 9, the US Department of Justice sued North Carolina, stating that the law violated the Civil Rights Act, among others. North Carolina filed two lawsuits the same day to defend the measure. Among the many other performers and businesses that have divested from North Carolina in protest of the law, AIA's South Atlantic Region (including Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina) announced on April 25 that it would no longer hold its September conference in Wilmington. You can read their statement here. Former AIA Georgia President Gregory Walker, a

This week on the podcast, Donna, Ken and Amelia discuss the uncertain future of downtown Atlanta's brutalist Public Library (the last building Marcel Breuer designed), how Shigeru Ban's relief efforts in Ecuador relate to his celebrity, and the emergence of a heavy-hitting lobbyist group for driverless cars in the US.   Shownotes: News pieces discussed in this show: Google, Uber, Lyft, Ford and Volvo join forces to lobby for autonomous vehicles Shigeru Ban arrives in Ecuador to train locals in relief architecture Breuer's Brutalist library in downtown Atlanta faces demolition The campaign to save Marcel Breuer's Grosse Central Pointe Library, started on Archinect Venice Biennale director Alejandro Aravena: "Our challenge must be to go beyond architecture."

This week we’re joined by special guest co-host Aaron Betsky, author of Queer Space: Architecture and Same-Sex Desire and Building Sex: Men, Women, Architecture & the Construction of Sexuality. As a strong presence in the architectural discourse of gender and sexuality since the 1990s, Betsky discusses with us a few of our recent Features published under April's special editorial theme, Sex, including: The enduring influence of "Playboy Architecture" Screen/Print #41: "Family Planning" from Harvard Design Magazine The gimp room, the padded cell, the medical office: inside the world of Kink.com Transparent Motives: the ins and outs of sex-specific architecture "The difference between porn and erotica is the lighting." – One-to-One #19 with Jake Jaxson, CEO and Creative Director at CockyBoys Betsky was last on the podcast in his current professional capacity as the dean at the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture at Taliesin, to talk about the school's then-uncertain future. You can listen to that ep

The sudden death of Dame Zaha Hadid could not also mean the end of Zaha Hadid Architects. With major projects still ongoing all over the world, the firm had to keep things running strong, focusing on the future while managing grief. After working with Zaha for nearly thirty years, Patrik Schumacher has now taken over leadership at the firm, and joins us on the podcast to discuss what it was like collaborating with her "killer instinct", and how he can continue honoring the "DNA" of her work.

We're joined by original 'Nector and senior editor Orhan Ayyüce to discuss Zaha Hadid's legacy and his recent piece on LA's industrial urbanism, part of our architectural travel guide through cities worldwide. As a student at SCI-Arc, Ayyüce was first taken aback by Hadid during a visiting lecture she gave in 1985, before she had completed any built work: "I was very impressed by her at that lecture and her strengths and vulnerabilities made a lasting place in my memory bank." We share the impressions she and her work had on us personally, as well as Archinect's memory bank.

Last week we witnessed the loss of Dame Zaha Hadid, one of architecture's most formidable and prolific talents. We'll be devoting a later podcast episode to remembering her and honoring her work. Until then, we'll continue catching you up with the most significant architecture news from the past week. This episode we discuss Alejandro Aravena's Pritzker acceptance speech (and the designs he's giving away for free), how NASA is experimenting with inflatable space houses, how we "crave" public space, and Nicholas Korody joins us to discuss the cockroach of unpaid architecture internships (they just won't die). Shownotes: Zaha Hadid Dies at Age 65 The NASA-grade work of Garrett Finney Quilian Riano's Who Owns Space project   Woman calls out Florida Governor Rick Scott in a Starbucks

Collecting the most important news of the past week – that is, from the recording date's perspective of March 30th, the day before Zaha Hadid's sudden death – this episode brings stories on: the winning below-grade skyscraper (sinkscrapers?) of eVolo's Skyscraper Competition; a long-lost Le Corbusier tapestry returning to the Sydney Opera House; another twist on co-habitation in the co-work startup, PodShare; Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects taking "revenge" on Charles Moore's Hood Museum; and our future of eating sandwiches while robots do our work.  We'll discuss the late Dame Zaha Hadid's legacy on next week's podcast.

This past week on Archinect, we heard Thom Mayne's story of "jazz, sex, and the alienation of singular genius" in Julia Ingalls' interview with the Morphosis lead, and hypothesized on the future of architectural work in a world of full automation and universal basic income, based onNicholas Korody's interview with the co-authors behind Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World without Work. Both Ingalls and Korody join us on the podcast to delve deeper into these pieces, and share some juicy tidbits that couldn't make the cut to print.

While Amelia is away this week, Alexander Walter fills in and joins Ken, Donna and me for a conversation about competitions, in a celebration of the re-launch of our sister site Bustler. In addition to discussing the new website and its new features, we also talk about the controversial new "Border Wall" competition and look at some current competitions worth checking out. 

Spring is just around the corner, and in the interest of new beginnings and rebirth, Archinect Sessions is taking this week off to get some much needed rest. The market is hot right now, and we're running on all cylinders just to keep up. We'll be back next week with a brand new episode, devoted specifically to competitions in honor of Bustler's new redesign, and until then, we've got a special half-episode to tide you over. Paul and I run through the recent news and recommend a few episodes to get caught up with to while we're on break (links to all in the shownotes below).

A new Texas state law going into effect on August 1 will allow concealed handguns to be brought into public university campus buildings. This isn't sitting well with many members of the public university system, as educators and administrators are now tasked with regulating the presence of guns inside studios and classrooms, and fear that such a law will scare people away from the school (not to mention the obvious safety concerns). Dean of the architecture school, Frederick "Fritz" Steiner, has been critical of the law from its inception, and faced with having to enforce it as campus policy, was prompted to leave UT-Austin for the deanship at PennDesign. While not the sole reason for his resignation, Steiner is adamant that such a law is simply not good for architecture education and studio culture, and joins us on the podcast to discuss.

The tragedy of Flint, Michigan's water crisis seems to worsen with every newly uncovered detail. As a manmade public health crisis provoked by willful denial and compromised safety standards, the entirely preventable poisoning of Flint's water supply with lead stands not only as a failure to care for the citizens of one city, but as a dreadful harbinger for the U.S.'s deteriorating infrastructure networks. Like any concerned citizen, Filnt-based architect Kurt Neiswender sees this as a call to action to help any way he can. Kurt joins us on the podcast this week to discuss how architects might apply their skills to improve such a monstrous situation, and address the real limitations the profession has when it comes to these scenarios.

We swear, no BIG or Trump on this episode. We discuss the donation of Lautner's breathtaking Sheats-Goldstein house, complete with jungle, nightclub and infinity tennis court, to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, to become the museum's first acquired piece of architecture (along with a sizable endowment for maintenance). The U.S. saw a major step forward into the realm of driverless cars, as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration told Google that its computers in autonomous vehicles could legally be counted as drivers, while the internet ogled Nissan's self-parking office chairs. It's also that time of year again, when the AIA announces the keynote speakers for its National Convention (check out our podcast on last year's convention in Atlanta), and this year's threw us for a loop – first, actor Kevin Spacey was named as Day 1 speaker, and praised for his "disruption" of "appointment television". Neri Oxman will give the Day 2 keynote, a very solid choice if not somewhat experimental for the

Long-time Archinector and reliably sane commentator Will Galloway joins us from his base in Tokyo to discuss the weekly news, including his interview with Assemble, crucially taking place mere weeks before they won the Turner Prize. Otherwise, while news from Bjarke Ingels Group commanded the feistiest comment threads – with renderings of BIG's spiraling Hudson Yards tower provoking debate over craft in skyscrapers, and the firm being selected to design the Serpentine Pavilion for 2016 in their last last eligible year – the last week included big news for firms both star-studded and unknown. MoMA PS1 named Escobedo Solíz Studio as the 2016 winner of its Young Architects Program, for their "Weaving the Courtyard" submission, while Dame Zaha Hadid received her RIBA Gold Medal (the first woman to win solo). And for you planning wonks, we throw in a brief discussion of a controversial proposed ballot measure to halt big developments in Los Angeles. 

Virtual Reality is very much here, in all its messy, beautiful, uncanny glory. The gee-whiz factor notwithstanding, the technology holds a bevy of architectural applications and implications, and manages to hold a mirror up to the built environment to show us things that we couldn't understand before. This episode, we discuss a host of recent VR stories, from the narrative VR journalism of Emblematic Group to Thorsten Wiedemann's VR performance art, an AR helmet that streamlines the construction site and VR-value-added rendering services for firms. Joining us on this VR-trip is Rebecca Howard, freshly returned from New York where she developed video content for the Times, and helped them launch their entry into VR content.

Back in December of last year, the Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture launched in Shenzhen and Hong Kong, featuring an exhibition curated by Los Angeles-based critic Mimi Zeiger and designer Tim Durfee. Their show, “Now, There: Scenes from the Post-Geographic City,” winner of the Biennale’s Bronze Dragon, reconsiders what makes up today’s idea of a “city”, specifically regarding our digital and virtual presences, as well as contemporary issues of globalized economies. Mimi and Tim joined Paul and I in Archinect’s podcasting studio to talk about the exhibition, and introduce a discussion recorded in Shenzhen among the participants of “Now, There" and one of the Biennale’s curators, Aaron Betsky. Their conversation, “Where is now; When is then” makes up the meat of this Bonus Session. The exhibition features work by Besler & Sons, Walton Chiu, Tim Durfee and Ben Hooker (with Jenny Rodenhouse), John Szot Studio, m-a-u-s-e-r, and Metahaven, as well as texts by Joanne McNeil, Enrique Ramirez, and Theres

For our 50th (!!!) episode, we discuss the biggest news items from the last week – everything from the latest BIG and DS+R shake-ups to a surprisingly controversial Seattle homeless shelter – and it's been a doozy. We take a look at: The "sphincter from which digital art issues" (according to one Archinect commenter), aka DS+R's new Berkeley Art Museum; the controversy surrounding BIG's latest client (referred to here as the Washington "Pigskins"); recent discussions of diversity issues that have arisen on the site; the 25-year old who won a big World War I memorial design contest; MoMA's updated expansion plans; Architecture for Humanity's potential second life; and more.

As last week's episode was taken up by Pritzker-hooplah, this episode takes a look back at the major news items of the last week(ish) and gets you caught up with what's been happening on Archinect. We discuss: the recent photo exhibition on homelessness at USC (which closes tomorrow!); the Treasury Department's controversial new practice of tracking and identifying secret buyers of luxury housing; how BIG's 2 World Trade Center is now in limbo after "anchor tenant" Rupert Murdoch has pulled out; the demolition of yet another not-beloved-enough Brutalist building; the big ol' chunk of cash the U.S. now has to prepare for driverless cars; and the ongoing debacle over the Tokyo Olympic Stadium, as Zaha Hadid Architects accuses Kengo Kuma Associates of copying their design, while Japan won't pay ZHA until they hand over the design copyrights.

When news broke yesterday that Alejandro Aravena was the winner of this year's Pritzker Architecture Prize, reactions were generally positive, but a bit conflicted. Aravena's most known, and cited by the Pritzker, for his work on social housing projects in his home base of Santiago de Chile, where he operates as the executive director of the "do tank", ELEMENTAL. And few would contest that his work is worthy of the prize, despite the fact that he's only 48. But Aravena was also a Pritzker juror from 2009 - 2015, serving alongside jurors who ultimately chose to cite him, and he isn't the first winner to have previously served on the jury. This makes it impossible to ignore criticism that the award tends to stay within a pretty tight-knit circle of practitioners. Often described as the most prestigious architecture award out there, what is the point of the prize nowadays, and is its significance justified? We wanted to know more about how the Pritzker is awarded, and its self-awareness in the eye of architects

Architect, artist, and experimental preservationist Jorge Otero-Pailos has created scents for Philip Johnson's Glass House, removed centuries of dust from the inside of Trajan's Column with latex, and is the newly appointed director of the Historic Preservation program at Columbia University's GSAPP, where he also began the "Future Anterior" journal. And this week, he joins us on the podcast to discuss ideas that he mulls over constantly in his work – what role should originality play in architecture? What's at stake when discourse and criticism come to rely more on representations than the in situ structure? And what role do media and virtual realities play in all of this? This episode is brought to you by BQE ArchiOffice. Check out their offer for Archinect Sessions listeners at bqe.com/startups.