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For Episode 188 of the A is for Architecture Podcast, Nele De Raedt and Maarten Delbeke discuss some small parts of the 2025 book, Beauty in Architecture: Perspectives from Theory and Practice, which they edited and published with Bloomsbury.  Beauty in Architecture connects ideas from across practice and theory that consider how beauty might again become central to architectural discourse. Beauty has re-emerged in public debate, but sadly it remains contested in critical discussions, often treated with suspicion – as an issue of politics, more or less. But, as we discuss, perhaps by taking beauty seriously, architecture might permit of – and articulate - broader reflections on values, identity, class, ecology and the notion of a shared cultural life. Nele is Associate Professor in History, Theory and Criticism of Architecture at the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium and is on LinkedIn and can be found on Instagram at her research group super_positions. Maarten is Professor in the History and Theory of Architecture at ETH Zürich in Switzerland and is on Instagram. The book is linked above. + Music credits: ⁠Bruno Gillick 

In Episode 187 of the A is for Architecture Podcast, Fernando Lara, professor of architecture at the Weitzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania, discusses his book, Spatial Theories for the Americas: Counterweights to Five Centuries of Eurocentrism, published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in 2024. Spatial Theories for the Americas critiques the dominance of Eurocentric, cartesian and elitist frameworks in architectural and urban studies, imposed through the colonial-modernist project, particularly as they impinge upon the articulation of indigenous practices, spatial knowledges and cultural forms. Fernando argues that these perspectives failed to reflect the unique realities of the American built world as it was when first encountered by Europeans in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the legacy of which persists to this day. To address this, the book proposes new theories from multiple disciplines forming a fresh - self-determined – Amerindian vision.  Fernando can be found at work here, on his personal website here, on Instagram and LinkedIn. The book is linked above. + Music credits: ⁠Bruno Gillick  #ArchitecturePodcast #SpatialTheoriesAmericas #FernandoLuizLara #DecolonialArchitecture #ArchitectureTheory #CriticalUrbanism #BuiltEnvironmentStudies #EurocentrismCritique #IndigenousSpatialKnowledge #ArchitectureAndColonialism

In Episode 186 of the A is for Architecture Podcast, neoclassical architect Francis Terry, founder of Francis Terry and Associates, discusses his upbringing, education, drawing, work, practice and the imposed politics of it all. In our binary times, it seems strange to think of traditional classical design -still so popular among the public - as somehow controversial, and yet here we are. The institutional profession certainly preferences contemporary modernism – look at all the prize winner – but perhaps this is hardly surprising given widespread disinterest in- and lack of practical knowledge of – the techniques and patterns of traditional design in architectural education. Classicism is of course tainted by its association to a certain politics; modernism by contrast remains rhetorically linked to emancipatory social movements.  Even so, whilst classicism retains its hold on the public imagination as rooted, reassuring and legible, architects like Francis - versed in the Doric and the Tuscan, in fluted shafts, acanthus leaves and egg and dart, in astragal, dentils and domes - remain very busy.  Francis Terry and Associates is here, and one of his books, Francis Terry: A Life in Sketchbooks, is linked here. Francis is on Insta and LinkedIn. + #ArchitecturePodcast #FrancisTerry #ClassicalArchitecture #NeoclassicalArchitecture #ArchitecturePodcast #ArchitecturalDrawing #TraditionalArchitecture #ArchitectureAndPolitics #ContemporaryArchitectureDebate #ArchitecturalPractice

In the latest episode of the A is for Architecture Podcast, recorded at the end of last year, Fatina Abreek-Zubiedat spoke to me about her new book, A Territory in Conflict: Eras of Development and Urban Architecture in Gaza, published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. The Gaza Strip was formed after the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and served to accommodate fleeing refugees. Until 1967 Administered by Egypt, Israel's occupation of the region after the Six Day War saw settlement building and military governance, till in 2005 it withdrew and Hamas took control. But the story of Gaza’s form – it’s spatial and material history - isn’t just one of conflict, but really an interplay of competing forces, ideas and identities.  Fatina’s is an extraordinary book, really, and quite other as a piece of history writing, made more pertinent now that so much of the material history of this strange and embattled place needs making again.  The book is linked above. Fatina is Assistant Professor and Head of the Spaces-in-Transition Lab at Tel Aviv University. She is on Facebook and Insta. + Music credits: ⁠Bruno Gillick  #ArchitecturePodcast #ArchitecturalHistory #UrbanStudies #SpatialHistory #CriticalUrbanism #ArchitectureAndPolitics #PostcolonialUrbanism #BuiltEnvironmentStudies #MiddleEastArchitecture #ResearchInArchitecture #AIsForArchitecture

For the first episode of 2026 for the A is for Architecture Podcast, we’re starting slow and steady – but rather inspiringly I think - with Patrick Hutchison, a builder.  Patrick’s very recent book, Cabin: Into the Woods with a Clueless Craftsman, which he published with Harper Collins in November 2025, tells the story of his journey from copywriter to carpenter and now, bestselling author and carpenter, via the renovation – the discovery, in a manner - of a small cabin in the woods.  It’s an elegant story indeed, which beyond a sort-of practical how-to for other itchy-footed office-jockeys, is one tangentially rooted in an American romance and myth – from indigenous peoples, Thoreau, pioneers and non-conformists. Through the cabin and through the book, Patrick describes his journey of discovery, at once a DIY adventure story and a meditation on how to find meaning, community and identity through making, through building and through acts of ordinary creation. Architecture has long been allured by the idea of the homes of our forebears, the original dwelling, the cabin in the woods. The preference, as Gombrich put it, for the primitive.  But finding a gap in modernity’s matrix? That’s the dream, isn’t it? Patrick can be found on his personal website, on Instagram and LinkedIn. The book is linked above, and has been reviewed everywhere, with Patrick having done quite a bit of TV about it too. Have a wander on the internet and you’ll probably find him. + Music credits: ⁠Bruno Gillick 

It’s Christmas, and just past Hanukkah, and in recognition of that, Episode 183 of the A is for Architecture Podcast, is a conversation with architect, photographer and writer Gili Merin, about her extraordinary and exquisite book, Analogous Jerusalem, which came out with Humboldt Books earlier this year.   In Analogous Jerusalem, Gili explores how the sacred topography of the Jerusalem of the pilgrim—particularly the Via Crucis or Stations of the Cross —has been analogically recreated across Europe. Combining essays and a photographic travelogue Gili argues that these "analogous" Jerusalems often surpass the original in their materialisation because, freed from the geopolitical conflicts and material constraints of the "real" city, they permit of a spiritual purity that connects the pilgrims more deeply to the Jerusalem of their imaginations, the Jerusalem that should be. We discuss a little of this, and how Christianity displaced Jerusalem's holiness to distant landscapes, creating sites that foster devotion, introspection, and community. Indeed perhaps, through the words and the abundant, beautiful images of shrines, routes and holy places of the way Jerusalem’s holiness has been reconfigured elsewhere - everywhere - the book itself is an invitation to readers to embark on their own "virtual pilgrimage" without leaving home. Gili currently holds a post-doc position at TU Wien and is a senior researcher at the Geneva University of Art and Design or HEAD. She can be found on her website, on Instagram and LinkedIn. She’s been and done quite a lot in her short years, so with a quick google will find you a lot of stuff. + Music credits: ⁠Bruno Gillick  Image credits: Main – Gili Merin, Book cover - Francesco Spallacci

In the 182nd episode of the A is for Architecture Podcast, Andreea Mihalache joined me to discuss her new book, Boredom and the Architectural Imagination: Rudofsky, Venturi, Scott Brown, and Steinberg, which she published with the University of Virginia Press in 2024.   Exploring the boundaries of boredom, Andreea and I discuss Bernard Rudofsky, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown and Saul Steinberg, the four thinker-makers of the twentieth century explored in her excellent book, whose writing and design challenged boredom’s pervasive, creeping grip on the modern imagination.  Looking at our orderly, crisp and glassy, financialised cities now, it’s perhaps difficult to see how their critique of modernity and the city changed anything. But by proposing modes of operation to counter it, each of these folk gave us ways of thinking, engaging and acting through design which remain elegant, generative and – I think – rather inspiring.   Andreea is Co-Director of the Architecture Graduate Programs and Associate Professor of Architecture at Clemson University, USA. The book is linked above.  + Music credits: ⁠Bruno Gillick    #ArchitecturePodcast #ArchitecturalTheory #BoredomInArchitecture #LessIsABore #RobertVenturi #DeniseScottBrown #BernardRudofsky #SaulSteinberg #ArchitectureBooks #ArchTheoryPodcast

For Episode 181 of the A is for Architecture Podcast, I was joined by the Berlin-based artist, Larissa Fassler whose work explores through imagery and sculpture - aesthetic, layered, ambiguous maps, models and interventions - the social and political spatialites of cities and their everyday encounter by people there. Larissa’s work has intrigued and delighted me for quite a long time, so it was a real prize to finally get to meander with her through a very little of her thinking, experiences, background and motivations. As I understand it, Larissa’s work derives from deep engagement in places, documenting them through a host of means and rendering them as something like palimpsests, which in turn demand close and slow encounter by their public, producing a sort-of double coded knowledge of cities and the people who live with them, pointing thus towards space’s meaning and possibilities.  It’s all very architectural, or at least, I think, towards that which we in architectural education might in our better moments aspire. Larissa can be found on her website, on Instagram and via Galerie POGGI, with whom she works. Viewshed, a very good book on her work, can be found at Distanz, its publishers, as can the catalogue for Building Worlds here. There are good articles on Larissa’s work in many places.   + Music credits: ⁠Bruno Gillick  #LarissaFassler #UrbanMapping #ArchitecturePodcast #Psychogeography #ContemporaryArtAndArchitecture #SocialSpace #CityAsPalimpsest #SpatialPolitics #ArtAndUrbanism #BerlinArtScene

For Episode 180 of the A is for Architecture Podcast, the extraordinary Australian architect, Peter Stutchbury, joined me to speak about a little of his work, his origins, his purpose and his ethic. It’s an extraordinary story, beautifully told by a wonderful man, a worthy addition for this, a jubilee episode.  Peter’s work is deeply rooted in the land and culture of his homeland, and all the complexity that implies. There are histories, cosmologies, manners and methods, which are drawn together in places and through this, in Peter’s telling, ‘the work becomes a means of connection, so that as you find the work, you also find yourself becoming of the work, not in a way that you copy it […] or that necessarily makes sense to you, but in a way that allows you to relax and perhaps even not be judgemental, perhaps even to take it with you, as part of your entourage.’ That’s quite a way of putting it. Peter Stutchbury Architecture can be found here, are on Instagram and  more or less everywhere that’s anywhere architectural online. The wonderful book by Ewan McEoin and published by Thames and Hudson in 2016, is Under the Edge: The Architecture of Peter Stutchbury.  + Music credits: ⁠Bruno Gillick  #PeterStutchbury #AustralianArchitecture #ArchitecturePodcast #SustainableDesign #ArchitectureAndLandscape #PlaceBasedDesign #ArchitecturalEthics #ContemporaryArchitecture #ArchitectureInAustralia #AIsForArchitecture

Episode 179 of the A is for Architecture Podcast is a fascinating, expansive discussion with scholar, planner and architect, Dr Shiben Banerji, associate professor in the Department of the History of Art at UC Berkley, about some small parts of his sprawling and wonderful Lineages of the Global City: Occult Modernism and the Spiritualization of Democracy, which he published with the University of Texas Press in July this year. In the shadow of empire-collapsing wars and revolutions, Shiben explains, occult modernists of the early-twentieth-century saw not just chaos, but a rare chance to forge a spiritually united humanity. Across the world, from Argentina to India to America, occultist architects and planners dreamed up radical cities, suburbs and communes designed to awaken a new global subject who would feel bound to all humankind, transcending the impulse for wretched violence.  Shiben and I talk all this, and how these new world builders tried to use architecture to engineer souls. Visionary? Indeed. But vision is scary! Listen to Shiben and just relax. Shiben can be found at work and nowhere else, which is very wise. The book is linked above. + Music credits: ⁠Bruno Gillick

In Episode 178 of this incessant podcast, Adam Sharr, Professor of Architecture at Newcastle University, discusses his 2007 book, Heidegger for Architects, published by Routledge. Heidegger’s ideas haunt architectural discourse, practice and education, which remain inwardly wedded to concepts like dwelling, place, authenticity, world and building, ideas that are rooted in his work. Arguably, his ideas remain foundational in debates on sustainability and human-centred design too.  Yet despite this influence, Heidegger’s writing’s opacity and his philosophical entanglements—intellectual, political, and ethical—make him a challenging figure to approach. So we deal with this, including Heidegger’s Nazi associations, some key concepts – dwelling, the Fourfold, the Thing – how Heidegger suggested buildings participate in the unfolding of place and meaning, and what it means to think of architecture not just as the production of objects but as a way of revealing—or concealing—our relationship to the world around us.  Awkward? I guess. Good chat? Yes. Adam is editor of the uber-successful book series Thinkers for Architects published by Routledge. He can be found at Newcastle University, and at Adam Sharr Architects too. He does not appear to be on social media, the lucky blighter. + Music credits: ⁠Bruno Gillick 

In this new episode of the A is for Architecture Podcast, writer and organiser, Alva Gotby, discusses her recent latest book, Feeling at Home: Transforming the Politics of Housing, published by Verso in January this year. Feeling at Home is rooted in Marxist feminism, and approaches housing as more-than-shelter, but rather as a key site for reproducing labour power under capitalism, perpetuating all the inequalities. Alva extends this critique, proposing what is called family abolitionism, arguing for the collectivisation of domestic life the better to dismantle the nuclear family as a capitalist institution. But Alva isn’t also pleading for nostalgia and a return to the paternalistic state but proposes instead collective alternatives that prioritize marginalised people and ecological sustainability. How’d you like them apples? Alva is on (but not much on) Instagram and X, and the book is linked above. Alva is in various places online discussing this book, and her previous one, They Call It Love: The Politics of Emotional Life. + Music credits: ⁠Bruno Gillick 

The A is for Architecture Podcast’s latest episode is a discussion with the architect, writer, teacher and broadcaster, Piers Taylor. It is Piers’ second time on the show, but rather than his practice, this time we discuss his freshly minted book, Learning from the Local: Designing responsively for people, climate and culture, published by RIBA Publishing last month. In Learning from the Local, Piers presents global examples of low-carbon, context-responsive architecture. In arguing for a post-global architecture, examining geology, waste, ecology, self-build and community engagement, the book proposes a sort-of vernacular. We talk this, Oz, practice, good practice and a very elegant proposal for what Piers calls restless innovation.  Quieten down why don’t you and have a solid listen. Piers is Professor of Knowledge Exchange in Architecture at UWE and director of Invisible Studio, (which posts on Instagram), and he’s so all over the internet he literally has a Wikipedia page. The book is linked above. + Music credits: ⁠Bruno Gillick  Image credit: The Rural Studio (Haybale House) by Timothy Hursley.   

In the latest episode of the A is for Architecture Podcast Jeana Ripple, Chair and Vincent & Eleanor Shea Professor in the School of Architecture at the University of Virginia, joined me to discuss her recent book, Type V City: Codifying Material Inequity in Urban America, published by the University of Texas Press in August this year.  In Type V city, Jeana describes how building codes or regulations in the USA have shaped urban landscapes. Specifically, Jeana explores how the construction of light, combustible wood-frame buildings – known as Type V construction - have codified inequities in social, economic, environmental and health outcomes for residents. We discuss this idea – the entrenchment of ethics in the materials of building making – but also that where the technology is restricted, in the exacerbation of labour inequalities.  Materials, huh? Who’d have thought it? Well, you will, if you listen to (and read) Jeana. The book is linked above. Jenna can be found at work and on LinkedIn. + Music credits: ⁠Bruno Gillick 

The A is for Architecture Podcast’s newest episode is a conversation with North American scholars, social scientist Patrick Lynn Rivers and design historian Kai Wood Mah, about their book, Situated Practices in Architecture and Politics, published by Dalhousie Architectural Press in 2024. In our conversation, Patrick and Kai speak of the importance of situated learning and practice, which involves architects engaging with communities to co-create knowledge as a mode not just of transforming spaces and making things, but as an ethnographic means of seeing things through the eyes of communities. Situated practices, they argue, force a necessary politicisation of design thinking, and are as such essential for architects to adapt to post-colonial challenges and contribute to global change. Patrick is professor at SAIC in Chicago, has a personal website here, and can be found on LinkedIn and Insta. Kai is Associate Professor in the McEwan School of Architecture at the Laurentian University, Canada and also has a website. Both Patrick and Kai co-direct the design research practice a.field. The book is linked above. Much to ponder, so little time. Get to it! + Music credits: ⁠Bruno Gillick  Image credit: Pilgrimage to Biete Gabriel-Rufael by Robert Wilson.