ArchitectureTalk

Hotel Condessa, Mexico City SOURCE JSa This week we talk with Javier Sánchez, developer, architect and founder of JSa architectural firm, with offices in Mexico City and in Peru. We interrogate the state of contemporary practice in Mexico, the role of Modernism, and the power of transformation in architecture. We discuss with Javier family legacy, time, and innovation as the son and grandson of architects and forging his own path in the design world. And we examine the role of personal change and the role of running in rethinking architectural practice. DEAR LISTENERS: You might notice some distortion in the second half of the interview. We had some interference on the recording but it improves.

30 Apr 20181h 1min

Camel with Gatling gun SOURCE Smithsonian Magazine 1872 Camels, ships, roads, railways, electricity.....This week we talk with Shundana Yusaf, Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Utah, and discuss the concept and approach to her fascinating co-authored GAHTC module about architecture and the technologies of transportation and communication. Her research has looked at topics as rich and wide ranging as the BBC and Empire in the age of wireless communication as well as Sufi shrines and hyperconnectivity.

12 Apr 201846min

Based on her recent book, Creating Urban Agricultural Systems: An Integrated Approach to Design, we discuss with University of Washington's Gundula Proksch the myriad implications of re-thinking our food culture. Conversation topics range from community gardens to hydroponics, edible school yards to Mars colonies, the slow-food movement to bio-engineered buildings.

28 Mar 201843min

View of kumbh mela. SOURCE Felipe Vera We discuss kinetic architecture and ephemeral urbanism with Rahul Mehrotra, Professor of Urban Planning and Design at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD). Topics include events like the kumbh mela, and its implications about thinking about temporality in contemporary practice; designing for obsolescence; immigration and identity; and India in the 21st century. Rahul is also principal of RMA Architects, Mumbai.

14 Mar 201846min

Mud brick fortification walls from the 10th century at Merv, Turkmenistan SOURCE: Manu Sobti Dr. Manu P. Sobti, Senior Lecturer in the School of Architecture and Director of the Higher Degree Research Program at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, discusses his co-authored GAHTC module, Peripheries of Contact, which explores the architecture and urbanism created by migrant populations who traversed Central Asia and engaged with 'settled' peoples at the edges of their world. We discuss migration, loss and memory; graphic design, photography and cultural landscapes; the Mongols, Timurs, Uzbeks, Russians, Delhi Sultanates and Islamic identity in the medieval times.   Biography MANU P. SOBTI is an Islamic architecture and urban historian, specifically focused on examining changing borderlands in the Asia-Pacific. Prior to his recent arrival at the University of Queensland’s School of Architecture as Senior Lecturer and Director of the Higher Degree Research Program, he served as Associate Professor at the School of Architecture & Urban Planning (SARUP), University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee USA, Coordinator of SARUP-UWM’s India Winterim and Uzbekistan Summer Program (2008-15), and directed the Building-Landscapes-Cultures (BLC) Concentration of SARUP-UWM’s Doctoral Program (2011-13) in partnership with the Art History Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Sobti also chaired SARUP's PhD Committee between 2014-16, leading an area of BLC's research consortium titled Urban Histories and Contested Geographies. Mapping urbanity and its scalar geographies feature prominently in his ongoing projects, a vantage determining how future urbanists view the multiplicity of emergent stakeholders within the contentious realms of the historical city and its changing meanings. His recent explorations have focused on the urban histories of early-medieval, Islamic cities along the Silk Road and the Indian Subcontinent, with specific reference to the complex, ‘borderland geographies’ created by riverine landscapes. Within a trans-disciplinary examination of medieval Eurasian landscapes straddling the region’s Amu Darya River, he is completing a project entitled The Sliver of the Oxus Borderland: Medieval Cultural Encounters between the Arabs and Persians – an unprecedented work on the historical, geo-politics of the Amu Darya, collating his extensive fieldwork and employing multiple Arabic, Persian, Russian and Uzbek sources. The Oxus borderland is also the subject of his ongoing filmic project entitled Medieval Riverlogues (intended for Public Television) which captures archival research within a re-drawn map series, state of the art computer-generated renderings and live footage on this cultural crucible, while suggesting provocative connections to enduring questions on cultural ‘indigeneities’ and identities, sustainability and resources. Mapping and the spatial humanities remain central to his work on the fast-changing urbanscapes of Delhi, Chandigarh, Ahmedabad & Bhopal, documented in the completion of two forthcoming book manuscripts - the first titled Space and Collective Identity in South Asia: Migration, Architecture and Urban Development (under contract with I. B. Tauris Press, expected April 2018); the second titled Riverine Landscapes, Urbanity and Conflict: Narratives from East and West (under contract with Routledge Press, expected Dec. 2017). His continuing work on contemporary architecture and urbanism in Asia has resulted in a third publication entitled Chandigarh Rethink (ORO Publishers, published June 2017).

28 Feb 201850min

Katerra Project Delivery CREDIT: Katerra Katerra is a new global leader in innovation and efficiency in construction project delivery. Design Director Craig Curtis, FAIA, shares eye-opening insights as a member of the Executive Team. Katerra is challenging conventions to deliver successful, sustainable, and innovative projects on par with Ikea, Apple and Tesla in supply chain and smart sourcing, construction and beautiful design. Through its commitment to Research and Development and environmental responsibility, Katerra aims to completely disrupt the design and construction industry, and has just received $865 million in new funding! https://katerra.com/

15 Feb 201855min

B.V. Doshi's Amdavad ni Gufa underground art gallery in Ahmedabad, IndiaCREDIT Vaishal Dalal, WikiCommons At age 90, Balkrishna Vithaldas (B.V.) Doshi's journey in architecture has spanned 70 years, starting from Indian independence in 1947, to the vicissitudes of postmodernism and globalization. Doshi's voice is a touchstone is global and Indian modernism. Conversation topics include his reflection on life and creativity, his 'favorite' projects, the legacy of Nehruvian modernization, and architectural pedagogy in India today.

1 Feb 201844min

Tom Avermaete, professor of architecture at Delft University of Technology, discusses his GAHTC module, co-authored with Michelangelo Sabatino, on the historiography of mid-century modernism. Entitled "The Global Turn" the six lectures of their module articulate an alternative history of modernism as a network of collaborations cultivated in the context of the decolonizing world. Discussion topics include (post)colonial modernism, multi-layered collaborations, migration and housing, modernism and neoliberalism, Chandigarh, Casablanca and the 'commons' in the city.

17 Jan 201852min