Architecture Foundation

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Kanal • 3 serier

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06.07.2022

20.12.2025

Floris van der Poel's Favourite Things

Floris van der Poel comes on the pod this week to talk about the best work he’s discovered over the past year. Project list (in order of discussion): 1 The rounding of Cape Horn by Charlie Dalin. 2 Atelier Scheidegger Keller + Espazium, Areal Rosengarten Housing, Zurich, 2021 3 Emmanuel Héré de Corny's Palais du Gouvernement from the years 1751-1753 4 Meat cuts, comparing French and American tastes in urbanism 5 Model of an apartment building with 68 units in Tirana by Arquitectura G 6 Volante, housing in Hilversum by Monadnock Architects (2025) 7 Zwhatt housing, Regensdorf 2024. Luetjens Padmanabhan 8 770 Park Avenue, designed by Rosario Candela. 9 Logements Beaunier by Minuit Architecture 10-11 Papieri-Areal, Construction Site B Studio Eschrickenbacher 12-13 Bois-Gentil Housing, 1st Prize — Fruehauf, Henry, Viladoms 14 Door handle — LCLA 15 Ny Østergade, Copenhagen by Praksis Arkitekter 16-17 Office Complex in Hamburg, 2025 by Kawahara Krause Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

20.12.2025

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1 t. 2 min.
31.08.2023

89: Tony Fretton (Part 1)

Tony Fretton founded his eponymous architecture practice in 1982. His early work in London, including the Lisson Gallery (1986-1992), was influential in defining a new approach to architecture focused on urban context and daily life. “By the time I graduated, London was completely different. It wasn’t opulent, it was poor, and punk was an attitude that accepted the nihilism of the state and of the city. All those songs by the Sex Pistols, they rang true, they weren’t just inventions. Punk was really important to me - punks were ethical, they had an idea of the world and it was about make and mend, about living in the margins, and that was the background from which I developed my practice.” – TF Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield Download the London Architecture Guide App via the App Store or on Google Play Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

31.08.2023

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1 t.
28.11.2025

Kenneth Frampton

Architectural historian Kenneth Frampton remembers the exact moment of his political awakening. Arriving in the United States in 1965, flying over the blazing island of Manhattan and suddenly grasping the visibility of capitalist power there—“a ferocious panorama” of light, cars and consumption that stood in stark contrast to what he calls the “concealed” capitalism of mid-century Britain. From that moment, his architectural writing became inseparable from politics: shaped by Hannah Arendt’s idea of the space of appearance, by phenomenology’s insistence on embodied experience, and by a Marxist attention to exploitation, power and the global neoliberal order. In this first episode of a two-part interview, Kenneth Frampton, arguably the most celebrated and influential architectural thinker of the past half century, looks back over nearly six decades of his writing and teaching. In the first half of the conversation he addresses the idea critical regionalism as “an architecture of resistance” to commodification, connects phenomenology to political agency rather than aesthetic escapism, and defends his own “operative” criticism—writing that openly aims to influence how architects practice. He is unsparing about the state of architectural education, where social-justice rhetoric often displaces serious engagement with construction and craft, and where capitalism itself remains strangely unnamed. Along the way he reflects on being, as he puts it, “a Marxist who believes in phenomenology,” on the tectonic poetics of building, and, closing out the episode, he reckons with becoming a father at 52 and a grandfather in his mid-90s—thinking about legacy, continuity and what it means for architects, in Álvaro Siza’s phrase, not to invent anything, but to transform reality. Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, created and hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. Become an Architecture Foundation Patreon member and be a part of a growing coalition of architects and built environment professionals supporting our vital and independent work. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

28.11.2025

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56 min.
13.09.2023

90: Tony Fretton (Part 2)

Tony Fretton founded his eponymous architecture practice in 1982. His early work in London, including the Lisson Gallery (1986-1992), was influential in defining a new approach to architecture focused on urban context and daily life. “By the time I graduated, London was completely different. It wasn’t opulent, it was poor, and punk was an attitude that accepted the nihilism of the state and of the city. All those songs by the Sex Pistols, they rang true, they weren’t just inventions. Punk was really important to me - punks were ethical, they had an idea of the world and it was about make and mend, about living in the margins, and that was the background from which I developed my practice.” – TF Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield Download the London Architecture Guide App via the App Store or on Google Play Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

13.09.2023

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58 min.
05.12.2025

Kenneth Frampton (Part 2)

In part 2 of Kenneth Frampton’s Scaffold interview, we focus on his own experiences - from his early desire to become a farmer, and the long hesitation that kept him from starting a family, and his regrets around leaving architectural practice for a life of writing. These biographical threads are woven through his encounters with key thinkers – from Herbert Marcuse and Tomas Maldonado to Juhani Pallasmaa and Hannah Arendt – and with buildings like Corringham and Aalto’s Villa Mairea and the transformation in perspective they represent. The discussion moves between the question of anti-capitalist architecture, the inundation of images in contemporary life, and the importance of what Frampton calls the microcosmos – architecture as the creation of “a small world” where society can begin to recognise itself. Along the way, Frampton reflects on what it might mean not to separate the reality of work from the pleasure of life. Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. Download the London Architecture Guide App via the App Store or Google Play Become an Architecture Foundation Patreon member and be a part of a growing coalition of architects and built environment professionals supporting our vital and independent work. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

05.12.2025

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39 min.
31.10.2025

Truwant + Rodet +

Truwant+Rodet+ is a Basel-based architecture firm founded in 2015 by Charlotte Truwant and Dries Rodet, which operates across the fields of architecture, landscape urbanism, exhibition making, installations, furniture design, research, and teaching. In 2017, they received the Swiss Art Award for their project A Pavilion. Since 2018, they have been developing the project, Fountain of Youth with Fabian Marti for the Campus Santé in Lausanne. In 2020, Truwant+Rodet+ won the renovation for the Centre Culturel Suisse in Paris with the Parisian firm ASBR. In 2022, they won the competition for the renovation of the Stadium of Bulle. This conversation was recorded remotely on 12 September in Basel and London. Special thanks this week to Bárbara Maçães Costa. The essay "Time as Material" referred to in the conversation can be accessed here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

31.10.2025

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1 t. 25 min.
09.10.2025

Why be an architect today?

Scaffold is back this week, with an episode that asks a simple question: why be an architect today? The Architecture Foundation is based inside the office of AHMM in Clerkenwell, which, back in July, hosted a summer school for teenagers just beginning to explore architecture. We decided to speak with some of them, to try and understand what draws young people to this profession today, what they think architecture is for, and how they imagine their futures in it. In these short conversations you get a strong impression of the perennial motivations that push people toward careers in shaping the built environment, despite the seemingly diminishing returns of practicing architecture today. Speaking with these students about their convictions give us a lot of hope: that the culture of architecture today, its perceived importance in society, and the esteem it’s held in, might still be elevated, and remain worthy of the ambition and altruism that is clearly in no short supply in this incoming generation. Special thanks this week to all the summer school students, and to Claire Pollock / AHMM Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

09.10.2025

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15 min.
06.11.2025

OMA at 50

This special guest episode marks the launch of the podcast OMA at 50. Conceived and produced by architect Richard Hall, the series explores the Office for Metropolitan Architecture’s enduring influence on architectural culture, featuring conversations with an incredible roster of architects, academics, and historians. Marking OMA’s 50th anniversary, the podcast features some of the most authoritative voices on OMA — including Laura Schrijver, Pier Paolo Tamburelli, Sébastien Marot, Giovanna Borasi, and many others.New episodes are released every Thursday. Subscribe by searching OMA at 50 on Apple Podcasts, or by following this link. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

06.11.2025

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51 min.
13.11.2025

playbody

Today’s episode considers a part of the built environment that’s often overlooked in architectural discourse, yet has become one of the most vibrant sites of experimentation in recent years: the nightclub. Since the post-COVID resurgence of nightlife, we’ve seen club spaces music festivals become laboratories again — places where architects, artists and designers, artists test how bodies move, gather, and connect. After years of enforced separation, there’s been a renewed appetite for intimacy, tactility, and collective presence. Nightclubs have stepped into that space, foregrounding not just sound and spectacle, but how architecture can invite touch, trust, and new forms of social closeness. There are few people exploring that frontier more boldly than today’s guests: Thea Arde and Joel Jjio, the duo behind playbody. Playbody is far more than a club night — it’s an ongoing design research project that treats the dancefloor as a site of architectural inquiry. Their events incorporate sculptural objects, spatial interventions, and choreographic prompts that encourage people to rediscover their own physicality in relation to others. In a time when digital life keeps pulling us apart, their work asks a simple but radical question: how can design rebuild social intimacy? Today we’ll talk about how playbody grew from a nightlife concept into a design studio, how they prototype through parties, and why they see the club as a critical testing ground for the future of spatial practice. Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production. Support our work by becoming a member on Patreon. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

13.11.2025

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1 t. 10 min.
20.11.2024

Edward Jones

Edward Jones is the co-author, along with the late Christopher Woodward, of the Guide to the Architecture of London, which, originally published in 1983, is now in its fifth edition and has become the definitive guide book of the subject. In 2017 the guide book became the basis of an app - called the London architecture Guide, and one of the Architecture Foundation’s most ambitious projects. earlier this year a range of entries was added by Jones alongside a new generation of authors, and it was on this occasion that we met to talk about the guide book’s legacy and its evolution. “What matters hugely to me is that architecture has a role to play in public life. That’s what this book is about - to celebrate excellence in architecture, and to be somewhat critical of things we don’t argee with…there should be a debate about architecture in the city” – Edward Jones Show notes: Arcades, the history of a building type by Geist, Johann Friedrich (1983) College City, Colin Rowe (1978) John Rocque's map of London, Westminster and Southwark (1746) London The Unique City by Steen Eiler Rasmussen (1934) Gilbey House, Serge Chermayeff, London, 1937 Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. Download the London Architecture Guide App via the App Store or Google Play Become an Architecture Foundation Patreon member and be a part of a growing coalition of architects and built environment professionals supporting our vital and independent work. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

20.11.2024

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37 min.

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