A is for Architecture Ambrose Gillick

Episode 105 of ⁠A is for Architecture⁠ is with Pier Vittorio Aureli, writer and educator, and founder and principal of Dogma, the much-acclaimed architecture and research group founded in 2002 by Pier Vittorio and Martino Tattara. We talk about Pier Vittorio's 2023 book, Architecture and Abstraction, published by MIT Press.

Architecture and Abstraction, so the gloss has it, ‘argues for a reconsideration of abstraction, its meanings, and its sources. Although architects have typically interpreted abstraction in formal terms—the purposeful reduction of the complexities of design to its essentials, [this book] presents abstraction in architecture not as an aesthetic tendency but as a movement that arises from modern divisions of labor and consequent social asymmetries’, and the outcome of emergent socio-technical, economic and political realities. In the face of the AI-ification of the public imagination and, increasingly, material culture itself, this argument has great pertinence for design in and of the contemporary commonwealth. 

Pier Vittorio Aureli teaches at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), and can be found on through Dogma on Instagram.

Thanks for listening.

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Music credits: ⁠Bruno Gillick

In Episode 104 of A is for Architecture, is a conversation with Paul Watt about his 2021 book, Estate Regeneration and Its Discontents: Public Housing, Place and Inequality in London, published by Bristol University Press in 2021.

We discuss the story of council-supplied housing, and its transformation through various governments – not just Maggie’s Conservatives – from a common asset and social good, into an instrument of urban regeneration policy that has at its heart a very different image of the city, predicated a new model of the desired and desirable urban citizen.

Estate Regeneration draws on Paul’s deep knowledge and experience and extensive fieldwork ‘in some of the capital’s most deprived areas’ and shows ‘the dramatic ways that estate regeneration is reshaping London, fuelling socio-spatial inequalities via state-led gentrification’. It’s an important work of deep scholarship, for sure.

Paul is Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics, and can also be found on LinkedIn and Twitter/ X. 

 

Thanks for listening.

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Music credits: Bruno Gillick

In Episode 103 of A is for Architecture, Aaron Betsky discusses his recent book The Monster Leviathan: Anarchitecture, published by MIT Press in January this year. Until recently Professor in the School of Architecture and Design at Virginia Tech, and with previous roles as the President of the School of Architecture at Taliesin, director of the Cincinnati Art Museum and the Netherlands Architecture Institute, Curator at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the author of over 20 books. Aaron directed the Venice architecture biennale in 2008 and now operates as an independent scholar. 

The Monster Leviathan describes an architecture ‘lurking under the surface of our modern world […] an unseen architecture—or anarchitecture […] which haunts in the form of monsters that are humans and machines and cities all at once’ which Betsky suggests ‘are concrete proposals in and of themselves’ and which indicate to us now ways we might ‘construct a better, more sustainable, and socially just future’.

Aaron is on Instagram and LinkedIn and all over the internet, because he’s proper famous. 

 

Thanks for listening.

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Music credits: Bruno Gillick

In Episode 102 of A is for Architecture, Nimi Attanayake and Tim O'Callaghan, founders and principals of nimtim architects, talk about their work, practice and the social role of the practice/s of architects and our architecture. Their body of work is very lovely, but it’s not just this, having a richness born of a dynamic ethicality. The question then is, is the fruit of good ethics good architecture?

In an Architecture After Grenfell, an article they wrote around 2022, and which appeared in BD, they suggest ‘What is required is a reset for the whole industry. If morality is replaced by profiteering then the events at Grenfell tower will be the outcome. […] Whilst the world gasps at the cynicism and callousness revealed by the [Grenfell] inquiry, we should be positioning ourselves as the potential solution. Fundamentally, the problem is not one of process or competence, it is one of ethics and morality. Architects are uniquely placed to become the custodians of a new set of values that can run through every stage of a project. This may demand greater responsibility but it is a responsibility we should fight for and embrace.'

That’s what we’re here for, right?

Thanks for listening.

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Music: Bruno Gillick

In Episode 101 of A is for Architecture, Sophia Psarra, Professor of Architecture and Spatial Design, the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, discusses some of her recent book, Parliament Buildings: The Architecture of Politics in Europe, which she co-edited with Uta Staiger and Claudia Sternberg, and published in 2023.

‘Parliament Buildings brings together architecture, history, art history, history of political thought, sociology, behavioural psychology, anthropology and political science [to offer] an eclectic exploration of the complex nexus between architecture and politics in Europe.’ 

Well that’s what they say but see what you think.

Sophia is all across social media too, so seek her out. The book is Open Access.

Thanks for listening.

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Music credits: Bruno Gillick

In this, the 100th episode of A is for Architecture and the thirty-something in Series 3, Matthew Fuller speaks about his and Eyal Weizman’s 2021 book, Investigative Aesthetics: Conflicts and Commons in the Politics of Truth, published with Verso, which ‘draws on theories of knowledge, ecology and technology [to evaluate] the methods of citizen counter-forensics, micro-history and art […] an inspiring introduction to a new field that brings together investigation and aesthetics to change how we understand and confront power today.’ 

Matthew is Professor of Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London, and has written many books and papers, which you can find out about via his professional profile. Otherwise, I find little trace of him online…

Thanks for listening.

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Music credits: Bruno Gillick