Here There Be Dragons Jessica Myers

As many of you know, in addition to hosting and producing Here There Be Dragons, I also teach architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design. And for the past year, I’ve been working on A Pause Is Not A Break. An exhibition for the architecture department about the intersection of sound and architectural practice. Learn more at https://www.htbdpodcast.com/apauseisnotabreak.

A PAUSE IS NOT A BREAK

In architecture, we the practitioners of the built environment, have turned over our mode of communication so entirely to visual mediums, that we have been accused on many occasions of being poor listeners, poor readers, and perhaps, at the base of it, poor perceivers. What does the axonometric, the plan, the section, the elevation, the detail, the model miss? What have we failed to render in our visual pursuits?

The medium of audio may seem like a privation, cutting us off from the images we use to make meaning but in sound there is a representation of liveliness that standard architectural drawings cannot always capture, and in many cases, actively avoid or sanitize. Unlike the eye, which has a natural defense against that which it does not wish to absorb, the ear has no such mechanism. It is difficult to close the ear without great effort. It requires instead a type of concentration that creates hierarchies of the sonic information that surrounds us. And so, sound becomes a ubiquitous medium––perhaps the most ubiquitous sense in space––taking on through its mundane repetitions a significant part of how we, the users of the built, make sense of space. How can we train the architect’s ear onto the issue of occupation, and so history, and so life? Perhaps the tools of repetition and invocation can remind us of what we know, what our minds have been storing all our lives.

Special thanks to Adriene Lilly, Mohammad Golabi, Amy Kulper, Katy Rogers, Karen Bell, Carlos Medellin, Aine Guiney, Alex Eckman-Lawn, Uthman Olowo, Alia Varawalla, and of course the Design Research Seed Fund.

Don’t be alarmed. We’re working on a few experiments in between seasons. This is an episode swap with the experimental Berlin-based cultural magazine Errant Journal. We’re swapping an interview they did with Brazilian practitioner Felipe Altenfelder about his project Mida Ninja. We start off with an interview with the magazine and podcast editor Irene de Craen. Irene will be reposting the Moving episode from the Stockholm season starting with a brief interview with me. Be sure to check that out along with other Errant Podcast episodes.

https://errantjournal.org

My city of New York is known more for it’s skyline than its outdoor offering. But in Stockholm, nature seemed to appear out of nowhere, intertwined within the city fabric. Even neighborhoods constantly labeled “dangerous” have pretty stunning views. How has Stockholm grown, and keeps growing, with natural spaces in mind ?

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Check out Melissa Pons' Swedish Forest Textures: https://melissapons.bandcamp.com/album/swedish-forest-textures

The subway can tell you a lot about the geography of a city. Who gets off where and why? But at the central station all those wires get crossed and people are there for all types of reasons to work, to shop, to hustle, to hand out, to protest, to get out as fast as possible.

So T-Centalen ticks a lot of factors on the Stockholm spectrum between fear and security. 1) Crowded and 2) Unpredictable and 3) Controlled.

We’ll be navigating all three of these as we do the unimaginable, take our time in T-Centralen.

Twitter/Instagram: @dragons_podcast
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In a country known for both pragmatic protestantism and Absolut Vodka, you can imagine there is some anxiety around alcohol, that swings between enjoyment and control. A spectrum of emotion that simmers in the background of Stockholm’s night life. So episode we’ll be talking about the party, the club, the bar, the night life of the city.

Twitter/Instagram: @dragons_podcast
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Families are a common political battle ground. What’s good or bad for families is a regular explanation for everything from censorship to over-policing to immigration intolerance. So if families are so worth providing for and so worth protecting, what exactly are they afraid of? What do kids and parents feel they need to be safe in the city? This episode we’ll be discussing how parents and kids navigate the city. What’s working for them and what really isn’t.

Twitter/Instagram: @dragons_podcast
Support us: patreon.com/htbdpodcast
Sign up for our newsletter: www.htbdpodcast.com
Record a question or comment for us and send to: htdbpodcast@gmail.com