architectures of planetary well-being Podcast

Architect, media artist, and educator Leah Wulfman and artist, filmmaker, and musician Lawrence Lek each found their way to architecture through an interest in world-building. Today, they both continue to create digital universes. In this episode, they discuss their educational histories, the material connection between the digital and physical worlds—the often detrimental environmental impact of technology on our planet; the way humanity, even its emotions, shapes virtual reality—and how exploring both realms with curiosity and care can lead to a more sustainable future.

While graphic novelist and architectural designer Sabba Khan’s work poignantly explores her own history growing up in East London, and Federica Fragapane uses painterly illustration to visualize data, in this conversation, they find the overlaps between their respective practices, and discuss the lived experiences and choices shaping even the most objective information. They remind us to use our own voices to help build the future, and frame their work as invitations—for readers to understand, relate to, and find themselves within it—and consider how all data is embodied by the people who comprise it.

How does water carry ancestral memory? And how can ancestral memory remind us of the wisdom we’ve always carried? Curator and writer Natasha Ginwala and architect Sumayya Vally examine questions like these in a profoundly tender conversation that touches on both practitioners’ recent work, as well as landscape, memory, the importance of what Natasha describes as a “unity of knowledge,” and how the desegregation of knowledge systems will ultimately unify us, too.

In this episode, the Palestinian architect Noura Al Sayeh and the writer, historian, and architect Samia Henni discuss their recent accomplishments and, more broadly, the widespread impact of colonialism and imperialism—on both western perceptions of the world and its geographies, and on the artistic institutions that purport to fight hegemonic power structures. In an emotional, hopeful conversation, they reflect on the meaning of and need for decolonization—in the architectural field and everywhere else—how the siege on Gaza has led to a shift in our collective moral compass, and their genuine optimism for the future.

Welcome to Between Us, the second season of the Architectures of Planetary Well-Being podcast. For our first episode, we speak to the curators for this season, Shumi Bose and Federica Zambeletti of KoozArch, a research studio and digital magazine exploring architecture and design. Shumi and Federica guided the conversations of Season Two through the lens of betweenness—bridging gaps between practitioners and disciplines; moving collaboratively between spaces, concepts, and worlds. In this introductory episode, they reflect on the unexpected connections that emerged during the conversations for Between Us, and the generosity and sense of collaboration required to create architectures of planetary well-being.

Researcher and architect Setareh Noorani and artist and architect Emanuel Admassu discuss the transformative power of friendship, collaboration, and, as Setareh says, being “in touch with each other.” Together, they explore how that same sense of horizontality might shape the concept of reparations—all the while considering the importance of accountability, of reframing the hegemonic hierarchies that still govern so much of our world, and of caring for ourselves and each other while working toward collective liberation.