Scaffold

Gonçalo André Pires is an architect and co-founder, together with Pedro Santo Saraiva, of Studio Sotnas, a practice based between Aarhus and Lisbon. "While in the 90s and 2000s there were a lot of idealistic inventions and visions that wanted to be forced into being, now it’s more about reassembling and reorganising existing meanings and values in the things that we might we already have at hand, understanding that it’s more about discovering than inventing. We’re interested in bringing meaning to a building from the components that are essential to it." – GAPShow notes: “Modern architects have been harping continually on what is different in our time to such an extent, that even they have lost touch with what is not different, with what is always essentially the same”“Modern architects have been harping continually on what is different in our time to such an extent, that even they have lost touch with what is not different, with what is always essentially the same”Aldo Van Eyck, first published in the Team Ten Primer, late 1950sJohn Young’s apartment Jaques Herzog, House for an Art Collector Architecture and the Sciences by Antoine Picon (2003)The Savage Mind by Claude Levi Strauss (1962)Mechanisation Takes Command by Siegfried Gideon (1948) Salome Lamas (contemporary Portuguese filmmaker) 

Art writer and former Spike columnist Dean Kissick stops by the pod to discuss his most recent article "The Painted Protest: How politics destroyed contemporary art" – published in the December 2024 issue of Harper's.Read Dean's article here.Support the Architecture Foundation by becoming (or gifting) a Patreon membership. More details here.

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 JonesShow 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, 1937Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. Download the London Architecture Guide App via the App Store or Google PlayBecome 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.  

dorsa is a collective architecture practice founded by Yufei He, James Horkulak and Pan Hu in 2021. In their own words, they "seek to capture multiple and parallel realities concealed within our time, and employ whichever medium necessary to create optimistic narratives for an empathic future."Support the Architecture Foundation by becoming a Patreon Member.This episode was generously supported by the Swiss Embassy in the UK.

This episode was recorded live at the Barbican Centre's Frobisher Auditorium on 25 June 2024, with panelists Bob Allies of Allies and Morrison; Charlie Edmonds of the grassroots activist group Future Architects Front; Cristina Gaidos + Maia Rollo of the recently formed union Section of Architectural Workers; and Jane Issler Hall + Owen Lacey of the the architecture collective Assemble. Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. Download the London Architecture Guide App via the App Store or Google Play

Petra Blaisse is a designer and founding partner of Inside / Outside.Blaisse started her career in 1978 at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, in the Department of Applied Arts. From 1986 onwards, she worked as freelance exhibition designer and won distinction for her installations of architectural works. Gradually her focus shifted to the use of textiles, light and finishes in interior space and, at the same time, to the design of gardens and landscapes. In 1991, she founded Inside Outside. The studio worked in a multitude of creative areas, including textile, landscape and exhibition design. From 1999 Blaisse invited specialist of various disciplines to work with her and currently the team consists of about ten people of different professions and nationalities.A new monograph of Blaisse's work, called Art Applied, was published earlier this year by MACK. Edited and introduced by Fredi Fischli and Niels Olsen, with newly commissioned texts by Penelope Curtis, Christophe Girot, Rem Koolhaas, Charlotte Matter, Fatma Al Sehlawi, Jack Self, Laurent Stalder, Helen Thomas, and Philip Ursprung.

Florian Summa and Anne Femmer are founding directors of the Leipzig based Summacumfemmer and guest professors at the University of the Arts in Berlin.The practice's built work includes San Riemo (2020), a co-operative housing development in Munich designed with Büro Juliane Greb. Summa and Femmer were co-curators of Open for Maintenance, the German contribution to the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale.“[Teaching architecture] doesn’t work when you don’t have real problems, and so this is the strategy we find most useful for us right now: leave the university, leave the institution and go to the problems directly. This prevents you from just talking and mapping and analyzing things, and having the whole thing just remain a conversation within the institution. What we liked about the Venice project was that the most successful projects were the ones that went directly to the workshop – thinking while making.” – SCF*Join Florian and Anne at this year's Architecture Foundation Summer School (11-15 September). To learn more and register, click here.*

Minsuk Cho is a Korean architect and designer of this year's Serpentine Pavilion."We have a demanding role as architects, and I think movies are a good comparison: it’s always so polarising – there are serious directors, versus blockbuster directors – but there is a way of doing both."Show notes:Eun-Me Ahn - Korean Choreographer Cities on the Move - exhibition curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and You HanrouJang Young-Gyu - Korean musician and composer responsible for the 2024 Serpentine Pavilion’s sound installation Heman Chong and archivist Renée Staal - collaborators on the 2024 Pavilion’s “Library of Unread Books” Won Buddhism Wonnam Temple by MASS Studies Madang, traditional Korean courtyardReferences: Bruno Taut & Buckminster Fuller 2006 Serpentine Pavilion by Rem Koolhaas with Cecil Balmond 2010 Shanghai Expo Pavilion by MASS StudiesCrow's Eye View: The Korean Peninsula – 2014 Venice Biennale Korean Pavilion co-curated by Minsuk Cho Gottfried Semper’s Four Elements of Architecture (1851)Eduard Glissant - Philosopher and poet from Martinique OM Ungers’ 1978 essay on Berlin’s Green Archipelago Bong Joon-ho - Korean director (Host, Ok-ja, Parasite)Park Chan-wook - Korean director (Old Boy, the Handmaiden, Decision to Leave)