Cristina Gamboa is a co-founder of the Barcalona-based architecture cooperative Lacol. "We are constantly fighting with budgets, and are often left with what is absolutely necessary – a “pure” architecture. […] When the manzanas [Cerda’s urban grid for Barcelona] were built without architects this lead to a homogeneity, or even genericness, that we are comfortable with, maybe because of its lack of a specific aesthetic narrative." Episode References:  John Habraken – frameworks of mass support Lucien Kroll Frei Otto Francesc Rius – Coll De Portell Housing Alfons Sol ..read more

Takero Shimazaki is director of the London-based practice t–sa, which he co-founded with Julie Toh in 1996. You can’t control everything as an architect. You can’t dictate everything – that’s not the point. Instead it’s quite exciting to be liberating, to let things be in a way. There are discrepancies between the ideal architecture of imagination and the reality of tolerance and conflict; in these kinds of chaotic and raw situations, how does architecture survive? Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield.  Download the London Architecture Guide ..read more

“The artist working alone in their studio is the antithesis of what we do every day as architects […] and yet one hopes that the work you produce might have the same resonance.” Jamie Fobert a Canadian-born architect who has found himself increasingly working on projects at the centre of British culture.  Fobert, who has recently become chair of the Architecture Foundation's board of trustees, studied at the University of Toronto before moving to London in 1988, where he worked for for David Chipperfield, before establishing his own practice in 1996. He is best known for his work with m ..read more

Nicholas Lobo Brennan and Astrid Smitham founded Apparata, their London-based architecture practice, in 2014. "What we are always trying to do is a kind of activism, but the activism is entirely expressed and developed through prosaic things – literally, where is the door, how wide is the walkway, that kind of stuff. It’s not either or – either architecture is its own autonomous discipline, or it’s a social practice – there has to be room for the idea that the actual devices you use to engage with activist work can literally be construction, space and architecture." Buy tickets to Architect ..read more

Hans Ulrich Obrist is a curator and artistic director of the Serpentine Galleries in London. This episode features Part 2 of his interview for Scaffold. (Listen to part 1 here). "There is a different kind of time in the studio of artists […] time almost gets suspended when I do a studio visit, which is a major aspect of how I break with routine and liberate time. Artists are world builders, and so you travel into another world." – HUO Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. Download the London Architecture Guide App via the App Store or Google Play ..read more

Hans Ulrich Obrist is a curator and Artistic Director of the Serpentine Galleries in London. "We need protected spaces for art, yes – that's why we have museums – but we need also to find ways to actually go from from the gallery space to the park, into the city, and into society…curating is about building bridges between art and society, and I’ve always believed we need to create this kind of experience for people” Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield Download the London Architecture Guide App via the App Store or Google Play Hosted on Aca ..read more

Rural Urban Framework is a research and design collaborative based at the University of Hong Kong, directed by Joshua Bolchover and John Lin. Conducted as a non-profit organization designing for charities and NGOs working in China, RUF has built over 15 projects in various villages in China including schools, community centers, hospitals, village houses, bridges, and incremental planning strategies.  Of course, much has changed in China since John and Joshua began their practice - the rural to urban migration emblematic of china’s development over the past several decades is now reversi ..read more

Tosin Oshinowo is a Lagos-based architect and curator of the 2023 Sharjah Architecture Triennial. Titled "The beauty of Impermanence, an Architecture of Adaptability," this year’s triennial considers design solutions built from conditions of scarcity and explores how this might impact sustainable design today.  This interview was recorded in Sharjah during the opening weekend of the Triennial in mid November 2023, and the conversation began by addressing the triennial itself, before unfolding into a more personal discussion of the contradictions that emerge between the exhibition and Os ..read more

Lisa Robertson is a poet and art writer. “There are parts of consciousness that go unsaid, that have not yet found the language or the representational modes that can open them further, and I think that’s really the only thing that interest me as a writer […] I’m interested really in what’s ‘unpublishable’ – what happens before any person reaches a threshold of self-representation – and I feel that threshold is more and more the place I want to be. I want to be doing my work in that stinky inner chute of the cheap hotel where the concierges hang their rancid rags. That’s the space I want to be ..read more

Esther Choi is a New York-based multidisciplinary artist and writer trained in photography and architectural history and theory. “[In Le Corbuffet] I was trying to experiment with whether or not you could introduce a critical message into a circulation network that was unsuspecting, which is why the idea of “soft power” is so interesting to me […] We’re used to negational critique, and that’s been the predominant axis by which we talk about critique in architecture and art […] But you can also introduce challenging or political ideas through seduciton, or pleasure, or sensation, which is what ..read more