Archinect Sessions One-to-one

The Genesis-sized replica of Noah's Ark is just the beginning of Ark Encounter, Kentucky's new biblical theme park managed by the Christian apologist ministry, Answers in Genesis. Troyer Group are the architects behind the ark, with president and chair LeRoy Troyer as the lead architect. I spoke with LeRoy about the challenge of building a project with Biblical construction specs, as well as the inherent controversy of designing something that is meant as a kind of proof of concept for Answers in Genesis' ideology: that the Bible "is the true history book of the universe".

Mark Middleton, partner at Grimshaw in London, has been facing the Brexit decision's aftermath like many of his architecture-compatriots—with positive pragmatism. While many architects and design professionals strongly supported "Remain", they have little choice but to #keepcalmandcarryon, while carefully reevaluating how ties with the European Union could affect business, as well as London as a design capital. Middleton joins Amelia Taylor-Hochberg on One-to-One to sort through the current mood for practitioners in the UK, and the effects Brexit could have on architecture projects and policy in the years to come.

We're taking a break from One-to-One this week to set off fireworks and contemplate the potential future of a Trump Presidential Center. In the meantime, we present some of our favorite episodes related to this big ol' hot mess of a nation. We've got it all:   "Traditional" architecture, not necessarily just like Jefferson would have wanted: Building Our Best Nature: Archinect Sessions One-to-One #8 with Scott Merrill, winner of this year's Driehaus Prize The too-common tragedy of mass shootings: Queer Space, After Pulse: Archinect Sessions #69 ft. special guests James Rojas and S. Surface Seeing through anti-LGBTQ legislation: Due Protest: pushing back against HB-2 and fighting for interns on Archinect Sessions #64, ft. special guest Gregory Walker Gun-control in the classroom: Guns in the Studio: Texas' new campus carry law prompted Architecture Dean Fritz Steiner to resign. He joins us to discuss the law's effect on architecture education, on Archinect Sessions #55 Public health crises from compromised in

In the late 1950s, some of the world's most prominent architects gathered in Berkeley, California, to take part in a landmark psychological experiment on creativity and personality. Eero Saarinen, Philip Johnson, Richard Neutra, William Pereira and dozens of other architects were put through a barrage of tests and surveys, to gain a better understanding of what creativity is, and its place in architecture. They also rated one another, and in the process exposed not only exposed their egos honestly, but also their insecurities. For the first time, the story behind the study (along with its data and results) have been made public, in The Creative Architect, by architect and author Pierluigi Serraino. I spoke with Serraino about the context of psychological research in the 1950s and the evolving personality behind being a “creative” architect.

Architecture writer and historian Hugh Howard has written many books on American architecture, telling stories that meld design and cultural history together in highly accessible and humanistic ways. His latest book, "Architecture's Odd Couple: Frank Lloyd Wright and Philip Johnson", tracks the fruitful and contentious relationship between the two architectural frenemies—beginning with Wright’s role in Johnson’s pivotal “Modern Architecture” exhibition at MoMA in 1932, up until Wright’s death in 1959. Through their relationship, Howard provides an excellent overview of midcentury architecture's context in the United States, and personalizes the architectural giants in the process.

Elaine Molinar joined founding partner Craig Dykers at Snøhetta's very beginning, when they won their first competition for the Alexandria Library in 1989. Since then, the firm has grown true to its mountainous namesake, expanding to four offices worldwide and winning pivotal cultural projects in architecture and design, among them the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet, SFMOMA's expansion, the entrance pavilion at the National September 11 Memorial Museum, and Norway's new banknotes. They both joined me on One-to-One to talk about their future hopes for the firm, Snøhetta's office culture, and their advice for working with your significant other (they've been a couple since the firm began).

Writer and BLDGBLOG founder Geoff Manaugh's latest book, A Burglar's Guide to the City, isn't just a set of case studies on bank vaults and getaway routes—it's a dialectic for public and private space. It’s definitely the first book I’ve come across classified jointly under “architecture” and “true crime”, and it's full of fascinating insights into how burglars exploit architecture to pull off the perfect crime, as well as the extent architects go to prevent that from happening. Geoff spoke with me about the research behind the book, and how a personal experience with burglary changed his ideas about privacy in architecture. For more podcasting with Geoff, check out our conversation about autonomous vehicles on Archinect Sessions #43.

Amro Sallam helped start Architects for Society in 2015, gathering together a collective of international architects to focus their work on humanitarian and social-welfare projects. One of their first projects, Hex House, is a solar-powered, single-family unit designed for deployment in refugee camps and other displaced communities. Sallam shared with me the firm’s origin story, their mindset towards architecture’s involvement in humanitarian efforts, and his thoughts on Aravena's Biennale.  

20 over 80: Conversations with Legends of Architecture and Design is the antidote to those breathless, over-hyped lists you’ve seen, trying to predict which baby-faced youngster will be the next big thing in their creative practice. A compilation of unique interviews with such greats as Milton Glaser, Michael Graves, Phyllis Lambert, Jens Risom, Denise Scott Brown and Deborah Sussman, 20 over 80 not only draws a thread through the last century of creative practice, but is also a testament to the talented people whose lifetime of experience came to define today’s design and architecture. Editors Aileen Kwun and Bryn Smith joined Amelia Taylor-Hochberg to discuss how they approached the dream assignment of interviewing such "legends", and the surprising similarities and differences running through the interviewees' history.

Today's podcast guests are NBBJ Managing Partner Steve McConnell and John SanGiovanni, co-founder of Visual Vocal, a new company bringing virtual and augmented reality systems to the architecture industry. As an investor in Visual Vocal, NBBJ plans to foster the company in all of its design processes, using its collaborative platforms to communicate among designers, clients, and users, at all stages of project development. With a beta program launching this summer, Steve and John gave me a taste of how NBBJ plans to use the service, why it invested in the company in the first place, and how ubiquitous VR stands to dramatically change the architectural process.  

In the late 1980s, Bernard Khoury came to the US from Lebanon to study architecture at RISD and Harvard, then returned to establish his practice in Beirut in the mid-1990s. His father was a prominent modernist architect during Beirut’s booming pre-civil war years, and much of Khoury’s work somehow engages with Lebanon’s post-war urbanity. We spoke about his time at Harvard, studying “war architecture” with Lebbeus Woods, and how his practice is a constant reevaluation of how architecture can reflect upon, and come to terms with, the traumas of war.  

We last spoke with Amale Andraos for our Deans List series, a year after she succeeded Mark Wigley as dean of Columbia University's GSAPP.Since 2011 at GSAPP, before her deanship began, Andraos has ledvarious research studios and seminars around "Architecture andRepresentation: The Arab City"—the results from which she has nowedited, with Studio-X Amman director Nora Akawi, into a newbook, The Arab City.Andraos spoke with Amelia Taylor-Hochberg about theperpetuated stereotypes and simplifications that plague discussionsof Arab cities—the desert v. the oasis, the traditional v. themodern, etc.—and how her own experiences in Beirut inspired herresearch.

Shortly after starting out in Frank Gehry's office in the early 1990s, Clive Wilkinson founded his own firm in Los Angeles, and has since designed far-reaching workspaces for such big-name clients as Google, the BBC, 20th Century Fox and Microsoft. I spoke with Clive about the evolution from cubicle farms to “serendipity machines” in office design, and his thoughts on co-working spaces. Also turns out he’s not a huge fan of Apple's "spaceship" campus.

If the name didn't tip you off, CockyBoys is a gay porn studio based in New York. Jake Jaxson has been running it, quite successfully, since 2010, starting with implementing a major shift in the aesthetic and overall quality of its videos – not only to up the production value, but to communicate what Jake refers to as a "nostalgia," and a sense of place. In an industry awash with graceless, utilitarian money-shots, readily available for free, how do you justify that extra investment in design, and getting your audience to pay for it?  Part of our special April focus on sex and sexuality in architecture, I spoke with Jake about the tandem inspiration between pornography and architecture, and how design-conscious porn can lead to a more sex-positive society. Jake also shares his dream house for a shoot – hint: it rhymes with "The Ass Mouse".

We visited Ray Kappe in his breathtaking home in Rustic Canyon, Los Angeles, to hear his thoughts on the shifting grounds of architecture education, and how architecture seems to always play catch-up to the historical zeitgeist. In a career spanning 60+ years and counting – including his roles as co-founder of Cal Poly Pomona's architecture department, and the founding-director of SCI-Arc – Kappe has not only been an impressive force of architectural practice (often referred to as an under-the-radar southern Californian modern master), but an educator constantly seeking to bring science and the world at large into architecture.  

Richard Kim is a pretty busy guy – as the head designer at emerging electric vehicle company, Faraday Future, Kim is tasked with creating the company's very first EV for production, destined to compete with Tesla and, as he sees it, the airline industry. No public design is available yet, but Kim hopes to do the "impossible" and ready the car for production in 2017. We found some time in his tight schedule to discuss his role at Faraday Future and what's in store for car ownership and operation in the coming years, as automation and electric battery capabilities open up new paradigms for the humble automobile.

This week on One-to-One, we check in with the partners behind Family, Oana Stanescu (former top-notch Archinect School Blogger) and Dong-Ping Wong, to hear how the pop culture-bending firm grew from when Oana and Dong met at REX, to now designing for Kanye West and pitching their own projects in New York, including the innovative + Pool project. Also, why Oana's dog is all over their website.

One-to-One is taking a break this week – we've been super busy these last few weeks, getting together more interviews and doing some spring cleaning for the podcasts. We'll be back next week with a new One-to-One, featuring Oana Stanescu and Dong-Ping Wong of Family New York, the designers behind Kanye's volcano and the + Pool project. Until then, we'd recommend checking out these recent interviews: The Ascendancy of Theory: writer and theorist Sylvia Lavin on Archinect Sessions One-to-One #13 Architecture for Humanity's Next Chapter: Garrett Jacobs, executive director of AFH-offshoot the Chapter Network, on One-to-One #11 The Art of Architecture Criticism: Archinect Sessions One-to-One #7 with Michael Kimmelman, architecture critic for the New York Times As always you can share your thoughts on the podcast through @archsessions or #archinectsessions, or through connect@archinect.com. Until next week!

This week's One-to-One guest, the Los-Angeles based architect Michael Maltzan, may be best known for his multiple residential projects with the Skid Row Housing Trust, and the longer-than-the-Empire-State-Building-is-tall residential mixed user, One Santa Fe. But Maltzan’s office is also designing Los Angeles’ new Sixth Street Viaduct, a since-demolished infrastructural icon of the city that bridged the Los Angeles River between downtown and Boyle Heights. Michael shares his relationship with the growing identity of downtown Los Angeles, and his perspective on the style of urbanism arising on LA’s westside in the “Silicon Beach” neighborhood of Playa Vista. We also discuss the effect of China’s ban on “weird” architecture for LA-architects practicing there.

Architect and educator Tom Wiscombe has made major inroads as SCI-Arc's BArch chair to establish a stronger connection to the humanities and critical theory in architecture education, founding the school's Liberal Arts Program last year and bringing in contemporary philosophers and theorists to spark new dialogues. We discuss his role in the southern Californian architecture culture (particularly in regards to MOCA's 2013 New Sculpturalism show), how he prioritizes theory in architectural practice and education, and his ongoing Main Museum of Los Angeles project in the city's enlivened downtown.  Correction: this episode thanks SCI-Arc for helping coordinate the interview – while Tom is on faculty there, it was his alma mater of UCLA that assisted in scheduling the interview.