Unfrozen
By Daniel Safarik and Greg Lindsay
UnfrozenNov 05, 2022
Irreplaceable
Kevin Kelley, a self-described “attention architect,” is a co-founding partner of design firm Shook Kelley and author of Irreplaceable: How to Create Extraordinary Places That Bring People Together. In our digitized world of ghost commerce, he believes there is still a place for real places, and that it is incumbent on architects to stop looking down their noses at retail, the essential lubricant of urban life, and start designing places that matter.
--
Intro/Outro: “Friction,” by Television
--
Discussed:
Bass Pro Shops at the Memphis Pyramid
“The Bonfire Effect,” courtesy Loxahatchie, Florida
Participation mystique, as per Jung, as per Lucien Levy-Bruhl
“TheAnxious Generation” by Jonathan Haidt
“Harvard Guide to Shopping” by Rem Koolhaas et. al.
Prior Unfrozen commentary on the replacement for the Orange County Government Center by Paul Rudolph
Yaromir Steiner and Easton Town Center, Columbus
Country Club Plaza, Kansas City
The Grove, Los Angeles
The Farmer’s Market, Los Angeles
Larchmont, Los Angeles
Hollywood and Highland (now Ovation), Los Angeles
Harley-Davidson dealerships’ Parts Bar
Mercado Gonzalez, Costa Mesa, CA
From Railyards to High-Rises
Craig Hutson has worked in research and development in academia and industry and is fascinated with the history of Chicago’s lakefront. When seeking a definitive book about the history of Illinois Center and Lakeshore East, the air-rights developments above former docklands and railyards east of the Loop, he realized there wasn’t one, and he decided to write it himself.
--
--
Intro/Outro: “Nighttime in the Switching Yard,” by Warren Zevon
--
Discussed:
Outer Drive East (400 East Randolph)
The Park at Lakeshore East
Boulevard East
Horror in Architecture
Blobs. Doppelgangers. Giants. Puppets. Incontinent objects. Mullets. Army of Darkness. All and much more are covered in Horror in Architecture: The Reanimated Edition by Joshua Comaroff and Ong Ker-Shing. The book examines how horror genre tropes familiar from books and cinema also appear in architecture, and in so doing, how we can find another way to understand and criticize our built environment, using the language of mass culture in place of “weaponized jargon.” Comaroff is the guest of honor on episode 76 of Unfrozen.
--
--
Intro/Outro: “Scare Me,” by Deadbolt
--
Discussed:
Harvard Graduate School of Design under Rem Koolhaas
Bigness, or the Problem of Large, by Rem Koolhaas
Centre Pompidou = Terry Gilliam’s Brazil
Xintiandi, Shanghai
The Architectural Uncanny, by Anthony Vidler
Built Beautiful, with narration by … Martha Stewart
Mullets
Ordos 100, Inner Mongolia
- House House, by Johnston Marklee
H.R. Giger -> Zaha Hadid -> Thomas Heatherwick-> Santiago Calatrava
Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town
Hannover Pavilion at Expo 2000 by MVRDV = Arby’s Breakfast Sandwich
Caltrans Building, Los Angeles, Morphosis
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen series, by Alan Moore
House of Leaves, by Mark Danielewski
The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov
Saddam Hussein’s Frank Frazetta-esque fantasy interior paintings
Idi Amin’s Chinese Garden
Great Basilica, Yamoussukro, Ivory Coast (110% the size of St. Peters)
Anti-Oedipus, by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari
The Day of the Beast and Philip Johnson’s Gate of Europe, Madrid
We're Back, Miss Us?
Never mind the weather, don’t you feel it has been a cold and eerily quiet winter? Could it be because Unfrozen was offline due to unanticipated legal issues with our podcasting platform? Never fear, we are back in black / in the saddle again, we missed you, and we are ready to infiltrate your ears with our musings once again.
Intro/Outro: “Miss You,” by the Rolling Stones
--
Discussed:
- Spotify throws a sprocket in our jam-bulance wheels
- Ubik-like terms of service, as written by Philip K. Dick.
- Digital Millennium Copyright Act
- Dubai: Mistakes were made
- 15-minute cities are in the Dubai 2040 plan
- Qiddiya
- North Pole Riyadh, 2-kilometer tower by Foster + Partners
- The Ministry of McKinsey
- The US Senate Inquiry into the PIF Consultants
- Dubai Creek Harbour and the delayed Dubai Creek Tower maybe restarting?
- Jeddah Tower also maybe restarting?
- Pritzker Prize goes to Riken Yamamoto
o Work includes The Circle, Zurich Airport
- Bjarke Ingels had a big, postmodern, postironic week
o Museum/Casino of Freedom and Democracy, New York
- Bears and Sox lobbying Chicago and Illinois for stadium subsidies
- Saudi 2034 World Cup Stadium by Populous
- Greg’s SXSW calendar
o Conference of Mayors Civic I/O Mayor’s Summit
o Using Augmented Reality to Drive Inclusive City Development
- Also at SXSW: Imagine Harder: Prototyping Impossible Futures
- Don’t drive or walk outside using Apple Vision Pro goggles
- Upcoming guests:
o Joshua Comaroff & Ong Ker-Shing, authors of Horror in Architecture
o Kevin Kelley, Shook Kelley, author of Irreplaceable (not Kevin Kelly)
Domo Arigatou, "Mike 2.0"
In every office, there is someone with so much accumulated knowledge the boss wants to “clone” them. At structural engineering firm Thornton Tomasetti (TT), they’ve basically done that. The firm has taken the concept of a “digital twin” to a newly literal level – engineers can now quiz a synthetic clone of the firm’s in-house welding and metallurgy expert, constructed from 30 years of his files and emails. Chief Technology Officer Robert Otani tells Unfrozen where TT is taking generative artificial intelligence (GAI) next.
--
Intro/Outro: “Mr. Roboto,” by Styx
--
Discussed:
· ZHA’s Patrik Schumacher keynote at the AIA Center for Architecture’s AI+A Symposium, 16 December 2023
· Dall-E, ChatGPT, Midjourney, OpenAI
· HOU 3000: Serpentine Galleries’ virtual chief curator, Hans Ulrich Obrist
· TT’s Spark Intranet
· Cornell Tech Jacobs Institute: The Future of Generative AI in Architecture, Design and Engineering
· TT made a digital twin of welding and metallurgy expert Mike DeLashmit. The real Mike gives "Mike 2.0" a “4.7 out of 5” in terms of the accuracy of its answers.
· Converting scanned PDF drawings with annotations into vectors + tabular data
· A “hallucination throttle” for generative AI iterations on existing documents
· Using AI to optimize material quantities, operational energy, and eventually, embodied carbon
On Balance: Architecture and Vertigo
Mankind’s quest for verticality has an underexplored dimension: the queasy feeling of vertigo many experience when close to the edge of a sheer drop. Davide Deriu, Reader in Architectural History and Theory at the University of Westminster, London, has taken on the relative lack of research into the subject with an interdisciplinary approach, captured in his book On Balance: Architecture and Vertigo. Come, stand on the edge with us.
--
Intro/Outro: “Vertigo” by U2
--
Discussed:
Vertigo, Alfred Hitchcock, 1958
Vertical: The City from Satellites to Bunkers, Stephen Graham, 2016
Vertigo in the City program at University of Westminster, 2015
The Eiffel Tower and Other Mythologies, Roland Barthes, 1979
Funambulism
Jean François "Blondin" Gravelet – Niagara Falls wire walk, 1859
Philippe Petit, World Trade Center wire walk, 1974
Jan Gehl on humans’ “natural” habitat in horizontal planes
Singapore’s HDB social high-rises
Mies’ insertion of ventilation grilles in front of the glass curtain wall at the Seagram Building, 1958
Prosper Meniere, father of the vestibular sciences
Trying Not to Think About Time: 2023 Recap / 2024 Preview
On the dawn of our fourth season, your hosts recap their favorite ‘casts of 2023, a live dramatic reading of Unfrozen’s 2023 Spotify Wrapped stats, and get on and off the soapbox as we stare down the barrel of 2024.
--
Intro/Outro: “Trying Not to Think About Time,” by The Futureheads
--
Discussed:
- Unfrozen’s 2023 Spotify Wrapped Stats:
o Most Popular Episode: “Show Me the Bodies” with Peter Apps
o Most Shared Episode: “Untimely Meditations, Virtual Repatriations,” with Era Merkuri and Martin Gjoleka + Chidi Nwaubani
- After School Newsletter by Casey Lewis
- Unfrozen’s Favorites of 2023:
o Attending the Venice Biennale during previews, including Sir Peter Cook’s assertion that, while at their event and on their payroll, NEOM would be less than half-built and eventually devolve into shantytowns
o “Moving the Monolith, Speed-Running the Follies,” with Andreea Ion Cojocaru and Nick Kauffman
o “The Atlas of Space Rocket Launch Sites,” with Brian Harvey and Gurbir Singh. Greg was channeling Geoff Manaugh’s BLDGBLOG
o “Smaller Cities in a Shrinking World,” with Alan Mallach
o “Renewing the Dream” with James Sanders
--- 2024 Doomscroll:
o NEOM meets the Metaverse at Aquellum + Zaha Hadid’s Minas Morgul tower, Discovery at Trojena
o You won’t have Charlie Munger to kick around anymore
o CES is underway, and so is the metaverse rebranding
o Want work? You need to kneel before the PIF
o Are architects and engineers really building the future for Saudi’s young? Or are they just taking the money and running?
--- Half the world’s population will vote in 2024
- No election scheduled in Canada, but in 2025, things are looking topsy-turvy:
o Canada is “three NIMBYs in a trenchcoat” right now
o Households now owe more in mortgage debt than Canada’s entire GDP
o Pierre Poilievre and the Canadian Conservatives seem to be the only ones taking the housing crisis seriously, and the kids are listening
o CHMC can’t just straight-up build affordable housing – why?
--- But it’s good real estate vibes in the US once rates get cut...
- You can build it – but who will insure it?
- Will San Francisco exit its doom loop in 2024? What cities will pull ahead?
o Gensler doubles down in its hometown + Shvo to the rescue at the Transamerica Pyramid
- Greg draws a picture of the work-from-home, AI-driven, obesity-drug-taking hellscape called America
- People are competing for walkable urbanism everywhere because we can’t seem to build any new housing
- Could consumer branding of residential real estate boost housing construction?
o Welcome to the Neighborhood! Wall Street Designed It
o Culdesac– build-to-rent walkable urbanism in Tempe, AZ
o WeWork’s Adam Neumann starts Flow
- Dead mall resurrections
- Easton Town Center, Columbus
- Retrofitting Suburbia, Ellen Dunham Jones and June Williamson
--
Engagements Preview 2024:
“Don’t Believe the Hype: Cities are Alive and Well,” University of Maryland Baltimore, 22 February
“Using Augmented Reality to Drive Inclusive City Development,” SXSW, Austin, 10 March
Smart City Expo USA, New York, 22-23 May
CTBUH International Conference, London and Paris, 23-27 September
Renewing the Dream
James Sanders edited Renewing the Dream: The Mobility Revolution and the Future of Los Angeles, out now from Rizzoli. With contributions from Nik Karalis, Frances Anderton, Mark Valliantos and Unfrozen’s own Greg Lindsay, the book explores the forces behind the change in the mobility landscape of the most famously car-centric city on Earth. Through design provocations and disciplined research, Sanders and the authors see the city on the edge of a mobility revolution, already manifesting in the largest rail-transit-building campaign in America since World War II, that could soon see its dozens of square miles of surface parking and 1,500 gas stations converted to “higher and better” uses, including housing and public space around far less-consumptive electric-vehicle charging stations.
--
Intro: “Low Rider,” by War
--
Discussed:
- James Sanders:
Celluloid Skyline: New York and the Movies: 2001, Knopf New York: A Documentary Film with Ric Burns, 1999
- Woods Bagot & Renewing the Dream
- John Rossant & CoMOTION
- Party time on the Expo Line
- The California courtyard apartment complex & bungalow court
- Courtyard Housing in Los Angeles, by Stefanos Polyzoides, Roger Sherwood and James Tice. Photos by Julius Shulman
- Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
- Chinatown
- La La Land
- California transit-oriented development legislation and funding
- LA’s transit-oriented communities program
Upcoming readings/bookstore appearances:
- Book Soup, West Hollywood, CA: 1/5
- The Skyscraper Museum, New York: 1/23
--
Outro: “L.A. Woman” by the Doors
Trespass 2: Private Views
Andi Schmied is an artist and architect based in Budapest. On a fellowship with the Triangle Arts Association, she traveled to New York, impersonating a “Hungarian billionaire’s wife” and prospective apartment buyer to gain access to some of the highest and most expensive real-estate in the world. The result is “Private Views,” a book documenting through photography and research the rarified atmosphere of the so-called “pencil towers” now dotting the Manhattan skyline.
--
Intro/Outro: “Something for the Girl with Everything” by Sparks
--
Discussed:
Calacatta Tucci marble Miele appliances New York State LLC purchase transparency law Lawsuits over construction defects at 432 Park Avenue, by Rafael Vinoly One57 Trump Tower
Lantern House by Thomas Heatherwick 53w53 (MoMA Tower) by Jean Nouvel 56 Leonard, by Herzog & de Meuron, with sculpture by Anish Kapoor
85% of ultra-high-net-worth (UHNW) individuals are men 90% of billionaires are men
A Dubai-style free zone in Hungary
Editor Irena Lehkoživová and VI PER gallery
Next project 1: World Islands, Dubai
The Palm, Dubai
Next project 2: London’s “Iceberg Homes”
Oliver Bullough’s Kleptocracy Tours From Russia with Cash
Trespass 1: Intimate Stranger
Zachary Balber is a photo artist who has been a frequent presence in the Miami contemporary art circuit exhibition since he got his BFA in Creative Photography at the University of Florida, New World School of the Arts, in 2009. His work has also been included in several American private and institutional collections.
Intimate Stranger is a photographic series produced in Miami by Zachary Balber between 2013 and 2020. Zachary has created 150 photos in which he has taken, very rapidly and without authorization, self-portraits during photo sessions of high-end real estate, in various poses, and in various degrees of undress.
--
Intro/Outro: "Balls" by Sparks
--
Discussed:
“Photography: The Middle Class Medium”
Family Propaganda Portraits
Photo-Marxism
Susan Sontag
Cindy Sherman
Walker Evans
“Avedon Smiles” > Richard Avedon: Nastassja Kinski and the Serpent
Alfred Dupont Building, downtown Miami
--
“Navigating through the excuses became part of the performance.”
“The image is more important than the reality it captures.”
“You are poking at people who can squish you.”
“Is taking a picture a crime?”
“I erase myself into these interiors.”
“I left with all the conceptual goodies I could fathom.”
“Interior decorating choices like a bad mixtape…With all of the resources at your disposal, this was your choice?”
“Buildings will eventually be like a Mr. Potato Head, with interchangeable parts.”
“Documenting architecture and fine art, I can map the gentrification that has happened in the last few years.”
Through the Portal: What We Can Learn from the Ferry Building
Through multiple earthquakes, misguided urban renewal schemes and changing economic conditions, the Ferry Building has stood at the foot of San Francisco’s Market Street since 1898. In his book, “Portal: San Francisco’s Ferry Building and the Reinvention of American Cities,” John King, the urban design critic of the San Francisco Chronicle, tells Unfrozen what we can learn from the indefatigable icon, and what that might mean for the future of downtowns in this uncertain era.
--
Intro/Outro: “Ride Captain Ride,” by Blues Image
--
Discussed:
California Building at the 1893 Columbian Exposition
San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge
Ballot measure 1986 – tear down the Embarcadero Freeway?
Loma Prieta Earthquake, 1989
Parks for Profit
To some, the postindustrial linear park, exemplified by the High Line in New York City, is one of the prime examples of the resurgence of the city that has taken place in the last few decades. But for Unfrozen guest Kevin Loughran, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Temple University, the postindustrial park is also a vector of gentrification and privatization of cities: a kind of “death show of zombie plants and railroad corpses.” Parks for Profit: Selling Nature in the City (Columbia University Press, 2022), his first book, offers a critique of the High Line, Buffalo Bayou Park in Houston, and the Bloomingdale Trail/606 in Chicago.
--
Intro/Outro: “Post-Industrial Necrofolk,” by Vredenstal
--
Discussed:
Buffalo Bayou Park: Prime donor: Rich Kinder, Kinder Morgan / The Kinder Foundation
- CMAQ funds via Rahm Emmanuel
Kelly Drive - Philadelphia
Millennium Park, a network of corporate-branded spaces
Atlanta Belt Line The QueensWay, NYC
--
- The “picturesque” as a historical element of 19th-century imperialism.
- Landscape as a colonial tool.
- Parks conceived as safe spaces for white women and children in rapidly industrializing and ethnographically changing.
- Counterpoint: Small parks pioneered by Jane Addams and Hull House.
- Three-point manifesto:
- Ban private park corporations.
- Decolonize the links among race, capital and the aesthetics of nature > Provincialize the canon.
- Let the rails rot, or, “Why is a weed so offensive to a certain sensibility about social class?”
A House Deconstructed
“We were like ants trying to describe a mountain.”
We would like to think that we “know” what goes into making a modern building. But the truth is that no one, not even architects, knows. The O(U)R, Office of (UN)certainty Research, spent three years studying a single, relatively modest modern house located in Seattle by Allied8. The result is “A House Deconstructed,” featuring graphics by Angie Door.
Mark Jarzombek is a professor of history and theory of architecture at MIT.
Vikramaditya Prakash is a professor of architecture at the University of Washington.
Founded in February 2020, O(U)R is a design research practice dedicated to rethinking architecture in terms of the emergent scientific, social and political parameters of the 21st century. O(U)R collaboration started in February 2020. The “House Deconstructed” project grew from the 2021 Venice Biennale exhibition “Many Houses, Many Worlds.”
--
Intro / Outro: “The Deconstruction,” by Eels
--
Discussed:
- Permission granted to examine house by its architect, Allied8.
- The research focused on four vectors:
o Atomic Consciousness that dates back to the Big Bang and the earliest supernovas
o Production Consciousness that involves a vast array of ingredients that are combined to make architectural products
o Labor Consciousness that spans a wide spectrum of temporal and economic conditions
o Source Consciousness that is multilayered and global in its reach.
- “Consciousness” as opposed to “research” or “history”
- Deliberate obfuscation of sources of environmentally damaging materials
- Normalization of the “chemicalization” of supply chains in the building industry
- The entire industrial complex is based on exploitation of the planet – which we need to fundamentally rethink
- Design for deconstruction – labeling all materials, using machine learning in some cases, in order to consider how a building can be taken apart and reassembled into a project in the future
- Interview took place on the day the day the NASA Psyche mission was launched, sent in search of metallic bodies
- Attempting to quantify the inputs and normalize them for comparison proved next to impossible – and beside the point, somewhat, which is simply to establish awareness of the complexity.
- The objective is to create a generation of future designers who have the “rearview mirrors” that prior generations didn’t, when it came to understanding material sourcing.
A.I., Meet Timber
At the intersection of A.I. and timber, expect new tessellations and kinetic results. Unfrozen interviews Mykola Murashko, a 23-year-old Cambridge graduate who, with Carlo Ratti, founded Maestro, a software-powered construction company whose initial projects feature precision-cut timber panels, optimized by artificial intelligence.
Intro: The Cutter, by Echo and the Bunnymen
--
Discussed:
Blank: Speculations on CLT: Jennifer Bonner & Hanif Kara
ETH Zurich Robotics Aesthetics & Usability Center
AGO Modina - adaptive reuse in which an A.I.-designed steel kinetic roof covering the courtyard - using digitally fabricated components.
Alpine stone bivouacs
What’s the best tessellation?
What’s the best kinetic result?
--
Outro: The Trees, by Pulp
"V" is for "Value": Verse Design
Verse Design LA is headed by Paul Tang and Courtenay Bauer. The architecture firm has taken considerable risks, sometimes playing the role of ambassador and accountant while pursuing value for clients – including telling prospective clients they shouldn’t pursue the project. From high-speed rail stations in China to sprawling eco-resorts in Northern California, Verse Design has been around the Ring of Fire a few times, literally and figuratively. They share their wisdom with Unfrozen.
--
Intro/Outro: “Value,” by Foliage
Discussed:
- Verse Design Shanghai – with Leon Dai
- USC American Academy in China
- Projects:
o High-Speed Rail Station, Bengbu,China, 2010
o Thirty75 Tech, Santa Clara, CA, 2022
o Guenoc Valley, Lake County, CA (16,000 acres) – Ongoing
- Adrian Zecha, partner, founder, Aman Resorts
- Manhattan = 14,478 acres California Forever, Solano County, CA: 55,000 acres
- Pro forma as a design tool
Larry Booth: Modern Beyond Style
Our guest is Larry Booth, founder of Booth Hansen Architects and a member of the original "Chicago Seven" group of architects who broke away from the Miesian acolytes dominating the discourse in Chicago at the end of the 1970s. He has a new monograph by Jay Pridmore called "Modern Beyond Style." We chat about postmodernism, pluralism, and the sensibilities that have made his work timeless, even as he has transitioned from the "young Turk" to "the establishment."
--
Intro/Outro: "Chicago" by Sufjan Stevens
--
Discussed:
- "One Hundred Years of Architecture in Chicago" exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, 1973
- the Chicago Architectural Club & "Chicago Architects" exhibition, 1976
- Time Life Building, Harry Weese, 1969
- Museum of Contemporary Art - Larry Booth, 1978
- Museum of Contemporary Art - Josef Paul Kleihues, 1996
- Krannert Art Museum, Champaign, IL - Booth Hansen, 1985
- The Whites (the New York Five)
- The Grays
- Computer Design Research and Learning Center, University of Illinois at Chicago
- Philip Johnson, cover of Time Magazine, Jan. 8, 1979, with the drawing for the AT&T Building, New York
- Paul Hansen, the "business side" of Booth Hansen
Skyscrapers and Skullduggery
Thomas Leslie is a professor at the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois, and a noted skyscraper scholar. He has just published “Chicago Skyscrapers, 1934-1986: How Technology, Politics, Finance, and Race Reshaped the City, the second book in a magisterial series on how the famous Chicago skyline came to be. This period saw the birth of icons like the Sears (Willis) Tower and John Hancock Center, the story of which is inextricable from the skullduggery in the backrooms of Chicago politics and real estate.
--
Intro/Outro: “Skullduggery” by Steppenwolf
Discussed:
- The Richard J. Daley Collection archives at University of Illinois Chicago
- The Development Plan for the Central Area of Chicago, 1958
- Chicago as a gameboard, in which skyscrapers were chess pieces
- The Field Building, 1934
- 860-880 Lake Shore Drive, 1951
- C.F. Murphy, the Zelig figure of Chicago architecture and real estate
- The State of Illinois Building > James R. Thompson Center > Google
- The Sears Tower and its land accumulation saga
- The John Hancock Center – the “car chase” scene in the book
- Modern Architecture: A Critical History - Kenneth Frampton
- The Power Broker – Robert Caro
Smaller Cities in a Shrinking World
Drawing on his decades of experience working in and writing about shrinking cities, renowned urban policy expert and Center for Community Progress senior fellow Alan Mallach delivers a powerful wake-up call in his new book Smaller Cities in a Shrinking World: The era of booming global population and economic growth is over, and cities everywhere will shrink as a result.
--
Intro/Outro: "Smaller and Smaller," by Faith No More
Discussed:
- Germany and Japan's demographics
- The immigration factor
- The political time bomb of shrinking cities and left-behinders
- Networked Localism
- Remote Surgery
- Dan Gilbert saves(?) Detroit
- Migration to the Sun Belt - what will reverse that course?
- HGTV for Shrinking Cities
-
New Territories
Justin Hui is an architect, artist and photographer who researches topics of land development, borders, globalization and memory. His recent projects are New Territories, which explores the changing landscape of Hong Kong’s northern frontier, and Urban Africa, Made in China, which tracks the phenomenon of Chinese companies constructing infrastructure and buildings across Africa, modeled after China’s urban development.
—
Intro/Outro: “Territories” by Rush
Discussed:
Hong Kong’s New Territories: Northern Metropolis and Lantau Island
China’s Debt-Driven Construction Binge > Skyscraper Ban
TAZARA Railway – Dar es Salaam to the Zambian Copper Belt
China in Africa - colonialism or globalization?
Africa’s Urban Future: “Made in China”
Gated cities in Angola and Kenya
Exporting Special Economic Zones (SEZs) > Zambia
Made in China > Made in Africa, Mexico
You get what you pay for
Vincent Lo – Shui On Group
Ronnie Chan -- Hang Lung Group - 66 Projects
The podium + tower model as export commodity, rising in Long Island City, Flushing and Jersey City
Hudson Yards is very analogous to a Asian shopping mall
Steven Holl - Sliced Porosity - Chengdu
Concrete, the Cheech, and Principles of Preservation
John Lesak is a Principal at Page & Turnbull in Los Angeles, where he specializes in in the preservation, rehabilitation, repair, and reuse of historic structures. His work includes the adaption of historic modern office buildings, 1970s concrete structures, and a 1960s library into The Cheech, a museum for Chicano art in Riverside, California that opened last year to house the collection of actor Cheech Marin. Unfrozen and Lesak chat concrete, the broad meaning of historic preservation, and of course, the Cheech – the man and the museum.
--
Intro: “Born in East L.A.,” by Cheech & Chong
Discussed:
The Mercury (Union Bank, Getty Realty Building) – Claud Beelman, converted to residential in 2007
Local Law 97 – New York City
Empire State Building retrofit by Johnson Controls
Ranking of NYC buildings for energy performance
Shift of LEED from incentive-based program to code
Concrete cage match: Walter Netsch vs William Pereira
Consider also Max Abramowitz
Early recognition of embodied energy impact, 1976-1980: Energy Use for Building Construction, Richard G. Stein & Associates + Center for Advanced Computation at the University of Illinois
New Energy from Old Buildings, National Trust, 1981
--
Outro: “Concrete,” by the Darkness
Biennale Breakdown 3: Not for Sale, or: Lost in the Supermarket
The third and final installment of the Biennale Breakdown is at hand: We speed-ran the national pavilions so you don’t have to. Here’s the rundown on our 16 most notable national showings, complete with two interviews of the curators of Latvia and Canada pavilions, all in less than 50 minutes.
Intro/Outro: “Natural’s Not in It,” by Gang of Four
Discussed:
Austria: Partecipazione / Beteiligung
Switzerland: Neighbors
South Korea: 2086: Together How?
The Netherlands: Plumbing the System
USA: Everlasting Plastics
Bahrain: Sweating Assets
UAE: Aridly Abundant
Applied Arts Pavilion: Victoria & Albert Museum – Tropical Modernism
Australia: Unsettling Queenstown
Germany: Open for Maintenance
Uzbekistan: Unbuild Together
Czech Republic: The Office for a Non-Precarious Future
Latvia: T/C LATVIJA (TCL): Interview with curator Ernests Cerbulis
Intro/Outro:“Lost in the Supermarket,” by The Clash
Estonia: Home Stage
Canada: Not for Sale!!: Interview with curators Matthew Soules and Adrian Blackwell
Intro/Outro: “New Home” by Toro y Moi
Untimely Meditations, Virtual Repatriations
Despite its looming omnipresence, the Venice Architecture Biennale had very little material on virtual/augmented reality and the metaverse. Unfrozen interviews two of the exceptions.
First, Era Merkuri and Martin Gjoleka, principals of the Karlsruhe, Germany-based Heramarte, are the curators of the 2023 Albanian Pavilion, titled "Untimely Meditations: How We Learn to Live in Synthesized Realities." The project takes two real but highly adulterated 1950s public works projects in Tirana - the Dinamo Stadium and the Artificial Lake - and situates reimagined augmented-reality objects within them, projecting the results throughout the space at the Arsenale, and online.
Second, Chidi Nwaubani is the founder of Looty, a “virtual restitution project” in which a team of artists stages a “heist,” in masks and dark clothing, to (perfectly legally) scan detailed 3D images of looted artifacts from Africa now sitting in places such as the British Museum. The 3D images of such works as the Benin Bronzes and the Rosetta Stone are then converted into non-fungible tokens (NFTs), with 20 percent of the proceeds going to grants for young African artists.
Intro / Outro: “Untimely Meditations” by Shortwave Research Group
Intermezzo: “Heist” by Noisestorm
Old Wine, New Bottles: Urban Block Cities
Copenhagen has long been a paragon in urban planning circles. Karsten Palsson, CEO of Palsson Urbanism, says it's under threat from commercial development interests and weakened government, and now is the time to rearticulate and potentially export the principles that made it a paragon in the first place. Unfrozen sits with the author of "How to Design Humane Cities - Public Spaces and Urbanity," and the new "Urban Block Cities - 10 principles for Contemporary Planning."
Intro/Outro: "Old Wine, New Bottles," by Silver Convention
Biennale Breakdown 1: The Boys are Back in Town
The 18th Venice Architecture Biennale was one with “no architecture,” some critics have alleged, but there was no shortage of consequential exhibition. Shaking off jetlag and whiplash from the contrasts on hand, Greg and Dan attempt to unpack their initial impressions of “The Laboratory of the Future.”
Intro/Outro: “The Boys are Back in Town,” by Thin Lizzy
--
Discussed:
Olalekon Jeyifous – winner of the Silver Lion for “The African Conservation Effort”
Killing Architects + Buzzfeed + local Chinese journalists: “Investigating Xinjiang’s Network of Detention Camps”
Wilson, Yoon, Howeler, Begley, Han – Unknown Unknown: A Space of Memory
Albanian Pavilion: Untimely Meditations
Liam Young – The Great Endeavour
Big Shovel – Daniel Yergin
Robots of Brixton – Kibwe Tavares
Forensic Architecture – The Nebelivka Hypothesis
The Dawn of Everything – David Graeber & David Wengrow
Sapiens – Yuval Noah Harari
The Economy of Cities – Jane Jacobs
Sweet Water Foundation – “chaord”
DAAR – winner of the Golden Lion for “Ente di Decolonizzazione — Borgo Rizza”
Black City Astrolabe – J. Yolande Daniels
– Opening talk with Sir Peter Cook – Archigram
- What the Biennale criticizes is what NEOM is built on…
- Parallel: Brasilia – 50 years of progress in 5
- Contrast: V & A’s exhibition on Tropical Modernism
- Edifice Complex / The Myth of Tabula Rasa: You can’t build your way out of a lack of institutions – it leads to disastrous consequences.
- Contrast with Canada Pavilion’s “Not for Sale!”
Rating the Tote Bag Designs:
No. 5 – Saudi Arabia
No. 4 -- Hungary
No. 3 – UAE
No. 2 – Switzerland (“Neighbors” with Venezuela)
No. 1 – Canada – AAHA!
Oliver Wainwright’s review for the Guardian
Megablocks: Go Big and Go Home
Jeffrey Johnson is Director of the School of Architecture at the University of Kentucky College of Design. He previously taught for 10 years at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University, where he was the founding director of Asia Megacities Lab. Unfrozen interviews Johnson about his work at the Asia Megacities Lab, including the “China Lab Guide to Megablock Urbanism,” exploring the most persistent typology of China’s urban expansion, domestically and internationally.
--
Intro/Outro: “Blockbuster,” by Sweet
--
Discussed:
- Steven Holl’s Linked Hybrid, Beijing
- SOHO Jianwai, Beijing
- Hutongs, lilongs, and other older “gated communities”
- Design and Solidarity > Megablocks functioning under zero-Covid lockdowns
- Neighborhoods > Defined by walls
KPF:
- Lincoln Center Pacific Park / Barclays Center Flushing, Queens as an export investment market for Chinese developers
The Roots of Urban Renaissance
Unfrozen welcomes Brian Goldstein, the author of “The Roots of Urban Renaissance: Gentrification and the Struggle Over Harlem.” Goldstein is a historian of the American built environment and an associate professor of architectural history in the Department of Art and Art History at Swarthmore College. Previously, he was assistant professor in the School of Architecture and Planning at the University of New Mexico and an A.W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Center for the Humanities and the Department of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He received his PhD from Harvard University in 2013.
--
Intro/Outro: “Across 110th Street” by Bobby Womack
--
Discussed:
ARCH – Architects Renewal Committee in Harlem
J. Max Bond Jr. > Bond Ryder & Associates > Davis Brody Bond
East Harlem Triangle Plan
Morningside Park Plan
“Second Harlem Renaissance” of the 1990s > Magic Johnson’s investor group arrival > Harlem USA
Bill Clinton office in Vincent Building, 125th St
Harlem Commonwealth Council (HCC) <> James Dowdy
Harlem State Office Building, a.k.a. Reclamation Site # 1
Robert Moses > Urban Renewal
Gov. Nelson Rockefeller + Edward Loeb, Urban Development Corp. (now Empire State Development)
Harlem Urban Development Corp.
Brownstone de-densification
Pathmark, closure and sale to Extell > Whole Foods > Target and Trader Joe’s
Community Land Trusts (CLTs) – one possible legacy of 1960s planning and architecture activism
Abyssinian Development Corp. – Rev. Dr. Calvin O. Butts III
Mass Support
Cassim Shepard is distinguished lecturer in architecture and urban studies at City College, City University of New York. Trained as an urban planner, geographer, and documentary filmmaker, Cassim produces nonfiction media about cities and places, with a particular emphasis on housing and civic life. His film and video work about cities around the world has been exhibited at the Venice Architecture Biennale, the Museum of the City of New York, the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, the United Nations, Pavillon de l’Arsenale in Paris, and the African Centre for Cities in Cape Town.
His current exhibition, Mass Support, running at CCNY’s Spitzer School of Architecture through May 7, with a symposium scheduled for April 26, explores the legacy and contemporary relevant of Stichting Architecten Research (SAR). SAR was an architectural think tank active in the Netherlands between 1964 and 1990, which proposed a radical new way of thinking about mass housing. The essential gambit was to fuse industrial production with mass customization, a concept that has strong implications for today’s urban issues.
Intro/Outro: “Plug In!” by Porci Scomodi
Discussed:
Places article
The New York Housing Compact
Prefab Problems: Pacific Park B2 Project – Forest City and Skanska
Tim Swanson, Inherent Homes, Chicago
People’s Architecture Office: Plug-in Houses
Gans & Co.: Build it Back Modular
Nakagin Capsule Tower > Unfrozen episode “1972: A Spatial Oddity”
Levittown
MoMA: Home Delivery:
Fabricating the Modern Dwelling
Baugruppen R50, Kreuzburg, Berlin
San Riemo, Munich
Kooperative Grosstadt
Top Up and PATCH22, both by Lemniskade Projecten (Developer) and Frantzen et al architecten (Architect)
Lewis Mumford Lecture: “Pressing Change in the Increasing Inflexible City,” Featuring Emily Badger (April 27, CCNY)
The Atlas of Space Rocket Launch Sites
"The Atlas of Space Rocket Launch Sites" shows all major sites where space rockets have been launched since Sputnik in 1957. Brian Harvey and his co-author Gurbir Singh showcase the steps of space travel as they have never been presented before. We were lucky enough to catch them on Unfrozen. Have a listen and enjoy this unique exploration of the final frontier with us.
Intro/Outro: "Rocketship XL-3" by Man or Astro-Man?
EV Equity
Adam Lubinsky, AICP, PhD, is a principal at WXY Studio. Adam leads a range of planning studies, strategic visions and master plans, and he has created new practice areas that address mobility, education and economic development using data analysis, design and new forms of community engagement.
Lubinsky has just authored a detailed, 5,000-word report for the American Planning Association on equity and EV charging infrastructure, reaching their 40,000 members. Drawing on his work in this field in 11 states and for clients ranging from BMW to local departments of transportation, Lubinsky focuses on equitable access to charging, and the push to have more EVs — and cleaner air — in all areas, including those where environmental justice is a legacy concern.
Intro: "Vehicle" by The Ides of March
Outro: "Electricity" by Suede
Show Me the Bodies
At Grenfell Tower, London, on 14 June 2017 a small kitchen fire quickly enveloped the entire 24-story building, aided by combustible cladding material affixed to its exterior. This and many other factors contributed to the deaths of 72 people. Grenfell Tower became an international symbol of systemic failure within the building industry and the government to protect the lives of high-rise residents. More than five years on, the public inquiry is nearly complete, having taken more than 1,600 witness statements and held more than 300 public hearings. Now, the book "Show Me the Bodies: How We Let Grenfell Happen" meticulously examines the root causes of the tragedy. Unfrozen interviews its author, Peter Apps.
--
Intro: "That's Entertainment" by The Jam
Outro: "You Don't Care About Us," by Placebo
Moving the Monolith, Speed-Running the Follies: Numena and SpectraCities
Kicking off the “Metaverse Metropolis” series, Unfrozen spends a fascinating hour with Andreea Ion Cojocaru, CEO of Numena, and Nick Kauffman, Director of Communities for Spectra Cities. The companies are collaborating to build open-source city-building tools and in augmented and virtual reality, and working to translate the resulting deeper understanding of 3D space to build better communities in the physical world.
Catch Andreea live at South by Southwest (SXSW): From Words to Worlds, March 14, and at “Placemaking Across Realities,” with Spectra Cities founder Ryan Rzepecki at Cornell Tech, New York City, March 21, along with Unfrozen’s own Greg Lindsay.
Intro: “Numena” by Cosmosquad
Outro: “Spectra” by Pink Skies
Still Alive in the Utopia / Dystopia
Dan and Greg return from podcast sabbatical to bring you tasty riffs and preview Unfrozen’s spring docket. You didn’t think you could get rid of us that easily, did you?
Intro/Outro: “I’m Alive,” by Electric Light Orchestra
--
Discussed:
IIT MTBVU goes to Malaysia and Singapore
CTBUH 2023 Conference
Crescent City CA - site of a future megacity, and maybe tsunamis. A job for Climate Alpha
Vanity Fair - Horseshoe Theorists - network states, crypto communities
Economists believe architecture doesn’t matter
Trads vs mods
Human scale vs megaprojects - there are no natural norms of architecture
Singapore - the ultimate tabula rasa city:
Koolhaas, S, M, L, XL
The 7 peaks <> Devils Pool and Marina Bay Sands pool -- great, but you’ve got to see the employee dry cleaning operation at Marina Bay Sands
SIM City for Real
How do we disrupt Autodesk?
Who is the Carlos the Jackal behind Trump’s first policy proposal for 2024 campaign: Freedom Cities! With EVTOLS! = Bioshock Infinite
University of Notre Dame vs. a supertrad grad
Threatcasting and Micro-targeting with the Secret Service
Next up:
Nick Kaufmann, Spectra Cities and Andreea Ion Cojacaru, Numena
Peter Apps, “Show Me the Bodies: How We Let Grenfell Happen”
The MCHAP
…and Venice Architecture Biennale - countdown to May
…tying it back to the Chicago Architecture Biennial
Episode 46: More, More, More
Sean Mo and Heagi Kang are living the dream as Andmore Partners, a one-stop development and architecture shop in Los Angeles, working mostly in multifamily residential. Because they are investors as well as architects, the SCI-ARC grads take a hands-on approach to residential design that considers tenant longevity, maintenance, and management - meat-and-potatoes concerns that architects don't always have the privilege or obligation of considering. This informs and improves their future designs.
Intro/Outro: "More, More, More," by The Andrea True Connection
Episode 45: The Everyday Life of Memorials
Andrew Shanken is currently the Director of American Studies, Faculty Curator of the Environmental Design Archives, on the Faculty Advisory Committee at the Townsend Center for the Humanities and the Global Urban Humanities at the University of California Berkeley. He has a joint appointment in American Studies. His most recent book is The Everyday Life of Memorials, which explores memorials’ relationship to the pulses of daily life, their meaning within this quotidian context, and their place within the development of modern cities.
Intro: “The Statue Got Me High,” by They Might Be Giants
Discussed:
“There is nothing in this world as invisible as a monument.” – Robert Musil
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Washington DC, Maya Lin
Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial, Washington DC, Frank Gehry
National World War II Memorial, Washington DC,
Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Berlin, Peter Eisenman
Monument vs monumental vs memorial
The Bastille, Paris
Mariana Griswold van Rensselaer
National September 11 Memorial & Museum, New York City, Michael Arad
New Yorker cover, “Memorial Plaza,” 7-14 July 2014, Adrian Tomine
Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn
“Death, Grief and Mourning in Contemporary Britain,” – Geoffrey Gorer, 1965
Sedlec Ossuary, Kutna Hora, Czech Republic
“The Hour of Our Death” – Philippe Ariès, 1977
Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris
Brooklyn Strand, repurposing the Brooklyn War Memorial as a conduit to New York City’s park system
Hyde Park Corner, London
Monuments that “switch on” only when they’re blown up or taken down
Marian Columns
Georgia Guidestones
Robert E. Lee Monument, Richmond
White contractors wouldn’t remove Confederate statues. So a Black man did it.
“Kickstarter urbanism” and the crowd-funded monument
Denkmalkritik
“The Great War and Modern Memory” – Paul Fussell
The Grove, Los Angeles
Texas State Capital Grounds, Austin
Outro: “Monuments for a Dead Century,” by The Boo Radleys
Episode 44: "Olive the Seal" - Unfrozen in 2022
Dan and Greg recap the highs and lows of the first full year of Unfrozen – 33 episodes – and look ahead to 2023.
Did you know? You don’t have to catch the stars as they fall. You can listen to any episode from our web site, or on your favorite podcast platform, at any time!
Intro/Outro: “Our Lips are Sealed,” by The Go-Go’s
Discussed:
- A high number of episodes devoted to Peter Rees, the former chief planner of the City of London
o Episode 37: The City is Here for You to Use
o Episode 22: The Engine Room, the City, and Color Commentary
o Episode 21: This is London: Rees Reminiscences
- Stats and demographics
- Fan fave episodes: tied for 125 plays each:
o Episode 32: Future Storage: From Mineral Extraction to Data Forestry (Marina Otero)
o Episode 31: Emergent Tokyo (Jorge Almazan)
- Greg’s favorites:
o Episode 13: What Fresh McMansion Hell is This? (Kate Wagner)
o Episode 26: Big Time (Patrick MacLeamy)
o Episode 27: A Skyscraper Superfan Aims High (Changsub Lee)
o Episode 34: Chicago: Two Guides, One Cast (Laurie Petersen, Vladimir Belogolovsky
o Episode 41: Imagine a City (Mark Vanhoenacker)
o Episode 43: Who is the City For? (Blair Kamin)
- Dan’s favorites:
o Episode 42: 1972: A Spatial Oddity (Noritaka Minami, Iker Gil)
- Guest & adventure pipeline for 2023
o Juan Miro, Miro Rivera Architects on windowless dormitories
o Andrew Shanken – author, The Everyday Life of Memorials
o Andmore Partners – Architects as Developers
o Dan in Hradec Kralove, Czechia
o Greg: The Metaverse Metropolis @ Cornell Tech Urban Hub
o What is the Figma of Autodesk?
o Zach Katz – Transform Your City
Episode 43: Who is the City For?
Pulitzer Prize–winning architecture critic Blair Kamin has long informed and delighted readers with his illuminating commentary. Kamin’s newest collection, Who Is the City For?, does more than gather fifty-five of his most notable Chicago Tribune columns from the past decade: it pairs his words with striking new images by photographer and architecture critic Lee Bey, Kamin’s former rival at the Chicago Sun-Times. Listen to the Unfrozen interview with Kamin, and understand why “city planning is not a game of 2D checkers but of 3D chess.”
Intro/Outro: “Chicago” by Benny Goodman
Discussed:
Maurice Cox, Chicago Planning Commissioner
The pandemic’s effect on rapid urbanization
Spread of crime from poor to rich neighborhoods
The city’s not “out of control,” but it is in need of reinvention
Lower Manhattan’s adaptive reuse of older skyscrapers does present a template
Decentralization of the central business district, ex: McDonald’s HQ in the Fulton Market
Prospects for Lincoln Yards and The 78 – shades of Cityfront Center?
The Chicago Spire pit / 400 N Lake Shore Drive replacement project
DuSable Park and the Riverwalk
“We have to think of the city not as a 2D checkers game but a 3D chess game.”
Buffalo Bayou Park extension project, Houston
AIA design competition for the next bungalow
“Plop” architecture
1611 W Division – look ma, no parking!
“There are those who say ‘who gets what’ is a tired trope of architectural criticism – let me vehemently disagree.”
Chicago as a participant in global economic and architectural design exchange
The City that Works > The City that Plays
Investment of Chinese capital in St. Regis Tower
Episode 42: 1972: A Spatial Oddity
The Nakagin Capsule Tower, among the few large structures to emerge from the Japanese Metabolism movement, was barely 50 years old when it was demolished in September 2022, after years of neglect and debate. Unfrozen interviews visual artist Noritaka Minami and curator Iker Gil, who have staged the exhibition 1972/Accumulationsat MAS Context in Chicago, on display through December 8.
--
Intro/Outro:
“Space Oddity” by David Bowie
-
Discussed:
1960 Tokyo World Design Conference
1970 World’s Exposition, Osaka
1972 – Nakagin Capsule Tower book
Kisho Kurokawa, architect of the Nakagin Capsule Tower
Tomio Ohashi photos
Tatsuyuki Maeda> Capsule Tower Preservation and Restoration Project > Nakagin Capsule Tower: The Last Record
Kisho Kurokawa’s only building in the USA is in Chicago: the Illinois Center Sporting Club
Marina City, one of Nakagin Capsule Tower’s inspirations
Episode 41: Imagine a City
Unfrozen interviews Mark Vanhoenacker, a commercial airline pilot and author of Imagine a City and Skyfaring. A regular contributor to the New York Times and the Financial Times, he was trained as a historian and started in business before beginning flight training in 2001. He now flies the Boeing 787 Dreamliner from London to cities around the world.
Intro/Outro: “Flying,” by The Beatles
Discussed:
Calvino’s Invisible Cities
Holiday Inn and Suites, Pittsfield, Mass.
John Hancock Tower, 200 Clarendon, Boston
James C Scott – Seeing Like a State
Aerotropolises, and/or airport terminals and fringes we like:
- The Squaire, Frankfurt
- The Jewel, Changi, Singapore
- Harmondsworth Moor, Hillingdon, London – home of a barn built in 1426, which has a view of the Heathrow control tower
- AeroCity, Delhi
- Virgin Clubhouse, Heathrow
- Schiphol, Amsterdam
- Kastrup, Copenhagen
- Arlanda, Stockholm
Ways to make aviation fuel green, The Economist, 17 August 2022
Episode 40: Typological Drift
Cities that produce only underwear, blue jeans and extras in domestic films are among the fascinating objects of study in Typological Drift: Emerging Cities in China by Shiqiao Li and Esther Lorenz. Journey with Unfrozen and Shiqiao Li to reveal the surprising urban realities of China that escape normative urban theories, with several stops along the way in philosophy and linguistics.
Typological Drift: Emerging Cities in China by Shiqiao Li and Esther Lorenz
Interviewee: Shiqiao Li is Weedon Professor in Asian Architecture, School of Architecture, University of Virginia, where he teaches history, theory, and design of architecture, and directs PhD in the Constructed Environment Program. He is author of Understanding the Chinese City (2014), Architecture and Modernization (2009, in Chinese) and Power and Virtue, Architecture and Intellectual Change in England 1650-1730 (2006). He recently contributed an essay to the Routledge Handbook of Chinese Architecture (2022).
Inro/Outro: “Drifted” by Groove Armada
Discussed:
Drift Triggers
Ten Thousand Things
Borges: “The map of the empire is the size of the empire itself.”
Figuration
Episode 39: Seeking the Superfruit of Urbanism
Michael Eliason is an architect and founder of Larch Lab, a studio focused on prefabricated, decarbonized, climate-adaptive, low-energy buildings and livable ecodistricts. Eliason, based in Seattle, had a transformative experience while living in Germany – the American residential model could be greatly improved by adopting some of the principles of Baugruppen – self-developed co-housing, without the granola trappings. Hear the Unfrozen interview – and then listen to his podcast, Livable Low-Carbon City.
Intro/Outro: “Spacelab” by Kraftwerk
Discussed:
- Black Sheep Development Co., Larch Lab’s baugruppen partner, headed by Aaron Yankauskas
- Ascent, Milwaukee
- Jeremy McCloud, Nightingale, Melbourne
- California development legislative changes
- First Passivhaus in the US: Smith House, Urbana, IL
- Minneapolis’ single-family housing zoning rollback experiment
- St. Paul’s rent control battle
- Product recommendation: Corsi-Rosenthal Box
- The north star of Baugruppen: Gleiss 21, Vienna
Episode 38: Towards a Non-Combustible Practice, Away from Mundane Endeavors of Indifference
Hanif Kara is a civil and structural engineer and professor in practice at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design and the co-founder of AKT II, a 350-person engineering practice based in London. The firm won the Stirling Award for Peckham Library in 2000 (with (Will Alsop), the Sainsbury Laboratory in 2012 (with Stanton Williams), and the Bloomberg European Headquarters in 2018 (with Foster + Partners). He is co-author of Blank: Speculations on CLT with Jennifer Bonner, and the recipient of the 2022 Fazlar Khan Lifetime Award from the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat.
Intro/Outro: Great Things, by Echobelly
Discussed:
One Park Drive (with Herzog & De Meuron)
Castilla (with Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners)
240 Blackfriars (with AHMM)
The Tower and the Bridge by David P. Billington
Joint studio with Farshid Moussavi, using reclaimed steel
Google HQ London (with BIG & Heatherwick Studio)
The Francis Crick Institute (with HOK & PLP Architecture)
Culture flaps at SCI-Arc and The Bartlett
Episode 37: The City is Here for You to Use
Unfrozen interviews Peter Wynne Rees, Professor of Places and City Planning, The Bartlett School of Planning, University College London, who was previously City Planning Officer for the City of London, from 1985 to 2014. He is a founding member and director (1990-2022) of the British Council for Offices and received their President’s Award in 2003 for “presiding over one of the most extensive periods of redevelopment in the City’s long history”. This is his first appearance on the program, but he has been the subject of two prior episodes, #21, This is London: Rees Remembrances and #22, The Engine Room, the City, and Color Commentary.
Intro/Outro: "The City Is Here for You to Use," by The Futureheads
Discussed:
CTBUH Lynn Beedle Lifetime Achievement Award
The cult of home ownership, enforced by government
Lifespan of buildings vs building products
What architecture and planning students should be learning
Episode 36: Big Time: Patrick MacLeamy
Patrick MacLeamy was the CEO of HOK from 2003 to 2017, capping off a 50-year career at the venerable firm responsible for the National Air and Space Museum, Moscone Center, and Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, and is credited with creating "The MacLeamy Curve," a touchstone of business guidance for the built environment. In his semi-retirement, he is a founder and chairman of buildingSMART International, which encourages the adoption of Building Information Modeling (BIM) and more open collaboration between the design and construction industries. He recently authored "Designing a World-Class Architecture Firm: The People, Stories and Strategies Behind HOK." Hear some of his lifetime's worth of colorful anecdotes and sage advice on this special episode of Unfrozen.
Intro/Outro: "Elevation" by U2
Nuggets:
“We need to think about contractors as our valued colleagues and friends, and change the way we think about our industry. It needs to be more collaborative – design-bid-build is going into the dustbin of history. Collaborative design-build is the way forward.”
“Managing risk and complexity is much easier to do collaboratively. We have to wake up and smell the coffee. The old way of designing and building is changing. If architects want to rejoin society in a special place, they have to adapt. The world needs us, but we need to get the rules of the game changed so we can be successful again.”
Episode 35: Architecture of Normal
Daniel Kaven is the author of Architecture of Normal: The Colonization of the American Landscape, a book that views the built environment through the lens of successive developments in transportation. An architect and visual artist hailing from Albuquerque, now calling Portland home, Kaven takes on suburbanization, flying cars, and why “Generation Z needs to get out in the streets and be really pissed off about work-from-home.”
Intro/Outro: The Big Country, by The Talking Heads
Discussed:
Ed Ruscha
Cibola – one of the Seven Cities of Gold
COVID as accelerant of moving from an experiential lifestyle to a destination-based lifestyle
Instagram feeds are the new main streets of America
United Airlines buys Archer – an air-taxi company
Henry Ford’s flying personal cars department
Prediction: First place to adopt flying cars – Saudi Arabia
The Main Street and Mall Retail Apocalypse
Future infrastructure and traffic planning will be about stratification of means of transport, literally
Just because we have the technology to do something, doesn’t mean we should
Do we want to live in places where we just order online and it gets delivered to a drone pad?
The Big Tech companies are nation-states, or partners thereof
Urbanism had a good run from 1990s to just before COVID.
The post-COVID boom is in places like suburban Boise – Boomtown ZoomTown, and it’s already fizzling.
“Generation Z needs to get out in the streets and be really pissed off about work-from-home.”
Architecture firms have really phoned in their responsibility to make places where people want to be – as a counterpoint to work-from-home, the tone of which is being set by Facebook and their brethren.
“There is no future with goggles on.”
“We don’t need to rip America apart and build the Metaverse.”
“How can people live a more spacious life in an urban environment?”
“We’re going to regret having made all these 5-over-1 wood-frame buildings with cheap materials.”
Episode 34: Chicago: Two Guides, One Cast
Chicago is a famed architecture town, but the road has not always been smooth. Hear from the editor and author, respectively, of two recently released guides – Laurie Petersen for the AIA Guide to Chicago and Vladimir Belogolovskyfor the DOM Architectural Guide Chicago, discourse on Postmodernist icons like the Thompson (future Google?) Center and Harold Washington Library, and muse on what came next, where we are now, and why Chicago is still important to architecture everywhere.
Episode 33: Tallest Timber, Boutique Hotels, Pokemon NO! and more…
Dan’s recent consecration of the world’s tallest timber building; Greg’s new gigs, and hotels to stay at while making them happen; the third space in a post-COVID world; update on the Durbin Renewal scandal in Chicago, and a preview of upcoming guests.
Intro/Outro: Super Sex by Morphine
Tall Timber:
Ascent, Milwaukee
Rocket & Tigerli, Winterthur, Switzerland
Atlassian Central, Sydney
Greg’s gig in NYC this week:
Patcraft– Shaw Industries, with:
Brad Hargraeves – Common
Evan Fain – Industrious
Boutique Hotels:
The Ace Portland – have a record player!
Why not the Nakagin Capsule Hotel?
Brooklyn Mirage(Bushwick / Ridgewood)
Brimfield Antique Flea Market – feeding ground for Roman & Williams-designed boutique hotels
Inside Amy Schumer Pretentious Hotel
McKinsey & Co NYC Taskforce to repurpose office space
Mary Ludgin, Heitman, Chicago taskforce
Durbin Renewal: Century and Consumers buildings
Greg’s new gigs
- Undisclosed fellowship, a.k.a. Pokemon NO!: Preparing cities for the metaverse, protecting real public space from virtual reality, unregulated disruptors, and more…
- Parag Khanna startup: Chief Communications Officer: Tool for modeling climate risk. Invest now in the climate-resilient regions of the world. The call is open for volunteers.
Are we living in Ready Player One or Snow Crash?
Future Storage: From Mineral Extraction to Data Forestry
Marina Otero, head of the Social Design Masters Program at Design Academy Eindhoven, Netherlands, is the winner of the Harvard Graduate School of Design's 2022 Wheelwright Prize. Her study, Future Storage: Architectures to Host the Metaverse, will examine new architecture paradigms for storing data, and how reimagining digital infrastructures could meet the unprecedented demands facing the world today.
Intro:
Lithium, by Nirvana
Discussed:
The Stack, Benjamin Bratton
Tubes, Andrew Blum
DNA as a storage medium
Seed banks for data
A data garden in Eindhoven
Destinations:
- Singapore: Had a ban on data centers for a number of years; are seaborne and underwater data centers an option? Floating solar farms?
- Darwin, Australia: Data governance – the first indigenous-led data center. Who has access to the data? Who owns it?
- Nigeria: Woman-led crypto-tech communities. Positioning themselves against the corporations that are bringing the infrastructure, so they can set up their own.
- Chile: Lithium extraction, new Humboldt Cable to New Zealand and Australia.
- Iceland and Sweden: Questions connected to industry and energy. Use of new infrastructures. In Sweden, one data center is also a club.
- California: Where new storage media are being developed.
Outro:
A Forest, by The Cure
Episode 31: Emergent Tokyo
Think of Tokyo less as a “chaotic” than as an “emergent” city. This means spontaneous, self-organizing aspects create order from the bottom up. That kind of emergence can be, if not designed, then facilitated. Unfrozen interviews Jorge Almazan, Associate Professor, Department of System Design Engineering, Keio University, and author of “Emergent Tokyo: Designing the Spontaneous City.”
Intro: Woman from Tokyo, by Deep Purple
Discussed:
Yokocho Alleys
Zakkyo Buildings
Ankyo Streets
Complexity Science – Geoffrey West
Cellular Automata – Stephen Wolfram
The Uses of Disorder – Richard Sennett
Rather than a Unified Theory of Emergence applicable to all cities, there are transferable principles:
- Economies of Agglomeration rather than Economies of Scale.
- Networks versus hierarchies.
- Inclusive boundaries (mix of uses).
Bar recommendations:
- Bar Usagi, Shibuya
- The Greek Bar, Suginami
Made in Tokyo, Atelier Bow Wow
Outro: Godzilla, by Blue Oyster Cult
Episode 30: True Lies
For a truly philosophical take on the role of the architect in the post-truth era, Unfrozen interviews Richard Francis-Jones, author of Truth and Lies in Architecture.
Intro: “Telling Lies,” by David Bowie
Discussed:
Architecture’s ambiguous relationship to truth.
The criteria that make a building worthy of love.
How can architecture bring us closer to nature?
Architecture is “never neutral nor innocent. There is a mutual interconnection between architecture and the events around it.”
“Eternal principles” or a classicist, colonialist trap?
Ex Machina and the consciousness of materials
Locaton and Vassal
Tsien and Williams
John Keats
Aldo Rossi
Louis Kahn
The EY Centre, Sydney
The negative critique culture.
Outro: “True,” by Spandau Ballet
Episode 29: "Al" in on Supertalls
Unfrozen interviews Stefan Al, author, Supertall, founder, Stefan Al Architects, designer of Canton Tower, Guangzhou with Information Based Architecture (IBA).
Intro/Outro: “History Rhymes,” by Empty City Squares
Discussed:
Technology: The role of technologies: concrete, elevators, air conditioning and dampers
Society: Culture, social preferences, zoning, aesthetics
The succession of events that led to today’s skyscrapers
New York – zoning
London – view corridors
Hong Kong – transit-oriented development
Singapore – vertical greenery
“History rhymes”
“Progress traps”
Easter Island, Prometheus, and Pandora’s Box
Irregular paths to inventions
Carrier inventing air conditioning when trying to solve printing issues
Using an Oregon optometrist’s office to test potential swaying of the World Trade Center, New York City, in 1965
Rafael Vinoly – 432 Park and the boat-pilot sway / chandelier test
Icebergs, Zombies and the Ultra-Thin by Matthew Soules
Digital Monuments by Simone Brott
Reflexive practitioners