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 Patr…

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…

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 t…

The Architecture Foundation gratefully acknowledge the Delegation of Flanders to the UK for their support in producing this episode. Recorded on site at Horst Arts and Music Festival in Vilvoorde, Belgium on Saturday 11 May 2024, episode 108 includes conversations with Mattias Staelens, founder of Onkruid and the inspiration behind the Horst Festiv…

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 Germa…

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 Mo…

This week, AF Trustee Shumi Bose moderates a discussion on the state of architectural education with panellists Adrian Lahoud (Dean, School of Architecture at the Royal College of Art), Kester Rattenbury (former Professor of Architecture at the University of Westminster), and Neal Shasore (Head of the London School of Architecture). The event was r…

This special episode of Scaffold features a brief interview with the Austrian architect Herman Czech conducted by David Kohn in advance of Czech's 10.05.2024 Architecture Foundation lecture. The interview was recorded at Kohn's recently completed Smart's Place project in Covent garden for Baylight Properties. Czech's lecture coincided with a major …

Takaharu and Yui Tezuka founded Tezuka Architects in 1994 and are best known for their experimental designs for schools and kindergartens, chief among them the Fuji School in Tokyo. They are currently fundraising to build a new orphanage and school in India called the Jhamtse Gatsal Learning Centre. Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production…

Phineas Harper develops cultural programmes that engage broad audiences with architecture and design. A regular contributor to The Guardian and former Chief Executive of Open City, their career spans criticism, curation, education, youth engagement, journalism and sculpture. "I see my work as always having an eye on some other change that is about …

This episode originally aired in April 2022; Scaffold will be back with a new episode next week. Asif Khan is a designer of buildings, landscapes, exhibitions and installations. “It’s helpful sometimes to think that architecture is made up. All of this cannon, all of this writing, all of this schooling […] let’s just imagine it’s a religion of some…

Fernanda Eberstadt is a New York born writer living in Europe. She has published five novels and two books of non-fiction, the latest of which is BITE YOUR FRIENDS: STORIES OF THE BODY MILITANT. "Art lies in the cracks, the deep tremors, the dysfunctions, in the gap between our own broken capabilities and the unpoliced world we’re hoping to create"…

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…

Takero Shimazaki is director of the London-based practice t–sa, which he co-founded with Yuli 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. I'm interested in the discrepancies that exist between imagined ideals…

“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…

Nicholas Lobo Brennan and Astrid Smitham founded Apparata, their London-based architecture practice, in 2016. "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 arc…

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…

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 …

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 h…

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…

RESOLVE is the Croydon-based collective practice of Akil Scafe-Smith, Seth Scafe-Smith and Melissa Haniff. “We want people to look at our work and think: “I could do that” - if it means it doesn’t look amazing, and it can’t go on dezeen, so be it. There has to the mark of people on these structures, and the mistakes of people too. That is a fundame…

Scaffold is on holiday this week – instead here's an interview with the IG architecture meme account Dank Lloyd Wright recorded last year for the podcast Power and Public Space, co-produced by Drawing Matter and the Architecture Foundation. A new Scaffold interview with Resolve Collective will air in two weeks ✌️ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/priv…

Theo de Meyer is an architect based in Ghent whose work moves between architecture, design and the arts. He and doorzon interieur architecten together represent the core of the modular collective Stand Van Zaken (‘State of Affairs’), who create furniture and architecture in collaboration with specialists in various fields. Special thanks this week …

Tony Fretton founded his eponymous architecture practice in 1982. His early work in London, including the Lisson Gallery (1986-1992), was influential in defining a new approach to architecture focused on urban context and daily life. “By the time I graduated, London was completely different. It wasn’t opulent, it was poor, and punk was an attitude …

Tony Fretton founded his eponymous architecture practice in 1982. His early work in London, including the Lisson Gallery (1986-1992), was influential in defining a new approach to architecture focused on urban context and daily life. “By the time I graduated, London was completely different. It wasn’t opulent, it was poor, and punk was an attitude …