In the fourth episode in our series on sound, architectural acoustics expert and educator Michael Ermann and CertainTeed Architectural national sales manager Steve Udolph share the secrets of how to ensure optimal acoustics in a concert hall.

How to Design the Acoustics of a Concert Hall

This is the third episode in our podcast series helping architects better understand acoustics. If you haven’t heard the first two episodes yet, make sure to go back and listen to “How Can Architects Better Understand Sound?” and "Unpacking the Latest Trends in Architectural Acoustics."

5 Mistakes to Avoid When Designing an Acoustic Space

In this second episode in our series on sound, architectural acoustics expert and educator Michael Ermann and CertainTeed Architectural national sales manager Steve Udolph help us understand the latest trends in architectural acoustics.

Unpacking the Latest Trends in Architectural Acoustics

In this episode, architectural acoustics expert and educator Michael Ermann and CertainTeed Architectural national sales manager Steve Udolph give us a closer look at when architects should start thinking about sound and emerging acoustical trends.

Podcast: How Can Architects Better Understand Sound?

As a new year begins, businesses across sectors are facing familiar challenges: COVID-19, experimental workplace models, economic uncertainty, climate change, and social inequity. Addressing these overarching issues in meaningful ways often falls off the everyday to-do list of architects, but for company executives, strategic, big-picture thinking is their priority, their task. In this episode, Shepley Bulfinch former president and CEO Carole Wedge and current CEO Angela Watson share their agenda for the future, lessons from their experiences, and insight into the executive suite of architectural practice.

Shepley Bulfinch Past and Present CEOs Discuss Design Leadership in Challenging Times

Lumenance Consulting founder Nancy Alexander, Perkins&amp;Will principal and director of global diversity Gabrielle Bullock, and University of Washington College of Built Environments dean Renee Cheng discuss common myths and questions about the role and place of DEI in architecture.

What Do Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Have to Do With Architecture?

In this episode, ARCHITECT contributing editor Ian Volner talks with LMN partner Stephen Van Dyck and principal Scott Crawford on they coupled design thinking with fabrication know-how to create an ethereal landmark for the city of Everett, Washington.

How LMN Bridges Thoughtful Design with Public Infrastructure

Steven Holl

Steven Holl discusses his firm’s recently completed project at Franklin &amp; Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa., and reflects on how the COVID-19 pandemic will influence the design of future educational, institutional, and arts spaces.

Explore Steven Holl Architects’ New Winter Visual Arts Center

Geoff Manaugh

Nicola Twilley

Karrie Jacobs interviews the writers about their forthcoming book on the history of quarantine facilities, which they were finishing in March while on lockdown in Los Angeles at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Geoff Manaugh and Nicola Twilley on the Architecture of Quarantine

Listen to Skidmore, Owings &amp; Merrill partners Carrie Byles, Laura Ettelman, and Xuan Fu describe their paths to the top of the global firm and their goals during their appointments.

Meet SOM's First All-Female Executive Committee

The Architect Podcast Network is a production of ARCHITECT, the journal of the American Institute of Architects. Here, we talk with the innovators working at the cutting edge of design, technology, and practice in architecture.

The topics and guests are relevant and interesting but the format is completely scripted. It sounds like I’m being read to and the interviewer does not ask follow up questions, but rather jumps to the next question as if the interview is timed. I appreciate considerations for my time but that is not what draws people to podcast. I would listen to a podcast that’s double the amount of time if it sounded like a real conversation.

I can read a script myself

I found a podcast named Architect and thought I’d learn something new. Never mind. If you’re interested in actual architecture, don’t waste time listening to these hacks.

Nothing architecture. All ‘social justice’.

ARCHITECT

Jonathan Moody

Listen to the father–son duo and respective past and current CEOs of Moody Nolan reflect on their road to success in a profession with disproportionately few people of color.

Curtis and Jonathan Moody on Being Leaders, African Americans, and Family Members in Architecture

Frank Gehry

We sat down with Frank Gehry, FAIA, while he was in Washington, D.C., to receive the 2016 Leonore and Walter Annenberg Award for Diplomacy Through the Arts. In addition to his architectural practice, the Los Angeles–based architect leads the design-tech solutions firm Gehry Technologies, and he was recently the subject of a biography by Pulitzer-Prize-winning architecture critic Paul Goldberger, Building Art: The Life and Work of Frank Gehry (Knopf, 2015). We talked with Gehry about his career, his impressions of the industry, and his advice for emerging practitioners.

Frank Gehry on Practice and the Profession

Jeanne Gang discusses her firm's recently completed project in Brooklyn, N.Y., and examines how creating supportive space for first responders can serve the community as a whole.

Studio Gang's FDNY Rescue Company 2 Rethinks the Modern Firehouse

In this podcast episode, Nash Hurley, principal of San Francisco–based architecture studio Vital, references colonial villages, Burning Man, and hovercrafts in discussing the past and future of cities, work, transit, and community, and offers a first glimpse at the firm's Joint Structures research.

Joint Structures: A New Typology for a Networked Society

As a female person of color, a Puerto Rican, and a member of the LGBTQ community, Yiselle Santos Rivera, Assoc. AIA, has beaten the odds. In this episode, Santos Rivera shares how she is reaching out to individuals and communities not already embedded in the equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI)conversation; her efforts at HKS, a firm with more than 1,400 design professionals worldwide; and where designers can find support if their local community is not currently thinking about EDI.

Addressing Our Own Bias to Design Better

In this podcast episode, Karen Braitmayer, FAIA, describes the roadblocks often faced by people with disabilities interested in architecture. At some point in life, she adds, many people will be affected by a disability, whether it be themselves or someone they know, such as their parents, partners, or colleagues.

The Need for Architecture That Enables, Not Disables

Art Gensler

We talked with the founder of global design firm Gensler about the one skill that many architects lack: The ability to run a business. Art Gensler, FAIA, was 30 years old when he and a small team formally opened up shop as M. Arthur Gensler Jr. and Associates, Inc., on Jan. 1, 1966. Since then, the firm has grown to more than 5,000 employees across 46 offices globally. Gensler discusses how he learned business as an architect and shares some advice for emerging practitioners looking to strike out on their own.

Art Gensler on Business Management

In this podcast episode, Van Buren shares why she left her steady work at a successful firm to pursue her own ambition, what it takes to realize a restorative justice space in a community of doubters, and her belief that architects and designers can drive meaningful, substantial changes in society. In her op-ed "We Must Plan for a Decarceration Nation," in the May 2019 issue of ARCHITECT, Van Buren writes, "[Architects] have a unique way of thinking that helps us manifest complex ideas, concepts, and philosophies into real space and time—all skills that are desperately needed at the edge of social change. Together, we can steward and even lead a successful effort to decarcerate our nation and build equitable and just communities."

Practicing Architecture to Make a Difference

In this podcast episode, ARCHITECT speaks with three experts with firsthand knowledge, insights, and opinions about the lure of smart cities: Paul Doherty, an architect and the chairman and CEO of the international company The Digit Group (TDG); Debra Lam, managing director of the Smart Cities and Inclusive Innovation initiative at Georgia Tech, founder of the Georgia Smart Communities Challenge, and the former chief of innovation and performance for the city of Pittsburgh; and Anthony Townsend, founder of New York–based Bits and Atoms and author of Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers and the Quest for a New Utopia (W.W. Norton &amp; Co., 2013).

What Is a Smart City? Listen to Three Experts Debate

Skylar Tibbits

Skylar Tibbits knows his way around the fourth dimension—time, that is. In 2013, Tibbits, the head of MIT's Self-Assembly Lab, coined the term "4D printing" to describe a key area of his research in programmable material technologies, wherein materials are imbued with characteristics that allow them to change shape over time. A trained architect, Tibbits has previously worked for Zaha Hadid Architects, Asymptote Architecture, and Point B Design. Today, he co-directs the Self-Assembly Lab, runs his own design and research firm, SJET, and is a research scientist in MIT's Department of Architecture, where he teaches graduate and undergraduate studios. We chatted with Tibbits about the future of the architecture and design profession, and how failure should be viewed as invaluable, and even welcomed, in the pursuit of innovation.

MIT's Skylar Tibbits on the Importance of Failure

Lucas Epp of StructureCraft Builders describes the science behind one of the newest mass timber products on the market, and how it could help change the face of timber construction.

Timber On the Rise, Part 1 - Dowel-Laminated Timber

In this podcast episode, Bhatia discusses the importance of collective form, a topic he also explores in his recently published monograph, his dream project, and advice on collaborating with other designers.

The Importance of Collective Form for the Open Workshop

Opsis Architects' Alec Holser and the University of Idaho's Michael Perry discuss how they are turning the vision for an iconic mass-timber arena from renderings into reality.

Timber on the Rise, Part 8 - So You Want to Build with Wood

Led by tech entrepreneurs, the 2000-person (and counting) pre-fabrication and construction company is investing heavily in R&amp;D and mass timber, says Katerra Architecture president Craig Curtis.

Timber on the Rise, Part 7 - Katerra Tackles the Inefficiencies of the Building Industry

Pierluigi Serraino

In a study lost to the annals of architectural history, 40 of the 20th-century's most prominent architects were invited over the course of a few weekends in the late 1950s to the University of California, Berkeley, where they were evaluated for their presumed creative genius. The researchers, from the school's Institute of Personality Assessment and Research (IPAR), wanted to know how factors in a person's life and environment shaped their creative aptitude. Particularly intrigued by architects for their mix of design and business savvy, the researchers attempted to get inside the minds of Eero Saarinen, Louis Kahn, Philip Johnson, I.M. Pei, FAIA, and others. The study received significant media attention at the time it was undertaken, but little on it was ever published, and what it determined about creativity in general and in architecture specifically was unearthed only recently.In his book, "The Creative Architect: Inside the Great Midcentury Personality Study" (The Monacelli Press, 2016), Pierluigi Serraino, AIA, revisits the study and its implications. We talked with the Alameda, Calif.–based architect and author about what he learned during his research, and whether a similar attempt at understanding the minds of the world's leading architects could be executed today.

In a study lost to the annals of architectural history, 40 of the 20th-century's most prominent architects were invited over the course of a few weekends in the late 1950s to the University of California, Berkeley, where they were evaluated for their presumed creative genius. The researchers, from the school's Institute of Personality Assessment and Research (IPAR), wanted to know how factors in a person's life and environment shaped their creative aptitude. Particularly intrigued by architects for their mix of design and business savvy, the researchers attempted to get inside the minds of Eero Saarinen, Louis Kahn, Philip Johnson, I.M. Pei, FAIA, and others. The study received significant media attention at the time it was undertaken, but little on it was ever published, and what it determined about creativity in general and in architecture specifically was unearthed only recently.<br><br>In his book, "The Creative Architect: Inside the Great Midcentury Personality Study" (The Monacelli Press, 2016), Pierluigi Serraino, AIA, revisits the study and its implications. We talked with the Alameda, Calif.–based architect and author about what he learned during his research, and whether a similar attempt at understanding the minds of the world's leading architects could be executed today.

Pierluigi Serraino on Creativity in Architecture

Recent Next Progressives Ann Lui, AIA, and Craig Reschke, AIA, of Chicago-based Future Firm discuss their approach to design and when they'll know they've made it.

Next Progressives: Future Firm

In this podcast episode, the jury of the 66th Annual Progressive Architecture Awards—which included Paul Andersen, AIA, of Denver-based Independent Architecture; J. Frano Violich, FAIA, of Boston-based Kennedy &amp; Violich Architecture; and Claire Weisz, FAIA, of New York's WXY Architecture + Urban Design—discusses how they each define progressive architecture, how it manifests itself in the industry, and how it has evolved over time.

What is Progressive Architecture?

Charlie Klecha

Charlie Klecha is a senior designer at Dpop! Design, in Detroit. Before that, he was the American Institute of Architecture Students 2014–2015 president. During his tenure there, Klecha took all seven sections of the Architect Registration Exam in a week. He passed, and we talked with him about what we learned from the experience and how established architects and firms can support emerging practitioners before, during, and after they take the test.

Charlie Klecha on Acing the Architect Registration Exam

In this podcast episode, Inés Guzmán and Gregory Melitonov discuss how they manage projects across borders and their firm's annual design build initiative, Fundamental, which brings together volunteer designers from around the world for three months to conceptualize and build an architectural intervention in a public space.

Taller Ken on Managing Its 'Nomadic' Practice

After serving as architect-of-record on the largest wood structure constructed in modern U.S. history, DLR Group principal Stephen Cavanaugh and his team have been tapped to continue that model in other cities.

Timber on the Rise, Part 6 - How to Design Commercially Viable Mass Timber Buildings

The best podcast episodes on global issues affecting everyone. Covering topics such as the #metoo movement, climate change, the impact of technology and some of the biggest global issues facing us right now. For anyone interested in learning more about the world, and some of the issues we're facing, pick an episode below and start listening! Add episodes you're interested into your queue below!

Best Episodes on Global Issues

What is this?
1 quote, 3 ideas & 1 question from a carefully curated podcast episode.
Every Monday & Wednesday.

Want a 3rd insight and episode every week? Email me at curation@owltail.com.