Shows
Architecture Off-CentreOn Innovative Modular Dwellings / Sampat Althur (Pop-Up Housing)In our previous episode, we spoke to the team from Better Shelter about their kit-of-parts approach to providing emergency shelters in crisis situations. Today, we continue that line of inquiry and look at the work that Pop-Up Housing has been doing in India by deploying an industrial and modular construction system. Sampat Althur is the founder of Pop-Up Housing, a social innovation organization working on improving sustainable housing and infrastructure in low income communities in India. Using latest advancements in industrial construction, sustainability and hands on volunteering, Sampat is simplifying housing and enabling infrastructure development in marginalized...2024-12-1225 min
Architecture Off-CentreOn Building for Refugees / Better ShelterThe very first episode of our podcast focused on the Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh and highlighted the role of designers in alleviating the living conditions of the refugees. Today, we speak to Better Shelter about their work in providing shelters to refugees and displaced people around the world. Better Shelter is an independent Swedish non-profit without political or religious ties. They design and provide temporary shelters to help people live safer and more dignified lives until they can return or move to a new permanent home. About Better Shelter: https://bettershelter.org/ A...2024-11-2835 min
Architecture Off-CentreOn Feminist Capital Cities / Dorina PojaniWe have been talking extensively about housing this season but have not really looked at the identity of the cities within which it exists. In today’s episode, we zoom out a little to take stock of new capital cities and discuss their planning through the theoretical lens of feminism. Dorina Pojani is Associate Professor of urban planning at The University of Queensland, Australia. Her latest books are Trophy Cities: A Feminist Perspective on New Capitals (Edward Elgar, 2021) and Alternative Planning History and Theory (Routledge, 2023). Her forthcoming book is Early Planning Utopias: A Feminist Critique (Anthem, 2025). 2024-11-1426 min
Architecture Off-CentreOn Urban Planning and Policy in South Africa / Adi KumarFor those of us who have grown up in India, we were introduced to the concept of segregation and apartheid very early on as we were taught about the discrimination Gandhi faced while living in South Africa and how that marked the beginning of the independence movement in India. In this episode, we speak to Adi Kumar about the history of apartheid in South Africa and how those land policies continue to affect the supply of affordable housing in Cape Town today. Adi Kumar is a trained architect and seasoned land and housing activist. Over the last...2024-10-3135 min
Architecture Off-CentreOn the Rebuilding Efforts in Rwanda / Yutaka ShoIn this episode, we speak to Yutaka Sho about working in a context that has a history of genocide and colonization, and we discuss the challenges of working on ground, at the grassroots level. Yutaka Sho is a partner of nonprofit architecture firm General Architecture Collaborative (GAC) that has been working in Rwanda since 2008, and a professor of architecture at Meiji University in Tokyo. GAC works with underrepresented communities to build sustainable and aesthetically engaging spaces while using the construction sites for end-user training. About GAC and their work: https://www.gacollaborative.org/2024-10-1743 min
Architecture Off-CentreOn Short Term Rentals in Australia / Thomas SiglerWe are no strangers to the AirBnB phenomenon – and how it has revolutionized the travel industry. Over the last two episodes, we have been focusing on the rental housing markets in Kenya and India, and today we’ll take pan over to Australia to see what the short-term rental market looks like. Dr. Thomas Sigler is an academic researcher in urban and economic geography. He holds a PhD and MSc from the Pennsylvania State University, and a BA from the University of Southern California. He is an Associate Professor and Deputy Head of School in the School of th...2024-10-0328 min
Architecture Off-CentreOn Migrant Labour Housing in India / Bandhu (Rushil and Jacob)Bandhu is an AI driven urban-tech startup that is solving for India’s rapid urbanization by enabling low-income workers to access urban jobs along with housing and thereby directly addressing the roadblocks that rural migrants face while entering the urban workforce. Rushil Palavajjhala is Co-founder and CEO of Bandhu, and holds a Master’s degree in City Planning from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he focused on finance and technology for urban development in the Global South. Jacob Kohn is Co-founder and COO of Bandhu, where he heads product development and data science. Jacob holds a Mas...2024-09-1941 min
Architecture Off-CentreOn the Urban Rental Market in Nairobi / Etta MadeteWhen we talk about discourses on housing, we usually draw references from the western context. It is only in the last few decades that developing countries have come to the forefront of housing dialogues owing to their growing economies and increasing populations. Today, we take a closer looking at the housing market in Kenya, especially in Nairobi. Etta Madete is an architect, sustainable design expert, and developer passionate about sustainable real estate development in emerging markets. Passionate about advocacy, Etta previously taught at the University of Nairobi, is an EDGE Expert, Aspen and Mandela Washington Fellow. She...2024-09-0551 min
Architecture Off-CentreOn Ecological Living / Susannah Sayler and Edward MorrisToolshed is a platform, a project and a place in Hudson, New York, where artists Susannah Sayler and Edward Morris collect and share tools for ecological living. They have categorized these tools into four distinct groups: food, kin, shelter and magic. Today, we speak to Susannah and Edward about what ecological living means and how Toolshed plays into it. Susannah Sayler and Edward Morris (Sayler/Morris) work with photography, video, writing, installation and open-source projects. Of primary concern are contemporary efforts to develop ecological consciousness and the possibilities for art in support of social movements. From 2006 – 2020 they co...2024-08-2232 min
Architecture Off-CentreOn Living Alone / Maria Vittoria Tesei and Flavio Martella (m2ft)People are increasingly making the conscious choice to live alone and it just so turns out that the number of people living alone in Europe has doubled since the 1980s. We speak to architects Maria Vittoria Tesei and Flavio Martella about the social, economic and architectural implications of living alone. Founded by Maria Vittoria Tesei (architect and urban planner) and Flavio Martella (PhD architect), m²ft architects is a multidisciplinary firm working in the fields of architecture, urban planning, public space and research. Through design by research, they propose to produce architecture through the understanding of new co...2024-08-0834 min
Architecture Off-CentreIntroducing Season 6: On Home, Shelter, HousingBy living in a world of wars and unrest right now, we are witnessing one of the largest human displacements to have ever happened. People around the world are on the move to seek refuge – whether it is because of military action or a natural disaster. The idea of a “home” is under constant scrutiny as entire populations are uprooted from the very places where they built their whole lives. We ask our guests about how the concept of home has evolved in the last century. How do policy and design intersect to alleviate or exacerbate housing crises...2024-07-2504 min
Architecture Off-CentreOn being a Doula by Design / Kim HoldenIn this bonus episode, we speak to Kim Holden, whose change of careers has been unconventional and courageous at the same time. She was a founder, managing principal and architect at the renowned SHoP Architects and decided to become a doula after 20 years of practice. We speak to Kim about her initiative Doula x Design and how she helps people during pregnancy, labor, birth and postpartum. Kim is a registered architect and certified doula focused on the intersection of design and women’s health. Through the examination of the role that environment plays in the physical, physiological, an...2024-04-1134 min
Architecture Off-CentreOn Architecture + Medicine / Diana AndersonFor our final episode for this season, we speak to doctor and architect Diana Anderson, who has skillfully carved a unique career path for herself as a “dochitect” – by pioneering a collaborative, evidence-based model for approaching healthcare from the medicine and architecture fields simultaneously. Dr. Diana Anderson is a triple boarded professional – healthcare architect, internist, and a geriatrician. She is an Assistant Professor of Neurology at Boston University, and a recipient of an Alzheimer's Association Clinician Scientist Fellowship. She is also a healthcare principal at Jacobs, contributing her thought leadership at the intersection of design and health. D...2024-02-0838 min
Architecture Off-CentreOn Medical Tourism along the US-Mexico Border / Viviane ClementIn our previous episode, we got an overview of medical tourism around the world and the key factors that drive people to travel from one country to another for medical treatments and procedures. Today, we take a closer look at some of the medical tourism hubs along a very specific geographic area, i.e., the US-Mexico border. Viviane Clement is an epidemiologist and a cultural Anthropologist whose research focuses on the macro and micro effects of health and environmental policies and politics on under-sourced and under-researched communities. For her article on medical tourism titled ‘In Search of Hea...2024-01-1232 min
Architecture Off-CentreOn Medical Tourism / Valorie CrooksMedical tourism is a rapidly growing industry that has emerged out of people’s need to travel across country borders to access medical treatments and procedures. In order to understand this global movement, we need to understand the reason for travel, the destinations that attract individuals and the web of factors that shape this global industry. Dr. Valorie Crooks is a health geographer who specializes in health services research. She is a Professor at Simon Fraser University where she also holds a Canada Research Chair and currently serves as Associate Vice-President, Research. For more than a decade sh...2023-12-2844 min
Architecture Off-CentreOn Spaces for Mental Health / James LeadbitterWhat is your idea of good mental health? What does it taste like? What does it smell like? What does it sound like? What does it feel like to touch? And if you could design your own safe space, what would it look like? What would you have in it? James Leadbitter, also known as The Vacuum Cleaner, is a UK based artist and activist who makes candid, provocative and playful work. Drawing on his own experience of mental health disability, he works with groups including young people, health professionals and vulnerable adults to challenge how mental...2023-12-0733 min
Architecture Off-CentreOn the Architecture of Disability / David GissenIt has been a while since architects have been attempting to address various forms of disability in the buildings, neighborhoods and cities they design. However, these attempts are most often limited to increasing access for differently abled bodies. Our guest today, David Gissen, argues that a disability critique of architecture is not one that solely seeks to make the built environment more accessible but instead understands how embedded the ideas of physical incapacity and impairment are within architecture. David Gissen is a New York-based author, designer, and educator who works in the fields of architecture, landscape, and u...2023-11-2343 min
Architecture Off-CentreOn Death in the Digital Age / Oreet AsheryWe don’t talk about the technical and logistical aspects of death enough. For example: How does one’s economic status affect the conditions in which they die? Do gender identities play a role in how people receive end of life care? Can we choose the memories that we want to leave behind for our loved ones? And how does social media become an archive of one’s life after passing? We speak to artist Oreet Ashery about death in the digital age. Oreet Ashery is a visual artist whose practice navigates established, institutional and grassroots contexts. Ashery...2023-11-0936 min
Architecture Off-CentreOn Menstruation Rooms in the Benin Kingdom / Minne AtairuHistorically, many communities around the world spatialized the bodily function of menstruation and integrated it within their architecture in the form of menstruation huts – often leading to the isolation and oppression of women as impure beings. Our guest today argues that these spaces in the west African Benin Kingdom were intentionally designed for women to rest and recuperate – that the isolation rooms were essentially spas. Minne Atairu is an interdisciplinary artist whose research-based practice seeks to reclaim the obscured histories of Benin Bronzes. Utilizing generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) and additive fabrication, Atairu reassembles visual, sonic, and textual fragm...2023-10-2626 min
Architecture Off-CentreOn Drawing the Bombay Plague / Ranjit KandalgaonkarOver a century ago in 1896, the bubonic plague broke out in colonial Bombay. While the British officials maintained detailed records of the various aspects of the plague, local newspapers reported on the public sentiment towards the disease and its colonial management. Ranjit Kandalgaonkar explored one such archive to draw out a subaltern narrative of the bubonic plague. Ranjit Kandalgaonkar lives and works in Mumbai and his art practice primarily comprises of a lens directed at the urban context of cities. Most of his long-term projects are research-intensive and attempt to unlock historical and contemporary data by placing...2023-10-1240 min
Architecture Off-CentreOn Care Environments / Fiona KenneyThe discourse on care within the field of architecture has recently been gaining a lot of traction as ideas about health are expanding beyond the limits of traditional hospitals. In this conversation with Fiona Kenney, we discuss the history of long-term care facilities, residential hospices and pediatric respite centers, and how they differ from institutions that are aimed at providing cure. Fiona L. Kenney is a PhD candidate at the McGill University School of Architecture, where she studies spatial expressions of care. Fiona holds an MDes in History and Philosophy of Design from the Harvard Graduate School...2023-09-2834 min
Architecture Off-CentreIntroducing Season 5: On Care, Health, MedicineEver since the pandemic, questions and concerns over the human body and the public health have heightened. We wanted to ensure that the conversations we would have with our guests went beyond our experience of the last three years. Some of the questions we ask this season are: Can we look at the role of architecture for providing care beyond the design of hospitals?What are the ways in which medical tourism defines entire cities?How do we shape our environment to foster healthy living – both physically and mentally?And how do we leave be...2023-09-2405 min
Architecture Off-CentreOn The Hunger Museum / Abby LeibmanWe explored the themes of agriculture, food and waste in season 4 but did not get into too much detail about the idea of hunger, which is caused by the lack of food. For this bonus episode, we speak to Abby Leibman, who was at the forefront of conceptualizing The Hunger Museum - a virtual museum that takes a deep dive into the history of hunger and how it can be ended. Abby J. Leibman has been President & CEO of MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger since 2011. She has a distinguished record of community and professional leadership, including...2023-03-3132 min
Architecture Off-CentreOn Seeds, Soil and Life / Vandana ShivaFor this season’s final episode, we have a candid conversation with Dr. Vandana Shiva about the fears, concerns and anxieties of a young architect. Dr. Vandana Shiva is a world-renowned environmentalist, ecofeminist, writer and activist. She is the founder of Navdanya, a national movement in India to protect the diversity and integrity of indigenous seeds along with the promotion of organic farming and fair trade. To learn more about her work at Navdanya: https://www.navdanya.org/2023-02-2441 min
Architecture Off-CentreOn Grain Silos / Ateya KhorakiwalaParts of Ateya Khorakiwala’s doctoral research focused on grain silos in India and how they were a post-colonial import - built not just for the purpose of creating food security after witnessing one of the worst famines in the country but also to serve as a currency for exchange. In this conversation, Ateya talks about the history of silos, its construction materials and her course Feasting and Fasting at Columbia University. Ateya Khorakiwala is an architectural historian and is Assistant Professor of Architecture at Columbia University GSAPP. Her research focuses on India’s development decades, examining the...2023-02-1045 min
Architecture Off-CentreOn Farmers’ Protest in India / Sarover ZaidiThree farm laws passed by the Parliament of India in 2020 received major pushback from farmers around the country - with many of them mobilizing in Punjab and heading to the capital New Delhi. The protest site at the border village of Singhu outside Delhi turned into a mini-city of sorts with the Sikh farmers operating community kitchens and serving meals to thousands of people every day, including the policemen watching over the very barricades that restricted their entry into Delhi. Sarover Zaidi is a philosopher and a social anthropologist, who currently teaches at the Jindal School of...2023-01-2728 min
Architecture Off-CentreOn Pixel Farming / Lenora DitzlerA few weeks before the COVID lockdowns began in 2020, Rem Koolhaas’ much awaited exhibition Countryside opened in The Guggenheim museum in New York. It was in the exhibition’s thick but small pocket size handbook that I first came across Lenora Ditzler’s essay on pixel farming; a very innovative method of farming that questions the widespread monoculture and shows us a new way of looking at agriculture by dividing a farm into smaller pixels. Lenora Ditzler works at the Farm Systems Ecology group at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, where she is the research coordinator for the Gl...2023-01-1248 min
Architecture Off-CentreOn Urban Food Deserts / Jane BattersbyThe idea of food deserts was not known to me a few years ago. I recognized my privilege in having access to nutritious fresh food but still had a lot to learn about how certain areas are devoid of that basic necessity because of planning policies, politics and economic factors. Jane Battersby is an urban geographer based at the University of Cape Town with an interest in all things food related, with a particular focus on the African context. Her work focusses on the interactions between urban systems and food systems in shaping lived experiences of food...2022-12-2933 min
Architecture Off-CentreOn Delhi Agro-City 2050 / Depanshu GolaThe world of speculative design affords us the liberty of approaching urban planning through lenses we would have conventionally disregarded as overly ambitious or impractical. In today’s conversation, we think out loud about unused garden spaces outside malls, the function of terrace gardens and farmers as service providers. Depanshu Gola co-runs a research-backed design studio, Architecture for Dialogue (AfD) with Abhimanyu Singhal. His work at AfD explores the future of architecture and habitat. The studio has participated in projects across city-making, futurism, experience design and public engagement — often working in intersections. Depanshu was selected as one of t...2022-12-1537 min
Architecture Off-CentreOn Food, Fun and Follies / Rory FraserThe first time I heard the word “folly” was in relation to Bernard Tschumi’s Parc de la Villette in Paris – the large park with dozens of red structures strategically organized in a grid – each embodying the principles of deconstruction. I had been fascinated with the relevance and functionality of follies and even more amused by the lack of its typology. On graduation from Oxford, Rory Fraser wrote and illustrated his first book Follies: An Architectural Journey, which he then presented as a documentary. Rory subsequently completed an MPhil in Architectural History at Cambridge. He lives in London whe...2022-12-0142 min
Architecture Off-CentreOn Innovating with Food Waste / Rob NicollIf you are a fan of eating potato fries, you would have never guessed that the potato waste generated in the process of making those fries could be used to make consumer products! Rob Nicoll is the co-founder of Chip[s] Board, a company previously known for developing a sustainable polymer called Parblex and is currently developing eco conscious lactic acid by utilizing waste produced from industrial food manufacturing. While the company has moved away from their focus on polymers they believe that their current product will help increase the sustainable credentials of countless items we use...2022-11-1728 min
Architecture Off-CentreOn Seed Sovereignty in Mexico / Adriana DavidHow often do we really think about where our food comes from? I don’t mean the supermarket or the vegetable vendor where we buy it from but the place where it is grown or the kind of seeds that are sown and everything that concerns the cycle of crops and the resources that are involved in the production of food. It is not until someone explicitly forces us to think about the origin of our food that we give it any attention. Adriana David’s work lies at the intersection of architecture and the natural world. Her...2022-11-0350 min
Architecture Off-CentreIntroducing Season 4: On Agriculture, Food, WasteDo you know where your food comes from? Is it grown in a farm on the outskirts of your city or flown in from another country? How is food security different from food sovereignty? What happens to the waste that is generated in the process of consumption? And how can cities be planned with a food-sensitive approach? These are some of the questions we ask in season 4 of Architecture Off-Centre while speaking to artists, scientists, planners, and activists to map the contemporary concerns in the food systems around us.2022-10-2004 min
Architecture Off-CentreOn Building a Museum of Conflict / Avni SethiOn a Sunday afternoon a few weeks ago, I drove eastwards to the old city of Ahmedabad to interview Avni Sethi at the Conflictorium, a museum of conflict housed in a 100-something year old building. We talked about her being a cultural practitioner, who foregrounds the issues of caste, violence and oppression in a city with a painful history of riots. We also discussed their exhibits, ongoing thematic inquiries, the function of repetition in public dissent and the potential of museums in being institutions for dialogue, reconciliation and reaching closure. Avni Sethi is an interdisciplinary practitioner with...2022-06-1632 min
Architecture Off-CentreOn Designing Out Crime / Lindsay AsquithWhat if we approached urban crime as a design problem and deployed our methods and skills to reframe the questions we have been asking to ameliorate – if not completely obliterate – criminal activities? The team at Designing Out Crime (DOC), a collaboration between the New South Wales Department of Community and Justice, and the University of Technology Sydney, did just that. They used research, public engagement and human-centered design to tackle a wide range of urban challenges. Dr. Lindsay Asquith is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Design, University of Technology Sydney (UTS) and was the Director of t...2022-06-0330 min
Architecture Off-CentreOn Making Public Spaces Safer / Kalpana Viswanath (Safetipin)If you are a young woman, who has grown up in a city or travelled to another, you might have been warned about steering off certain areas of the city because they were deemed ‘not safe’. What lends safety to urban areas is not only a matter of data and statistics, but it is also often subjective – relying heavily on how one ‘feels’ while traversing through that part of the city. Dr. Kalpana Viswanath is the co-founder and CEO of Safetipin, a social enterprise that uses technology and data to advocate for gender inclusive urban spaces and mobility...2022-05-1936 min
Architecture Off-CentreOn Auschwitz and The Evidence Room (pt. 2) / Anne Bordeleau and Donald McKaySelf-explanatory in its nomenclature, The Evidence Room was first presented at the 2016 Venice Biennale as a room with architectural evidence from Auschwitz to assert the existence of the gas chambers used for committing genocide in the Nazi concentration camp. It presents three monuments – a door, a wall hatch and ladder, and a gas column along with a number of plaster casts as proofs of the crimes against humanity and underscores the culpability of architects in creating these instruments of murder. Anne Bordeleau and Donald McKay are two of the four principals who worked on The Evidence Room. An...2022-05-051h 22
Architecture Off-CentreOn Auschwitz and The Evidence Room (pt. 1) / Robert Jan Van PeltIn 1996, British author and Holocaust denier David Irving filed a libel case against American historian Deborah Lipstadt, stating that she had defamed him in her book Denying the Holocaust. In what became the case, David Irving versus Penguin Books and Deborah Lipstadt, architectural historian Robert Jan Van Pelt was brought in as the defense’s expert witness owing to his work on the history of Auschwitz. Robert Jan Van Pelt has taught at the University of Waterloo School of Architecture since 1987. His book, ‘Auschwitz: 1270 to the Present’ with Deborah Dwork and subsequent report ‘The Case for Auschwitz’ generated The Evidence R...2022-04-2155 min
Architecture Off-CentreOn the Smart Prison Project in Finland / Pia PuolakkaThere are splitting views in the design profession on the role of architects in the perpetuation and even existence of prisons, which stems from an ethical and a professional belief that incarceration is not the most optimum solution to crime and that the very design of prisons creates conditions that subject the inmates to inhuman living conditions. While in the previous episode we focused an alternate method of seeking justice, for this one, we wanted to look at what is happening in the world of prison reforms. Pia Puolakka trained as a forensic psychologist and has been...2022-04-0731 min
Architecture Off-CentreOn Restorative Justice / Shailly AgnihotriI had no idea what restorative justice was up until two years ago. It was naïve of me to think that justice was always “served” in the courts of law – buildings with high plinths, long walkways and large rooms with the typical setup that we see on screen. And because I did not think it was possible to create spaces for conflict resolution and reconciliation outside of the courts, the first time I saw circle work being done within the restorative justice method, I was surprised by the candidness and vulnerability of the circle participants and how deeply satisfy...2022-03-2442 min
Architecture Off-CentreOn Crime, Design, Storytelling and Walter Gropius / Natascha MeuserTwenty students at the Anhalt University of Applied Sciences developed ideas for crime stories to shed new light on the workers’ estate designed by Walter Gropius in Törten between 1926 and 1928. Led by Professor Natascha Meuser, this unorthodox approach to teaching helped the students gain a deeper understanding of the world-famous row houses and became the genesis of ‘The Törten Project: Murder and Crime Mysteries from a Bauhaus Estate’. Natascha Meuser is an architect and publisher based in Berlin. She is a professor of design at the Anhalt University of Applied Sciences and leads DOM Publishers. Natascha has extensively authored...2022-03-1036 min
Architecture Off-CentreOn a Burglar’s Guide to the City / Geoff ManaughWhile the intentions of architects and burglars are diametrically opposite in nature – with the former designing for safety, and the later breaching it through the very design aimed to protect, the single common thread between the two is how they foreground architecture in their operations. All of a sudden, storm water drains, vaults, staircases, parking lots, terraces and retaining walls become conduits for escorting large amounts of cash and gold bars out of the buildings. Geoff Manaugh is a Los Angeles-based writer and the author of the New York Times-bestselling book, “A Burglar’s Guide to the City.” His most rec...2022-02-2441 min
Architecture Off-CentreIntroducing Season 3: On Violence, Crime, JusticeJeremy Bentham’s panopticon got me thinking about the function of design in exercising power and control in society – even though rotundas preceded the panopticon and contemporary prisons have since evolved into newer typologies. I dug deeper and immersed myself in the vast pool of knowledge existing around the themes of violence, punishment, surveillance and crime – awkwardly jumping from Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish to Shoshana Zuboff’s The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. While I came out enlightened at the end of these books, I was left wondering what the current discourses in architecture are, when it comes to address...2022-02-1705 min
Architecture Off-CentreOn Havelis of Lahore / Rabeeya Arif“There is this informal inhabitation of spaces of heritage within the walled city that actually subverted the original intent of the buildings, however, they helped in the social economic development of the spaces that were being inhabited.” The exodus that followed the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947 caused one of the largest human migrations in the world and resulted in the mass abandonment of private property and structures of cultural heritage. In the walled city of Lahore, Hindu temples and Sikh havelis are being inhabited by low-income and marginalized communities as informal settlements – leading to what one ma...2021-12-1629 min
Architecture Off-CentreOn Monuments and Public Memory / Paul Farber (Monument Lab)“It's far easier to protest the statue than a statute, which is to say that power that lives through policy institutions embedded into practices made across generations are hard to dive into.” In our effort to question the premise of this season’s three central themes: preservation, restoration and conservation, we often came across the idea of public memory and monuments. This led us to think about what historic monuments, most frequently seen as stone statues on pedestals, signify in the contemporary context and what new monumentality could look like. Paul M. Farber is the Direct...2021-12-0244 min
Architecture Off-CentreOn Architecture and Journalism / Inga Saffron“It's really hard to preserve the community. Easier to preserve buildings.” Our guest today is a writer and uses the power of the written word to raise awareness, drive change and create accountability. She often writes about preservation – most notably focusing on the African-American history of Philadelphia and how cultural and historic preservation lock horns with urban planning. Inga Saffron has spent 30 years at the Philadelphia Inquirer, working as a reporter, foreign correspondent and architecture critic. In 2014, she received the Pulitzer Prize for her architectural writing. She is author of two books: ‘Becoming Philadelphia: How an old A...2021-11-1846 min
Architecture Off-CentreOn Facadism / Clemency Gibbs“But if all you can see is this frozen façade, that's the period that you're choosing to keep the public appearance of the building as, which doesn't really create any meaningful dialogue between the old and the new.” Facadism or facadism practices, as Clemency Gibbs refers to them, stand for “privileging of the façade above other aspects of the building, within the context of development.” There is an intriguing conservation practice where entire buildings are gutted for (re)development but their facades are kept intact to retain a certain architectural character at the scale of the street...2021-11-0439 min
Architecture Off-CentreOn Pyaavs of Mumbai / Rahul Chemburkar“Pyaavs today really could be instigators and facilitators mainly as drinking water fountains [but] at the same time also create a cultural connect and socio-cultural tourism.” Not too long before potable water became a commodity that could be bought and sold, its presence in the Indian urban infrastructure as drinking water fountains – or pyaavs as they are known in Mumbai – was closely associated with altruism and public memory. Our guest, Rahul Chemburkar, is on a mission to restore the pyaavs and activate the space around them to become thriving socio-cultural hubs of urban life. Architect and heri...2021-10-2140 min
Architecture Off-CentreOn Stained Glass Conservation / Brianne Van Vorst“Rather than restoration, we're not changing the object [in conservation], we're retaining the object, even with all of its marks of age.” I was taught that one of the identifiers of gothic architecture along with the flying buttresses, the pointed arches and the gargoyles – was the stained glass windows. But that was pretty much all I knew and thought about the stained glass – it was an element in the gothic cathedrals. Brianne’s preservation practice highlights stained glass not only as a medium and a material but also as an architectural element that has witnessed tremendous transformation over the y...2021-10-0739 min
Architecture Off-CentreOn Culture and Urban Regeneration / Ranajay Chand“It’s part city beautiful movement, part preservation, part making the city more walkable and just creating like a nice civic space that people can enjoy.” This summer, my friend Ranajay invited me to spend a weekend in Rajpipla and promised to show me some really good buildings – not quite telling me at first that he belonged to the royal family of Rajpipla and that his ancestors had commissioned the buildings that we were going to see. We spoke extensively about patronage, culture, gentrification and urban regeneration – and there was no way I was not recording it! Rana...2021-09-2330 min
Architecture Off-CentreOn a Counter-monument in London / Elliot Nash“I started to design things that might catch passersby or the weather, the things that aren't normally remembered...” The act of building a counter-monument is an oxymoron in itself. Artists and architects around the world have used voids to create these counter-monuments while challenging the notion of physically building spaces to retain public memory. Elliot Nash’s project 'Forgetting Whitehall; Casting Blackhall' subverts traditional methods of physical and non-physical preservation while navigating through the themes of redaction and transience. Elliot is a recent MArch graduate from The Bartlett, UCL. His work there focuses on alternative defini...2021-09-0936 min
Architecture Off-CentreIntroducing Season 2: On Restoration, Conservation, PreservationAfter a few weeks of restructuring and lots of planning, Season 2 of Architecture Off-Centre is ready to go live! On this season, we are focusing our attention on the ideas of preservation, restoration and conservation in the built environment by posing a simple question: what does it mean to conserve, restore and preserve something in the contemporary context?2021-09-0304 min
Architecture Off-CentreOn Public Art, Activism and Urbanism / Matthew Mazzotta“Let's make it so intriguing, so curious that people have to come into these ideas of their own volition.” Have you ever seen a storefront opening up as a theatre? Or a dilapidated house becoming a community event space? Or ever dined on an unfolding table that serves food from plants on the verge of extinction? What about a lamp post that is lit by converting dog poop into electricity? If you know any of these projects, you are probably familiar with Matthew Mazzotta’s work. Matthew Mazzotta is an internationally renowned artist who works at the...2021-06-0344 min
Architecture Off-CentreOn Revolutionizing the Construction Industry / Acelab (Vardhan and Dries)“I was told that you go to the US to learn the more innovative and technologically driven ways of practicing. But that was simply not the case.” If you have ever worked on a construction project and had a hard time searching for and specifying building products, you will be relieved to know that Acelab co-founders Vardhan Mehta and Dries Carmeliet are trying to ease the workflow and make your life easier. They are also leading by example on how to branch out into the business world as architects – all while still being in graduate school. Acel...2021-05-2031 min
Architecture Off-CentreOn National Identity, Architecture and Crisis“Projects such as the Central Vista underscore the agency of architecture for ‘those that govern us’—and how, misleading or not, design itself can construe the image of the nation.” The juxtaposition of New Delhi’s Central Vista project over the ongoing public health crisis in India has raised several questions regarding the relationship between political power and architecture. In this episode, Architecture Off-Centre host Vaissnavi Shukl reads an excerpt from her graduate thesis titled Lotus Blooms and Fighter Jets: New Delhi’s Central Vista Project and the Architecture of National Identity. Check out Vaissnavi’s presentation a...2021-05-0613 min
Architecture Off-CentreOn Set Design in Hollywood / Tim Croshaw“What is the camera? It's a surrogate for the human eye.” If you’ve ever watched a Hollywood super-hero film and wondered what goes on in the making of it or thought about who designs the submarines and the palaces and the spacecrafts or even questioned what it takes to design spaces for a camera, set designer Tim Croshaw will answer all of it as he takes us through his world of film-making in Hollywood. Tim Croshaw is a Specialist Set Designer who has collaborated in art departments on numerous movies for major film studios. He has...2021-04-2252 min
Architecture Off-CentreOn Video Games and Virtual Worlds / Alina Nazmeeva“Virtual worlds in a game enable certain things which are harder to make in the physical space, but they also, in many ways, continue the heuristics of physical space like navigation.” Video games today touch upon discourses on virtual economies, the metaverse and the social element in online games. Alina Nazmeeva’s work investigates the relationship between cities and digital games, interfaces and public, CGI and politics. Alina Nazmeeva graduated from the Master of Science in Urbanism program at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was fellow of the New Normal program at Strelka Institute of Media...2021-04-0859 min
Architecture Off-CentreOn Design Diplomacy in Afghanistan / Francisco Brown“Understand that your mission was the building… That at the end of the day, your politics or your own sense of values, might never meet the middle point, I sat down to negotiate the existence of our building, [otherwise] they will blow the whole thing up.” In its efforts to build new infrastructure with foreign aid, Afghanistan, as a post-conflict nation, welcomed international organizations and assistance from other countries. Francisco Brown worked in Kabul for half a decade, designing and building schools, hospitals, police training academies and counter narcotics centres. Francisco “Pancho” Brown is an architect...2021-03-2550 min
Architecture Off-CentreOn Birth Centres, Midwifery and the Female Body / Cristina Alonso“It really has to do with designing services around women and women's lives… For us as women, we live our lives inside our bodies…” Cristina Alonso is a midwife, who believes that all women can make informed choices about their bodies and lives. She advocates for the design of a healthcare system that serves women where they are and in a way that makes sense to them. Cristina Alonso is a midwife specializing in out of hospital care. She founded the Luna Maya Midwifery Centers in Mexico to bridge safe and evidence-based health care, to respectf...2021-03-1136 min
Architecture Off-CentreOn Reincarnating Indian Cities / Karan Saharya“The evolution of cities is barely ever linear and gradual. It follows an almost cyclical pattern of development that is highly influenced by political and religious currents.” Karan Saharya recently co-taught a course called Reincarnating Cities with Vaissnavi Shukl, where he took a deep dive into the changing architectural articulations of heritage, nationalism and religiosity in the contemporary Indian urban space. Karan Saharya graduated with a Masters in Design Studies from Harvard Graduate School of Design. He received the Gerald M. McCue Medal, the Best Thesis Prize as well as several research grants. Karan practises in N...2021-02-2548 min
Architecture Off-CentreOn the Afterlives of Orbital Infrastructures / Rajji Desai“It's so paradoxical - something which is so big, something which is so huge… It's almost invisible.” Rajji Desai talks about the afterlives of orbital infrastructures and how these objects in the outer space have an influence on everything that spans from the earth’s high orbits to its high seas. Rajji Desai is an Urban Climate Researcher-Designer at CBT Architects in Boston, where her work focuses on integrating interdisciplinary tools of research with urban planning practices to help shape the development of cities facing extreme risks of climate change. She is a recent graduate of the H...2021-02-1140 min
Architecture Off-CentreOn Design Advocacy in the Rohingya Refugee Camp / John Wagner and Nadyeli Quiroz“Designers must design the conditions that enable things to be created.” John Wagner and Nadyeli Quiroz, recent graduates of the Harvard Graduate School of Design, first became involved in the Kutupalong refugee camp as a part of an option studio led by prominent architect Anna Heringer. They continued their engagement in the camp even after their studio ended – marking the beginning of a research project that critically looks at spaces of migration as well as a practice that promotes a new kind of design advocacy. John David Wagner works at the convergence of public space, design...2021-01-2844 min
Architecture Off-CentreIntroducing "Architecture Off-Centre" After graduating from the Harvard Graduate School of Design in 2020, Vaissnavi Shukl was about to move to California for a new job when she received a polite rejection from the design firm stating a shift in their hiring priorities due to COVID-19. Unsettled and unsure of her future, she thought about all the incredible people she knew, who were associated with architecture but were doing some pretty incredible stuff. This is the preview of her new (and first) podcast “Architecture Off-Centre”. 2021-01-1604 min