Superurbanism

How do you design a roller coaster? What was it like on the North Sea oil rigs in the 1980s? What did you learn in the steel yards? Hanif Kara, recipient of this year’s Soane Medal led the engineering on the Peckham Library by Will Alsop, the Phaeno Science Centre by Zaha Hadid Architects amongst many others, Tim though is interested in where Hanif came from as much as where he got to.

Tim talks to Selina Anttinen, founding partner of Anttinen Oiva Architects with her husband Vesa Oiva. So successful have the practice been in their native Helsinki, from designing the main library of the University of Helsinki in 2008 to leading the reimagining of the city’s central harbour with the Katoleina Pier project, finished this year, you may not have heard of them. Until now.

Few architecture critics have had the impact of Kenneth Frampton. His Modern Architecture: a Critical History is a masterpiece; his essay on Critical Regionalism, one of the most influential pieces of writing on architecture of the twentieth century. He talks to Tim about his latest collection of essays Architecture and the Public World, published by Bloomsbury.

Paul Robbrecht founded Robbrecht en Daem with his wife Hilde Daem in 1975. Their son Johannes joined in 2002. This family-led practice is one of the most important in Europe, helping transform Belgium into one of the richest architectural cultures in the world. He talks to Tim about his father, his favourite sculptor and Egypt.

Kengo Kuma is a mercurial architect, who works with natural forms and historical structures with an avant-garde sensibility. Tim talks to the usually taciturn Japanese maestro about the horrors of Metabolism, what he calls the philosophy of the detail and the affinities between Portugal and Japan.

To celebrate the London Festival of Architecture’s 20th anniversary Tim met Edwin Heathcote, the Financial Times architecture critic, in a small podcast booth built underneath the Lloyd’s building in London. Designed by Urban Radicals, the booth was the perfect place to talk about public space in London and Eddy’s book, On the Street: In-Between Architecture published by HENI.

Job Floris was an editor of the pioneering, always interesting OASE Journal for Architecture from 2008 until 2018. He is also an architect: one half of the Rotterdam-based practice Monadnock which he founded in the naughties with Sandor Naus. For reasons that Tim explores with Job, Monadnock’s work sits uneasily in their home city although it is popular elsewhere in the Netherlands and in Germany.

Bijoy Jain lives in Mumbai; the city of his birth. Tim talked to him about his world famous practice Studio Mumbai which sits between the world of art, craft and architecture and is staffed by skilled craftsmen, technicians and draughtsmen, who design and build each project themselves. He reflects on architecture as dance and his time living and working in London.

Simon Henley is one of London architecture’s unsung heroes. His practice Henley Halebrown wrings great buildings from unlikely sites across the city, Hackney New Primary School being a great example but also their latest work Thames Christian School. But Simon is also a great advocate for the culture of architecture as a writer but in a host of other ways. Tim talked to him about buildings, history and London.

Farshid Moussavi RA OBE is an architect and – pay attention to the exact phrasing – Professor in Practice of Architecture at Harvard GSD. Born in Iran but raised in Britain, she has a terrific range of work, all imbued with a public spirit. Tim talks to her about one of her smallest projects ever as well as the purpose of her work in France and the USA.

Judit Carrera is a political scientist by education but is now director of the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB). As part of her remit, she is also in charge of the CCCB’s Education programme, head of the CCCB Archive, and director of the European Prize for Urban Public Space which awards the most thoughtful new communal spaces across the continent.

This is the second half of a conversation between host Tim Abrahams and William Mann the first half of which was broadcast earlier in this series. This week the practice William is a partner of Witherford Watson Mann will complete their extension to Clare College in Cambridge. This is a discussion about that building but much more. Moliere, Freud and Imannuel Kant.

Rowan Moore is one of the UKs most eloquent and respected architecture critics. His third book Property: The Myth That Built The World raises key issues about how we provide housing which has profound relevance for our current predicament. Do we have an unhealthy obsession with ownership? Tim explores the issue with him.

This week Tim Abrahams meets Ken Shuttleworth. Known as Ken the Pen in his university days, he is a leading architect with an exemplary talent for drawing. He takes us through a life in drawing, explaining how his relationship with the art has evolved and how, now he has founded the Architecture Drawing Prize, the media has changed in an industry undergoing huge technological change.

For the last ten years, collector and curator Niall Hobhouse has run the charity Drawing Matter from a converted farm in Somerset. This year he has taken the decision to bring his amazing collection of architectural drawings to London, Tim takes a look through work by Le Corbusier, Aldo Rossi, Alvaro Siza, plus many more and asks Niall what the plan is for the next decade.

Amin Taha founded his practice, now called Groupwork, in London in 2003. Despite the controversy around his signature project 15 Clerkenwell Close, built with structural stone, he is a much sought-after architect. He takes host Tim Abrahams around his latest project 8 Bleeding Heart Yard in London and talks construction techniques, planning politics and the meaning of history.

Laure Mériaud and Cécilia Gross came together when colleagues recommended that their practices Atelier 2/3/4 and VenhoevenCS bid to design the one new building that is being constructed for the Paris 2024 Olympics. They take our host Tim Abrahams around the Aquatic Centre in Saint-Denis, a département outside the city proper that has long suffered.

Shane De Blacam has just received the Royal Academy Prize, for his work with the late John Meagher, who he entered into practice in 1976. His greatest works include the Samuel Beckett Theatre in Dublin and Munster Technological University Cork. Before forming his practice with Meagher, de Blacam worked in London for Chamberlain, Powell and Bon and with Louis I. Khan in Philadelphia.

Together with his colleagues Christopher Watson and Stephen Witherford, William Mann is a partner at one of the most consistently brilliant architecture practices in the country; Witherford Watson Mann. Recently he took Tim on a whistle-stop tour of their latest project; an almshouse in South London, explaining how history acts as a rich source of ideas for the practice to plunder.

Will Wiles is a brilliant author of several novels and a collection of short stories called The Anechoic Chamber that will be published in August 2024. He’s also a contributor to The Machine Book of Weird, recently published by Machine Books. With Tim, he explores the relationship between architecture and literature and between the exterior world and the interior.