Yesterday
Lauren Stara, "Planning Library Spaces: A Practical Guide for Library Building Projects" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
Planning Library Spaces: A Practical Guide for Library Building Projects (Bloomsbury, 2025) is a book designed for librarians, trustees, local government officials, architects, and interior designers who are designing or planning to build, renovate, or reconfigure library spaces. ... Show More
55m 58s
Aug 11
William Whyte, "The University: A History in Stone, Silk, and Blood" (Harvard UP, 2026)
We often idealize the university as a sanctuary for disinterested reason, where material concerns are set aside in favor of higher principles. Yet when we remember our own college experiences, what springs to mind are not just lofty concepts but also material realities: cramped d ... Show More
42m 20s
Aug 10
Marco Pompili, "Public Housing in Japan: The Dōjunkai Apartments One Hundred Years On" (Brill, 2026)
Public Housing in Japan: The Dōjunkai Apartments One Hundred Years On (Brill, 2026) is the first comprehensive English-language examination of the Dōjunkai Foundation (1924-2024). Compiled and edited by Dr. Marco Pompili through interviews and studies, it is a must-read for anyon ... Show More
57m 14s
Jun 2021
Alisse Waterston and Charlotte Corden, "Light in Dark Times: The Human Search for Meaning" (U Toronto Press, 2020)
Today I spoke to anthropologist Alisse Waterston and artist Charlotte Corden to ask them questions, such as: What will become of us in these trying times? How will we pass the time that we have on earth? These questions draw on their gorgeously rendered graphic form book, Light i ... Show More
1h 28m
Dec 2021
Janneke Adema, "Living Books: Experiments in the Posthumanities" (MIT Press, 2021)
In Living Books: Experiments in the Posthumanities (MIT Press, 2021), Janneke Adema proposes that we reimagine the scholarly book as a living and collaborative project -- not as linear, bound and fixed, but as fluid, remixed, and liquid, a space for experimentation. She presents ... Show More
55m 16s
Aug 2021
War, Famine, Pestilence, and Design
<p>When Roman Mars and Kurt Kohlstedt were promoting <a href="http://99pi.org/book"><i>The 99% Invisible City </i></a>in late 2020, one question came up over and over again in conversations and interviews about our built environment: in what ways will the COVID pandemic change ci ... Show More
31m 37s
Sep 2021
Amelia Jones, "In Between Subjects: A Critical Genealogy of Queer Performance" (Routledge, 2020)
In Between Subjects: A Critical Genealogy of Queer Performance (Routledge, 2021) is a study of the connected ideas of "queer" and "gender performance" or "performativity" over the past several decades, providing an ambitious history and crucial examination of these concepts while ... Show More
48m 54s
Nov 2023
Vid Simoniti, "Artists Remake the World: A Contemporary Art Manifesto" (Yale UP, 2023)
Artists Remake the World: A Contemporary Art Manifesto (Yale UP, 2023) puts forward an account of contemporary art’s political ambitions and potential. Surveying such innovations as evidence-driven art, socially engaged art, and ecological art, the book explores how artists have ... Show More
58m 51s
May 2022
51. Why Possibilism is the Future with Architect Michael Pawlyn
<p>Michael Pawlyn is a biomimicry expert, TED talk star and founding director of the London-based practice Exploration Architecture, he is also co-author with Singapore-based urbanist, curator and writer Sarah Ichioka of the book Flourish: Design Paradigms for our Planetary Emerg ... Show More
36m 20s
Sep 2025
Darcie Deangelo et al., "Demilitarizing the Future" (Anthem Press, 2025)
Demilitarizing the Future (Anthem Press, 2025) draws from art, anthropology, and activism to investigate the entrenchment of militarism in everyday lives and consider novel imaginaries of its dissolution--of peacemaking, community, and shared equitable futures. This book will be ... Show More
50m 25s
Aug 2025
Marianna Charitonidou: Drawing, meaning and modernism.
In the newest episode of the A is for Architecture Podcast, I spoke to the architect, historian and theorist Dr Marianna Charitonidou about her fairly recent book, Architectural Drawings as Investigating Devices: Architecture’s Changing Scope in the 20th Century, which she publis ... Show More
53m 47s
Jan 2025
Eva Van Roekel and Fiona Murphy, "A Collection of Creative Anthropologies" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2024)
In this NBN episode, I am joined by anthropologists Eva van Roekel (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) and Fiona Murphy (Dublin City University) to talk about theit edited book, A Collection of Creative Anthropologies: Drowning in Blue Light and Other Stories. This beautiful collectio ... Show More
48m 8s
May 2021
Adam Rogers, "Full Spectrum: How the Science of Color Made Us Modern" (Houghton Mifflin, 2021)
From kelly green to millennial pink, our world is graced with a richness of colors. But our human-made colors haven’t always matched nature’s kaleidoscopic array. To reach those brightest heights required millennia of remarkable innovation and a fascinating exchange of ideas betw ... Show More
1h 23m
The Art of Experiment: Post-Pandemic Knowledge Practices for 21st-Century Architecture and Design (Routledge, 2020) is a handbook for navigating our troubled and precarious times. In search of new knowledge practices that can help us make the world livable again, this book takes the reader on a journey across time—from the deep past to the unfolding future. ... Show More