Gustav Hermann Krumbiegel's visionary work transformed the landscapes of India. From humble beginnings in Germany to an apprenticeship at Kew Gardens, Krumbiegel’s journey led him to Baroda, where he became the trusted landscape architect of the Maharaja. Designing the iconic Brindavan Gardens, shaping Bangalore’s reputation as the “Garden City,” and introdu ... Show More
Oct 2025
'I designed the Indian rupee symbol'
In 2009, the Indian government launched a national competition to find a design for the Indian rupee.With more than 3,000 entries and five finalists, the winning design was announced on 15 July 2010.The designer was by Udaya Kumar Dharmalingam, a student at the Industrial Design ... Show More
10m 29s
Nov 2024
India's capsule coal mine rescue
In November 1989, mining engineer Jaswant Singh Gill saved 65 miners from the Mahabir Coal Mine, in India.The miners, who had been trapped for three days after a flood, were winched out one by one using a tiny, steel capsule.Rachel Naylor speaks to Jaswant's son, Sarpreet Singh G ... Show More
10m 6s
Sep 2024
Ancient India and China: from golden to silk roads
The best-selling historian William Dalrymple presents India as the great superpower of ancient times in The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World. He argues that for more than a millennium India art, religions, technology, astronomy, music and mathematics spread fa ... Show More
42m 10s
Feb 2025
The Rise of Modern Hydroponics
<p>The practice of growing plants in water rather than soil isn't new, though early examples are difficult to substantiate. In the 1930s, hydroponic plant culture made headlines, but the field also had conflict among researchers.</p> <p>Research:</p> <ul> <li>Bacon, Francis. &ldq ... Show More
41m 14s
Jun 2025
Alan Michelson Talks Dinosaurs, Murderous US Presidents, and Platinum-Gilded Native “Knowledge Keepers”
As a child, Alan Michelson often rode the T past sculptor Cyrus Edward Dallin’s “Appeal to the Great Spirit” (1908) outside the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA). He was riveted by the statue’s grand horse and the powerful yet melancholy figure wearing a striking Plains Indian wa ... Show More
52m 19s
Jan 2024
William G. Pooley, "Body and Tradition in 19th-Century France: Félix Arnaudin and the Moorlands of Gascony, 1870-1914" (Oxford UP, 2019)
The moorlands of Gascony are often considered one of the most dramatic examples of top-down rural modernization in nineteenth-century Europe. From an area of open moors, they were transformed in one generation into the largest man-made forest in Europe.
Body and Tradition in Nine ... Show More
58m 24s
Sep 2025
Living stories: art, space and memory
What does it mean to tell stories through the spaces we live in? And how can architecture be a source of memory and repair?In this bonus episode of Our World, Connected, host Christine Wilson revisits a powerful conversation with Kabage Karanja, architect, researcher, and co-foun ... Show More
15m 10s
Nov 2019
Thaisa Way, "The Landscape Architecture of Richard Haag: From Modern Space to Urban Ecological Design" (U Washington Press, 2019)
Today I talked to Thaisa Way about her new books The Landscape Architecture of Richard Haag: From Modern Space to Urban Ecological Design (University of Washington Press, 2019). Haag is best known for his rehabilitation of Gas Works Park in Seattle and for a series of remarkable ... Show More
46m 5s