Contested City: Citizen Advocacy and Survival in Modern Baghdad (Stanford UP, 2025) offers a history of state-society relations in Baghdad, exploring how city residents managed through periods of economic growth, sanctions, and war, from the oil boom of the 1950s through the withdrawal of US troops in 2011. Interactions between citizens and their rulers shap ... Show More
Jul 15
Cat Dawson, "Monumental: How a New Generation of Artists Is Shaping the Memorial Landscape" (MIT Press, 2025)
For centuries, monuments have telegraphed the values and origin myths of dominant culture in public space and on massive scale. They have signaled both who is part of a culture and who is not, often overlooking histories that complicate the stories they tell. Yet in the last 50 y ... Show More
40m 40s
Jul 14
Juliet Rix, "London's Statues of Women" (SafeHaven Books, 2025)
No-one can fail to notice how many statues of Great Men there are around London: stern politicians, military generals, imperial adventurers . . . But what about women? As shown by Juliet Rix in London's Statues of Women (SafeHaven Books, 2025), women are surprisingly well represe ... Show More
50m 12s
Jul 11
Laurie Denyer Willis, "Go with God: Political Exhaustion and Evangelical Possibility in Suburban Brazil" (U California Press, 2023)
Through deep attention to sense and feeling, Go with God grapples with the centrality of Evangelical faith in Rio de Janeiro's subúrbios, the city's expansive and sprawling peripheral communities. Based on sensory ethnographic fieldwork and attuned to religious desire and manipul ... Show More
48m 5s
Sep 2021
Susanna Phillips Newbury, "The Speculative City: Art, Real Estate, and the Making of Global Los Angeles" (U Minnesota Press, 2021)
Underlying every great city is a rich and vibrant culture that shapes the texture of life within. In The Speculative City: Art, Real Estate, and the Making of Global Los Angeles (U Minnesota Press, 2021), Susanna Phillips Newbury teases out how art and Los Angeles shaped one anot ... Show More
40m 6s
Jan 2024
Susanna Phillips Newbury, "The Speculative City: Art, Real Estate, and the Making of Global Los Angeles" (U Minnesota Press, 2021)
Underlying every great city is a rich and vibrant culture that shapes the texture of life within. In The Speculative City: Art, Real Estate, and the Making of Global Los Angeles (U Minnesota Press, 2021), Susanna Phillips Newbury teases out how art and Los Angeles shaped one anot ... Show More
38m 6s
Aug 2023
Christian Parreno, "Boredom, Architecture, and Spatial Experience" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
Boredom is a ubiquitous feature of modern life. Endured by everyone, it is both cause and effect of modernity, and of situations, spaces and surroundings. As such, this book argues, boredom shares an intimate relationship with architecture-one that has been seldom explored in arc ... Show More
35m 6s
Jun 2019
For Elizabeth Diller, New York City Is Beginning to Feel Like One Big Punch List
When Elizabeth Diller graduated from Cooper Union with a degree in architecture in 1979, she had no intention of necessarily becoming an architect. In fact, the Polish-born, New York–raised Diller chose architectural studies simply to explore her interests in art and physical spa ... Show More
1h 19m
May 2024
Talking Practice: Pier Vittorio Aureli
In this episode of Talking Practice, host Grace La interviews Pier Vittorio Aureli, architect, educator, and co-founder of Dogma, an architecture and research-based practice in Brussels. Pier Vittorio reveals early beginnings of Dogma, which started as an academic comradery and b ... Show More
47m 59s
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
Apr 2024
... with Yussef Agbo-Ola
... with Yussef Agbo-Ola
In the newest episode of WAS MIT KUNST, Johann König speaks with the artist and architect Yussef Agbo-Ola. In his practice, Agbo-Ola addresses artistic, architectural, and anthropological issues by creating experimental spaces, such as pavilions, that reo ... Show More
44m 12s
Aug 2023
Flora Samuel, "Housing for Hope and Wellbeing" (Routledge, 2022)
Housing and neighborhoods have an important contribution to make to our wellbeing and our sense of our place in the world. Housing for Hope and Wellbeing (Routledge, 2023), written for a lay audience (with policy makers firmly in mind) offers a useful and intelligible overview of ... Show More
59m 32s
Nov 2024
Creative Momentum with Art Coach Christine Garvey
Christine Garvey is an artist, coach, and the founder of A Mighty Practice. Her paintings and installations have been exhibited internationally, including exhibitions with Galerie Circulaire (Montreal), International Print Center (New York), and The Contemporary Austin. Garvey’s ... Show More
38m 32s