With influential series on California, on the terraforming of Mars, and on human civilization as reshaped by rising tides, Kim Stanley Robinson has established a conceptual space as dedicated to sustainability as his own beloved Village Homes in Davis, California.
All of that, though, only prepared the ground for Ministry for the Future, his 2020 vision of ... Show More
Aug 6
Sayd Randle, "Replumbing the City: Water Management as Climate Adaptation in Los Angeles" (U California Press, 2025)
Moving between shower drains, aqueducts, rain gardens, and even kitchen sinks, Replumbing the City: Water Management as Climate Adaptation in Los Angeles (University of California Press, 2025) traces the enormous urban waterscape of Los Angeles in a state of flux. For more than a ... Show More
51m 21s
Aug 5
Timothy W. Kneeland, "Declaring Disaster: Buffalo's Blizzard of '77 and the Creation of FEMA" (Syracuse UP, 2021)
Join me for an insightful and timely conversation with historian Timothy Kneeland about his book Declaring Disaster: Buffalo's Blizzard of '77 and the Creation of FEMA (Syracuse University Press, 2021). This book masterfully bridges the gap between academic research and real-worl ... Show More
1h 15m
Jul 31
Yuki Kato, "Gardens of Hope: Cultivating Food and the Future in a Post-Disaster City" (NYU Press, 2025)
Gardens are often spaces of hope, expected to solve many problems in a city including food insecurity and climate resilience. In fact, there has been a historical trend of urban gardening gaining popularity during times of crisis. Gardens of Hope is the story of urban gardening i ... Show More
1h 7m
Jun 21
John Barr, "1960s University Buildings: The Golden Age of British Modern Architecture" (Lund Humphries, 2025)
The 1960s continue to hold an almost mythical place in Western culture, particularly in Britain, where change was widespread and infiltrated many aspects of life. This included architecture, whose role in a modern democracy and the form it should take were hotly debated. 1960s Un ... Show More
1h 1m
Feb 2025
Miles Glendinning, "Mass Housing: Modern Architecture and State Power – a Global History" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
Mass Housing: Modern Architecture and State Power – a Global History (Bloomsbury, 2021) is a major work that provides the first comprehensive history of one of modernism's most defining and controversial architectural legacies: the 20th-century drive to provide 'homes for the peo ... Show More
1h 20m
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
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
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
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
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
48m 50s