Takaharu and Yui Tezuka founded Tezuka Architects in 1994 and are best known for their experimental designs for schools and kindergartens, chief among them the Fuji School in Tokyo. They are currently fundraising to build a new orphanage and school in India called the Jhamtse Gatsal Learning Centre.

Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield.

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Phineas Harper develops cultural programmes that engage broad audiences with architecture and design. A regular contributor to The Guardian and former Chief Executive of Open City, their career spans criticism, curation, education, youth engagement, journalism and sculpture.

"I see my work as always having an eye on some other change that is about making a better built environment […] and that’s why I admire architects so much, because they have the patience and the care to see a project through. I think there’s a lot the we in the critical, curatorial, discursive world have to learn from architects in that regard.”

Phin's exhibition "Cascades" is on now until 1 June at San Mei Gallery

Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield.

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Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode originally aired in April 2022; Scaffold will be back with a new episode next week.

Asif Khan is a designer of buildings, landscapes, exhibitions and installations.

“It’s helpful sometimes to think that architecture is made up. All of this cannon, all of this writing, all of this schooling […] let’s just imagine it’s a religion of some sort that you’re operating within, but before that religion there were other religions, and so it’s about stepping outside of that world and seeing what else is possible.”

Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield.

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Fernanda Eberstadt is a New York born writer living in Europe. She has published five novels and two books of non-fiction, the latest of which is BITE YOUR FRIENDS: STORIES OF THE BODY MILITANT.

"Art lies in the cracks, the deep tremors, the dysfunctions, in the gap between our own broken capabilities and the unpoliced world we’re hoping to create" – FE

Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield.

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Cristina Gamboa is a co-founder of the Barcalona-based architecture cooperative Lacol.

"We are constantly fighting with budgets, and are often left with what is absolutely necessary – a “pure” architecture. […] When the manzanas [Cerda’s urban grid for Barcelona] were built without architects this lead to a homogeneity, or even genericness, that we are comfortable with, maybe because of its lack of a specific aesthetic narrative."

Episode References:

John Habraken – frameworks of mass support

Lucien Kroll

Frei Otto

Francesc Rius – Coll De Portell Housing

Alfons Soldevila – Casa Mas Ram

Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield.

Download the London Architecture Guide App via the App Store or Google Play

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Takero Shimazaki is director of the London-based practice t–sa, which he co-founded with Yuli Toh in 1996.

"You can’t control everything as an architect. You can’t dictate everything – that’s not the point. Instead it’s quite exciting to be liberating, to let things be in a way. I'm interested in the discrepancies that exist between imagined ideals and the realities of tolerance and conflict. In these kinds of chaotic and raw situations, how does architecture survive?"

Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield.

Download the London Architecture Guide App via the App Store or Google Play

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“The artist working alone in their studio is the antithesis of what we do every day as architects […] and yet one hopes that the work you produce might have the same resonance.”

Jamie Fobert a Canadian-born architect who has found himself increasingly working on projects at the centre of British culture. 

Fobert, who has recently become chair of the Architecture Foundation's board of trustees, studied at the University of Toronto before moving to London in 1988, where he worked for for David Chipperfield, before establishing his own practice in 1996. He is best known for his work with major fashion brands and cultural institutions, and has designed retail spaces for Selfridges, Versace and Givenchy, as well as major extensions and alterations to galleries and museums including Tate St Ives, Kettles Yard in Cambridge, and most recently London’s National Portrait Gallery. 

Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. 

Download the London Architecture Guide App via the App Store or Google Play

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Nicholas Lobo Brennan and Astrid Smitham founded Apparata, their London-based architecture practice, in 2016.

"What we are always trying to do is a kind of activism, but the activism is entirely expressed and developed through prosaic things – literally, where is the door, how wide is the walkway, that kind of stuff.

It’s not either or – either architecture is its own autonomous discipline, or it’s a social practice – there has to be room for the idea that the actual devices you use to engage with activist work can literally be construction, space and architecture."

Buy tickets to Architecture on Stage: A public housing manifesto (This Friday 26 January at the Barbican Centre)

Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.