PODCAST · arts
A is for Architecture Podcast
by Ambrose Gillick
Explore the world of architecture with the A is for Architecture Podcast hosted by Ambrose Gillick. Through conversations with designers, scholars and practitioners, Ambrose unpacks the creative and theoretical dimensions of architecture. Whether you're a professional, student, or design enthusiast, the A is for Architecture Podcast offers the best insights into how buildings shape society and society shapes buildings. To keep it free and good, subscribe to the podcast on Patreon.The podcast is not affiliated with Ambrose's place of works.
Episodes
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Witold Rybczynski: Coming to terms with architecture.
In this episode of the A is for Architecture Podcast architectural totem, Canadian American architect, professor and writer Witold Rybczynski, Professor Emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania, spoke with me about his forthcoming book, What Architecture Is, published by Yale University Press…
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Cat Rossi and Charles Holland: Design as method and object.
This episode of the A is for Architecture Podcast features a brace of professors, Cat Rossi and Charles Holland, both of UCA and Charles, Founder director of Charles Holland Architects. We met in the English port town of Dover to discuss Harvest, from the summer to autumn 2025, and Harvest Moon…
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Antony Wood: Tall buildings and sustainable vertical urbanism.
In this episode of the A is for Architecture Podcast, Professor Antony Wood PhD, Tall Building Expert, Professor of Sustainable Vertical Urbanism at the Illinois Institute of Technology, author, architect and former president and CEO of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, now the...
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Mabel O. Wilson: Spaces of liberation.
In this episode of the A is for Architecture Podcast, Mabel O. Wilson - architect, historian, and professor at Columbia University, director of the Institute for Research in African American Studies - speaks about Thinking from Black: A Lexicon, published by FSG Editions this September. Thinking...
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JL Williams: Architecture, dreams, metaphor & poetry.
In this episode of the A is for Architecture Podcast, poet and Creative Projects Manager at the Edinburgh Futures Institute, JL Williams, spoke to me about her recent collection of poetry, Strange Architectures, her fifth book of such with Shearsman Books. In the poems, Jennifer presents visions…
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Shumi Bose: Words relating to theory.
In this episode of the A is for Architecture Podcast, I spoke to Shumi Bose, about her work as a curator, chief editor of KoozArch, senior lecturer in architecture at Central Saint Martins in London and, I’d suggest, something like an activist-not-activist. Speaking here, Shumi makes a clear case...
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Maximillian Sternberg: Hans Dollgast: Designing in history
In this episode of the A is for Architecture Podcast, Professor Max Sternberg discuss the Bavarian architect Hans Döllgast, the subject of his latest book, Hans Döllgast: Reconstruction and Modernity, which is being published by Lund Humphries in late September this year. Born in 1891 and…
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Ole Bouman: Bicycles, buildings and an ethic of care.
Architecture’s conscience – as building, buildings, materials and practices – is a bolt-on at best, but more often a semantic, sophistic trick. Architecture as a profession talks ethically but it’s very difficult to see where this manifests in real life. This is an agency problem but also a...
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Maria Fusco: Site writing, sensing, place.
As architects, the nature of buildings is as drawings. Even when on site, a building is read in terms of its relationship to the documents off its legal production, preeminent among which – after the contract - are the plan and elevation. As such, the buildings of architects are abstractions. To...
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Gabriella Bennett: Other possible cities.
What would a failing city look like? Would one be able to tell if, for example, London or New York were a busted flush? What would be the markers? Social discord, unwalkable streets, cultivated inequality and polarization, declining mental and physical health might seem like some measures to…
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Timothy Soar: Images of architecture.
As George Berkeley almost almost said, if architecture is built in a city but no one takes its picture, does it make a sound? Photography is intrinsic to architecture, so much so that most of us only know buildings through the images made of them. What the photographer does then is to manifest...
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Irénée Scalbert: Earth City Architecture.
After the exhaustion of modernist functionalism and Koolhaasian bigness, architecture should be reconceived within the limits of the earth, as craft, stewardship, locality and bricolage. In short, architecture is just more complicated than that. So suggests Irénée Scalbert, architectural critic…
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Jo Farb Hernández: Artists as architects.
For Immanuel Kant, an aesthetic experience required four conditions: disinterestedness, universality, purposiveness and necessity. Architecture, as such, has always struggled with this, because its appreciation is fundamentally tied to a sense of its utility – as shelter, symbol, status, want –…
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Winka Dubbeldam: Architecture and hybridity.
What if buildings could free themselves – or be freed by their architects – of the stricture of type, of discrete identity, of typology? What might happen if, for example, a school and a house - schoolness and houseness – were hybridized? What if building and non-building, even, were wedded?…
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Paul Knox: London, heritage and capital.
In this episode of the A is for Architecture Podcast, I spoke with Paul Knox, University Distinguished Professor at Virginia Tech, about his 2025 book, Lost London: From Crystal Palace to Heston Airport, a History in 25 Missing Buildings, published by Yale University Press in April this year.…
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Vanessa Grossman: Architecture and the communists.
In this episode of the A is for Architecture Podcast, I spoke to architect and historian, Vanessa Grossman, Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania’s Weitzman School of Design, about her 2024 book, A Concrete Alliance: Communism and Modern Architecture in Postwar...
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Asma Mehan: Architecture in the shadow of oil.
In the latest episode of the A is for Architecture Podcast, I spoke to architect and scholar, Asma Mehan, Assistant Professor at the Huckabee College of Architecture, Texas Tech University and director of the Architectural Humanities and Urbanism Lab (AHU_Lab), about her edited volume, After Oil…
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Leslie Kern: Resisting gentrification.
In this episode of the A is for Architecture Podcast, I spoke to scholar, activist, author and feminist totem, Leslie Kern, about Gentrification is Inevitable and Other Lies, which she published with Verso in 2022. In Leslie and my conversation we speak broadly about her work and approach, some...
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Spyros Papapetros and Gerd Zillner: Kiesler: magic, metaphysics and home.
Frederick Kiesler was an Austrian-American architect, artist and theorist who, born at the tail end of the nineteenth century, bore witness to the irresistible rise of modernism in architecture and alongside it, the pyrrhic victory of amoral, individuated thinking, revealed so starkly in the…
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Beatriz Colomina: Architecture as disease and cure.
Bellerophon, son of Poseidon and Eurynome, slew the Chimera and, full of hubris, believed he had a rightful place on Mount Olympus among the gods and set off there on his winged horse, Pegasus. Zeus did not like this and sent a gadfly to sting Pegasus, which threw Bellerophon, who fell back to...
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Hilde Heynen & Lucía Pérez-Moreno: Feminist ecologies and architecture.
If one were to be the sort of inelegant person to point such things out, one might point out that despite all the egalitarian rhetoric, we still live in an architectural culture that cultivates dominance, not in the sense of dominion as rooted in domus, home, but in the dual senses of control and...
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Stefan Al: Houses, forms, cultures.
Despite the fact that theorists probably live in one, homes are rather poorly theorized. Why is this so? Perhaps it is the ascent of the domestic in capitalist bourgeois culture – the world within a world – that makes them the seat of late modernity’s subjective turn which, in its turn, made home...
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Miriam Attwood & John Kinsley: Building community.
Nine out of ten architectural practices in Europe are involved in designing private housing, according to the Architects Council of Europe, with the work generating 54% of the average practice’s turnover. But according to RIBA, in 2018 in the UK only 6% of housing was designed by architects. So...
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Tim Altenhof: Atmospheres and architecture.
Close study of singular aspects of building culture remains the mainstay of good architectural scholarship. Through detail, universals can be revealed. This is the case with Tim Altenhof’s Breathing Space: The Architecture of Pneumatic Beings, published by Zone Books in March this year…
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Ed Wall: Architecture & war.
With warfare seemingly creeping up on us – because governments keep starting them – it seemed like a good idea to speak to Ed Wall, Professor of Cities and Landscapes at the University of Greenwich, about his book Architecture for Warfare: How Corporations Profit from Destruction and...
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Andreas Lechner: Forms and typologies.
In Episode 194 of the A is for Architecture Podcast, architect and writer and Andreas Lechner, Associate Professor of Design and Building Theory at TU Graz in Austria and founder of Studio Andreas Lechner, also based in Graz. We connected off the back of my previous conversation with Hans van der...
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Lee Ivett: Blueprint for a new architecture.
In the 193rd episode of this here A is for Architecture Podcast, Lee Ivett joined me for a second time, 1591 days since his last appearance here. Now a Professor and Head of the London School of Architecture, and still an active architect, I wanted to speak to Lee to discuss architectural…
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Itohan Osayimwese: Africa, ornament and architecture.
In Episode 192 of the A is for Architecture Podcast, Itohan Osayimwese, Professor of the History of Art & Architecture and Urban Studies and Department Chair at Brown University, discusses small parts of her big book, Africa's Buildings: Architecture and the Displacement of Cultural Heritage,...
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Ellen Braae & Thordis Arrhenius: Scandinavia and the architecture of welfare.
The A is for Architecture Podcast’s 191st episode is a conversation with two professors, Ellen Braae & Thordis Arrhenius, about their and Guttorm Ruud’s publication, Architecture and Welfare: Scandinavian Perspectives, which came out with Birkhäuser in 2025. To summarise the book is hard…
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Alexander Josephson: Practice life and the political.
For Episode 190 of the A is for Architecture Podcast, Alexander Josephson, architect, lecturer at the University of Toronto’s Daniels Faculty of Architecture, and in 2012, co-founder of PARTISANS, a Toronto-based collective of architects, designers and thinkers that, among other things, is...
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Frances Northrop and Amica Dall: Commons and cooperative practice.
For this episode of the A is for Architecture Podcast, Amica Dall, co-founder of Assemble, writer and researcher, and Frances Northrop, head of community economic power at the New Economics Foundation and a director of Totnes Community Development Society discuss Common Treasures (Vol. 1 & 2),...
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Nele De Raedt & Maarten Delbeke: Beauty, aesthetics.
For Episode 188 of the A is for Architecture Podcast, Nele De Raedt and Maarten Delbeke discuss some small parts of the 2025 book, Beauty in Architecture: Perspectives from Theory and Practice, which they edited and published with Bloomsbury. Beauty in Architecture connects ideas from across...
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Fernando Lara: Alternative American architectures.
In Episode 187 of the A is for Architecture Podcast, Fernando Lara, professor of architecture at the Weitzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania, discusses his book, Spatial Theories for the Americas: Counterweights to Five Centuries of Eurocentrism, published by the University of...
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Francis Terry: New classical architecture.
In Episode 186 of the A is for Architecture Podcast, neoclassical architect Francis Terry, founder of Francis Terry and Associates, discusses his upbringing, education, drawing, work, practice and the imposed politics of it all. In our binary times, it seems strange to think of traditional...
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Fatina Abreek-Zubiedat: Making Gaza.
In the latest episode of the A is for Architecture Podcast, recorded at the end of last year, Fatina Abreek-Zubiedat spoke to me about her new book, A Territory in Conflict: Eras of Development and Urban Architecture in Gaza, published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. The Gaza Strip was...
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Patrick Hutchison: Into the woods.
For the first episode of 2026 for the A is for Architecture Podcast, we’re starting slow and steady – but rather inspiringly I think - with Patrick Hutchison, a builder. Patrick’s very recent book, Cabin: Into the Woods with a Clueless Craftsman, which he published with Harper Collins in November...
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Gili Merin: Jerusalem pilgrim city.
It’s Christmas, and just past Hanukkah, and in recognition of that, Episode 183 of the A is for Architecture Podcast, is a conversation with architect, photographer and writer Gili Merin, about her extraordinary and exquisite book, Analogous Jerusalem, which came out with Humboldt Books earlier...
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Andreea Mihalache: Modern architecture and boredom.
In the 182nd episode of the A is for Architecture Podcast, Andreea Mihalache joined me to discuss her new book, Boredom and the Architectural Imagination: Rudofsky, Venturi, Scott Brown, and Steinberg, which she published with the University of Virginia Press in 2024. Exploring the boundaries of...
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Larissa Fassler: Mapping meaning in the city.
For Episode 181 of the A is for Architecture Podcast, I was joined by the Berlin-based artist, Larissa Fassler whose work explores through imagery and sculpture - aesthetic, layered, ambiguous maps, models and interventions - the social and political spatialites of cities and their everyday...
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Peter Stutchbury: Voices, sky, land and folk.
For Episode 180 of the A is for Architecture Podcast, the extraordinary Australian architect, Peter Stutchbury, joined me to speak about a little of his work, his origins, his purpose and his ethic. It’s an extraordinary story, beautifully told by a wonderful man, a worthy addition for this, a...
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Shiben Banerji: Occult modernist urban visions.
Episode 179 of the A is for Architecture Podcast is a fascinating, expansive discussion with scholar, planner and architect, Dr Shiben Banerji, associate professor in the Department of the History of Art at UC Berkley, about some small parts of his sprawling and wonderful Lineages of the Global...
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Adam Sharr: Heidegger (ahem), building, senses.
In Episode 178 of this incessant podcast, Adam Sharr, Professor of Architecture at Newcastle University, discusses his 2007 book, Heidegger for Architects, published by Routledge. Heidegger’s ideas haunt architectural discourse, practice and education, which remain inwardly wedded to concepts…
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Alva Gotby: Other means of dwelling.
In this new episode of the A is for Architecture Podcast, writer and organiser, Alva Gotby, discusses her recent latest book, Feeling at Home: Transforming the Politics of Housing, published by Verso in January this year. Feeling at Home is rooted in Marxist feminism, and approaches housing as...
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Piers Taylor: Building in place.
The A is for Architecture Podcast’s latest episode is a discussion with the architect, writer, teacher and broadcaster, Piers Taylor. It is Piers’ second time on the show, but rather than his practice, this time we discuss his freshly minted book, Learning from the Local: Designing responsively…
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Jeana Ripple: Architecture, materials, technology and equity.
In the latest episode of the A is for Architecture Podcast Jeana Ripple, Chair and Vincent & Eleanor Shea Professor in the School of Architecture at the University of Virginia, joined me to discuss her recent book, Type V City: Codifying Material Inequity in Urban America, published by the...
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Patrick Lynn Rivers & Kai Wood Mah: Situated practices.
The A is for Architecture Podcast’s newest episode is a conversation with North American scholars, social scientist Patrick Lynn Rivers and design historian Kai Wood Mah, about their book, Situated Practices in Architecture and Politics, published by Dalhousie Architectural Press in 2024. In our...
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Hans van der Heijden: A rationalist architecture.
In the latest episode of the A is for Architecture Podcast Amsterdam-based architect Hans van der Heijden discuss themes of his design work and writing. Founder of Hans van der Heijden Architects, a practice which track context through deep research realised in, as I see it, a sort-of fitting...
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Peter Apps: Home making and unmaking.
In this episode of the A is for Architecture Podcast the journalist, writer and Deputy Editor at Inside Housing, Peter Apps discusses his very recent book, Homesick: How Housing Broke London and How to Fix It, published by One World Publications in September this year. Peter became something of a...
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Stefano Boeri: Architecture with nature.
In the A is for Architecture Podcast’s latest episode, Stefano Boeri - architect, urban planner, Professor of Urban Planning at Milan Polytechnic, President of the Future of the City Foundation and former editor of Domus (among some other things…) - joined to speak about his upbringing and...
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James Benedict Brown & Derek Jones: The design studio.
In the newest episode of the A is for Architecture Podcast, I got to speak to Derek Jones and James Benedict Brown, two of five scholars responsible for the very recently published Studio Properties: A Field Guide to Design Education, published by Bloomsbury this year and also available as an…
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Explore the world of architecture with the A is for Architecture Podcast hosted by Ambrose Gillick. Through conversations with designers, scholars and practitioners, Ambrose unpacks the creative and theoretical dimensions of architecture. Whether you're a professional, student, or design enthusiast, the A is for Architecture Podcast offers the best insights into how buildings shape society and society shapes buildings. To keep it free and good, subscribe to the podcast on Patreon.The podcast is not affiliated with Ambrose's place of works.
HOSTED BY
Ambrose Gillick
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How many episodes does A is for Architecture Podcast have?
A is for Architecture Podcast currently has 218 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is A is for Architecture Podcast about?
Explore the world of architecture with the A is for Architecture Podcast hosted by Ambrose Gillick. Through conversations with designers, scholars and practitioners, Ambrose unpacks the creative and theoretical dimensions of architecture. Whether you're a professional, student, or design...
How often does A is for Architecture Podcast release new episodes?
A is for Architecture Podcast publishes regularly with 218 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
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You can listen to A is for Architecture Podcast on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts A is for Architecture Podcast?
A is for Architecture Podcast is created and hosted by Ambrose Gillick.
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