Register - Architecture & Landscape

In this episode Andrew interviews Andreas and Samuel from Stockholm based Hermansson Hiller Lundberg Architects. Their practice is concerned with the capacity for contemporary construction for expression - and they explore structure and a close reading of context to make characterful and beautifully considered work at a wide variety of scales. The work speaks eloquently of our time, and draws on deep traditions in architecture - seeking expressive qualities in contemporary construction techniques. Here they speak about how they balance this careful ‘present tense’ aspect of their work, against the necessary vagaries of construction today. https://www.hhl.se —— Credits: Register is the Research Group in the Department of Architecture & Landscape at the Kingston School of Art, Kingston University London kingstonarchitecture.london Head of Department: Mary Johnson Producer: Laura Evans / Andrew Clancy Interviewer: Andrew Clancy Editor: Andrew Clancy Music: Poddington Bear - Rainbow Architecture

In this episode Simon Henley interviews Milinda Pathiraja. Milinda's is a director and co-founder of Robust Architecture Workshop, a practice based in Sri Lanka, and concerned with developing new means for architecture to operate there. The term 'Robust' is key, its meaning to Milinda representing architectures ability to develop a resilience by a clear sighted engagement with the world - eschewing the brittleness that comes from autonomous conversations, and making its languages from a bottom up approach, one with tolerance at its heart. Here tolerance is a calling to an architecture which is sited in the specifics of the architects context, and the needs of the project - encompassing material behaviours but also much more, including the lives and futures of those engaged with its making. https://www.facebook.com/robustarchitectureworkshop/ —— Credits: Register is the Research Group in the Department of Architecture & Landscape at the Kingston School of Art, Kingston University London kingstonarchitectu

In this episode Nana Biamah Ofosu and Andrew Clancy interview Shelley McNamara and Yvonne Farrell of Grafton Architects. Nana is a tutor in the Kingston School of Art, leading studies into precedent and the lessons found in territorial Ghanaian architecture as part of her Second Year Studio. Grafton Architects are the current Pritzker Laureates, an accolade that arrives as they appear to be gathering pace with a remarkable series of university buildings completed in the last few years, and more on the way. At the heart of Graftons practice is a concern for the human aspects of architecture - how it is made, how it affects those who use it, and how it speaks to the society that it forms a part of. In this discussion Shelley and Yvonne discuss their education, those critical first few projects, and how they have navigated their career since then. They reflect on the sensibilities that underlie their remarkable buildings, and what they see as key challenges facing the disipline today. https://www.graftona

In this episode Andrew Clancy speaks with Simon Henley of Henley Halebrown Architects. Simon is an educator and a practitioner, and has written several books about architecture, most recently ‘Redefining Brutalism’ - which seeks to redefine the subject beyond style, and to capture its sensibility as a living language of architecture -0 encompassing robustness at its core. Today their explorations into the language of architecture are being teased out via a series of remarkable housing projects, one of which (Chadwick Hall) was shortlisted for the Stirling Prize (the UKs highest award for architecture) last year. http://henleyhalebrown.com/ —— Credits: Register is the Research Centre in the Department of Architecture & Landscape at the Kingston School of Art, Kingston University London kingstonarchitecture.london Head of Department: Mary Johnson Producer: Laura Evans / Andrew Clancy Interviewer: Andrew Clancy Editor: Andrew Clancy Music: Poddington Bear - Rainbow Architecture

In this episode Andrew Clancy chats with the architect and educator Cathy Hawley. Cathy Haley started her professional career with the art and architecture collaborative muf, moved on to doing remarkable housing projects as a founding partner of Riches Hawley Mikhail, and now works with Public Practice to embed critical thinking about context and character into the development plans of a series of towns. Wherever she has worked she has brought a clarity of insight, valuing the unseen and the overlooked along with more obvious aspects, to make a singular contribution in each place. This is true also of her work as an educator - in which she seeks to tease out her students ability to see in an enabling fashion - both for their own careers as architects, and in relation to how they make work. She is a winner of the RIBA Stirling prize, RIBA Rome prize and numerous other accolades. http://www.cathyhawley.co.uk/about.php —— Credits: Register is the Research Centre in the Department of Architecture & La

In this episode Laura Evans and Matt Wells talk with the Historian and curator Nicholas Olsberg. Nicholas is a former director of the Canadian Centre of Architecture, and is a prolific writer. He has curated many exhibitions about architects and architecture and in this conversation shares his views about the role of the curator in this context. In particular he speaks about the need to make exhibitions which present those visiting with vivid moments of engagement with the subject - a particular challenge in architecture when by necessity only an alibi for the subject the visitor will be engaging with. --------- Credits: Register is the Research Centre in the Department of Architecture & Landscape at the Kingston School of Art, Kingston University London kingstonarchitecture.london Head of Department: Mary Johnson Producer: Laura Evans / Andrew Clancy Interviewer: Laura Evans / Matt Wells Editor: Andrew Clancy Music: Poddington Bear - Rainbow Architecture

In this episode Mary Vaughan Johnson and Federica Goffi Interview Alba di Lieto and William Whitaker Mary is the head of our Department of Architecture and Landcape here in Kingston, while Federica is Associate Professor and Co-Chair of the PhD and MAS Program at Carleton University. Last Summer Mary and Federica hosted the Frascari Symposium at Kingston, and it was at this event this podcast was recorded. In it Mary and Federica interview Alba diLieto and William Whitaker. Alba is curator of the archive Carlo Scarpa at the Directorate Civic Art Museums and Monuments of Verona. William Whitaker is the curator and collections manager of the Architectural Archives of the University of Pennsylvania Weitzman School of Design. In this conversation Alba and William speak of the nature of their archives, of their inception, management and growth. They also speak eloquently about the nature of these archives as repositories of thinking, offering profound insights into our discipline. --------- Credits:

In this podcast Laura Evans and Matt Wells interview William Burgess and Stephen Davies of 31/44 In the intro I mention our new books project. If you want to support us by pre-ordering copies of our first books please visit the crowdfunding site here https://kubacker.hubbub.net/p/REGISTER-Conversations/ Will is well known to us in Kingston as a studio tutor in third year, where he runs a unit with Kate Micklin also of 31/44. The work of the unit is a good way to understand some of the interests of 31/44 as a practice. There is a careful approach to understanding and researching context, and using this to inform their projects. This contextual read is not one grounded in a literal formal or material transposition, but in a sensibility which allows contextual work stand in sympathy both with its own time, and the histories of the sites they work on. As such their works are to an extent a distillation and a refinement of particular observations, a retelling of a story of how the city has been made. htt

In this episode Andrew Clancy interviews Shiela O'Donnell and John Tuomey of O'Donnell and Tuomey. John and Shiela are as much educators as architects, and this conversation roves freely between conversations about schools, and their own work in practice. It is clear that these two worlds are interconnected and interreliant in a profound way in their lives. The work in both places has overlaps - not least a concern with close reading of site and context, and an investment in drawing out what the ‘utter’ aspect of a project might be through conversation and drawing. We talk through their recent retirement from UCD - the school they were taught in and in turn taught into for most of their lives, and how this might mark a new chapter on a number of levels. We also hear what it was like working for Stirling, the humanity of the man, and his insistence on the value of ‘the act itself’ of being an architect. We do hope you enjoy the conversation. http://odonnell-tuomey.ie --------- Credits: Register

In this episode Bruno Silvestre interviews his compatriot Alvaro Siza. First off an apology - the sound is not as we would like it. Circumstances dictated that the interview had to be recorded in a hotel lobby, and the backgrounders noise is quite distracting - but we felt it was useful to put out anyway. Bruno is working with Siza on a project here in the UK, and grabbed this time during Sizas most recent visit. In this conversation they talk about practice, Sizes early frustrations with small projects, how current jobs interrelate in the office, and the value of Kenneth Frampton in highlighting work from around the world, including Portugal, which might otherwise have been overlooked. ———— Credits Register is the Reseach Group for the Departmetn of Architecture & landscape. This episode was made in collaboration with the students architecture society K.Arch Head of Department: Mary Johnson Producer: Andrew Clancy Interviewer: Bruno Silvestre Editor: Andrew Clancy Music: Poddington Bear - Rainbow

In this episode Andrew Clancy and Laura Evans interview Alice Casey and Can Deegan of TAKA Architects in Dublin. Over their 10 years of practice Alice and Cian have designed a series of remarkable buildings, which clearly illustrate the concerns of the office. Most obvious there is a recurrent engagement with context, making buildings which are grounded in the forms and materials of their physical situation. There is more at work than this - most intriguingly a continual engagement with the potentials for architecture to accrete meaning through its engagement as a protagonist in ritual and habit. Here they draw their references very widely, most particularly from a series of lengthy journeys they made in the first few years of their practice. Here we see a robust territorial architecture engaging with global conversations, making something new and yet of its place. www.taka.ie --------- Credits: Register is the Research Centre in the Department of Architecture & Landscape at the Kingston School of

In this episode Louise Koopmanns and Andrew Clancy interview Gunter Vogt, the eminent landscape designer, and Chair of Landscape at ETH Zurich. He views landscape design not as an autonomous totalling discipline, but as a careful reassembly of the world. In his methods he stresses the productive tension between the necessary subjectivity of the human condition, and the availability of scientific analysis and process. In speaking with his students he observes that a field trip can at once be a sensorial immersion and a scientific appraisal, and posits a work method that includes space for digression, memory and dreaming along with rigorous engagement with the realities of contemporary ecology and construction. A detail in this context can speak about both the personal and the political. This ability for multiple scales of thinking to be manifest at once allows space for digression and a radical subjectivity in the design process - resulting in landscapes which are contextual and surreal, robust and intima

In this episode Kate Ivinson and Dan Ryder-Cook both interview the London architect Amin Taha. Amin’s work, and that of the practice he established (Groupwork) is heavily invested in exploring the potentials for contemporary technology to allow a re-engagement with materiality, ornament and civic expression - particularly in the making of facades. This approach, at once playful and rigorous, has resulted in work which is beautifully detailed, robustly made and historically situated. In this conversation Amin teases out the underlying ideas of the practice, including the way that memory, and misremembering, have always been the way our cities have been made - placing his work in this tradition of continuity. Kate and Dan were both students of the course when they made this interview, and they bring an incisive lens on the work which makes for enjoyable listening. ———— Credits Register is the Reseach Group for the Departmetn of Architecture & landscape. This episode was made in collaboration with the

In this episode Andrew Clancy interviews Edwin Heathcote, the critic and writer. Edwin is the architecture critic for the FT, and an author of several books as well as the curator of an online resource celebrating the value of the written word in architecture (Reading Design). In this conversation we tease out the particular pressures on critics and discuss whether the golden age of architecture criticism may have passed. https://www.readingdesign.org/ --------- Credits: Register is the Research Centre in the Department of Architecture & Landscape at the Kingston School of Art, Kingston University London kingstonarchitecture.london Head of Department: Mary Johnson Producer: Laura Evans / Andrew Clancy Register: Christoph Lueder; Matt Wells; Matt Phillips Interviewer: Andrew Clancy and Matt Phillips Editor: Andrew Clancy Music: Poddington Bear - Rainbow Architecture

In this interview Andrew Clancy and Judi Farren Bradley interview Julian HARRAP. Julian is arguably the most distinguished conservation architect working in Europe today. In the work he completed with David Chipperfield on the Neues Museum he opened up a conversation about memory, authenticity and the abiding meaning of architecture in a highly nuanced manner. This work is of interest far beyond conservation circles of course, and I think it fair to say that this building has been one of the key works of the last 20 years in shaping the culture of architecture on our continent. Our contemporary understanding of bricolage, fragment and inflection are all wrapped up and tested in various ways in this building. There is a radicality here, one which is perhaps less immediately evident (but no less present) in other projects by Julian and in this conversation he takes us through the challenge of conservation - which in his view is never a simple dogmatic agenda, but another layer of architectural thinking.

In this episode Andrew Clancy and Matt Phillips interview Prof Elly Mosayebi The practice she runs with her partners (Ron Edelaar and Christin Idebitzin) works from a deep understanding of the plan as a source of invention in the making of beautifully resolved housing. By a first principle interrogation of inhabitation and occupation they can arrive at plans which frequently eschew conventional geometries - to make characterful, resonant, architecture which is deeply human, gently inhabitable and yet steeped in a deep architectural knowledge. This is a rich, complex architecture - one which validates the discipline of architecture in its fullest sense - showing how a deep understanding of the history of architecture, and care in its making can make genuinely beautiful places for people to live. Elly is a professor in the ETH and there is a strong link between the teaching and research she conducts there with her students and the evolving nature of her practice. In this conversation we talk about this,

In this podcast Mary Vaughan Johnson and Andrew Clancy interview Niall Hobhouse of Drawing Matter. Niall and his collection are such a valuable and important part of the contemporary architectural scene it is difficult to imagine it without this presence. Yet it is a rare and fragile thing. It is by no means obvious that a collection could be made which celebrates the doubts of creative production, and which reiterates the changing yet abiding value of the drawing as a site of critical enquiry. In the archives at shatwell, and in the many publications, exhibitions and educational programmes run by the archive there is a clear voice - one which is scholarly and playful, one that understands the collection as a living engine of thinking. Next week you are all welcome to join us in Kingston for the Frascari Symposium - which we are hosting here on the 27th and 28th July 2019. You are all welcome to join us as we explore the secret lives of drawings and models. http://kingstonarchitecture.london/frascari-

In this episode Andrew Clancy interviews Fergus and Edmund of Feilden Fowles Their practice is one which foregrounds craft, and the formal histories of the language of industrial and agricultural structures as a site for discovery and invention. Their hands on approach is probably most celebrated in their own studio, located as part of a campus of structures for Waterloo city farm. Despite the contingencies of budget (the client being a charity) and the need for the buildings to be rapidly designed, made (and potentially moved in time) they worked with and elemental architecture and frugal materials to make a wonderfully considered series of buildings and spaces. This nimbless means that their investment in the details does not preclude larger work, and indeed they are working with contemporary industrial sites - such as their recently completed food production site in Somerset. Here they work with the language of contemporary industrial structures, but adjust these by addition, developing a figurativ

—————— Before introducing this episode a quick mention of the free summer school for pre A- level students we run each summer with our partners. I talk a bit about this in the introduction - if you know anyone who might be interested there is more information here. http://kingstonarchitecture.london/architectural-drawing-summer-school-24-29-august-2019/ ———————- In this episode Andrew Clancy interviews Caroline Voet. Caroline joins us from Belgium where she works as an architect and an academic. She is rare, in that she excels in both practice and thinking about practice. The work of her practice, (Voet en de Brabandere, where she works in partnership with Leen de Brabandere) has a rigour in both formal and tectonic investigations - making buildings and interiors which are elegently conceived and beautifully resolved with their contexts. - http://www.voetendebrabandere.be As an academic Caroline is perhaps best known for her wonderful book (A House for the Mind) about the work of the architect Dom Hans

In this episode Andrew Clancy interviews Ryan Kennihan. Ryan is an architect, based in Dublin, and is leader of the thesis year in TU Dublin (formerly DIT Dublin School of Architecture) there. His practice is concerned with making buildings which act in continuity with typologies, forms and materials found in their physical context. These are translated through engagement with contemporary tectonics to make an expressive architecture in which structure, weathering and craft are considered and carefully calibrated. In this conversation we talk through his journey to this point, and the ideas fueling his practice today. http://www.rwka.com --------- Credits: Register is the Research Centre in the Department of Architecture & Landscape at the Kingston School of Art, Kingston University London http://kingstonarchitecture.london Head of Department: Mary Johnson Producer: Laura Evans / Andrew Clancy Register: Christoph Lueder; Matt Wells; Matt Philips Interviewer: Andrew Clancy Editor: Andrew Clancy