Scaffold

• Crit: Venice Biennale with Emily Conklin, Fabrizio Gallanti & Phin Harper

  A month after the opening of this year's Venice Architecture Biennale, we've invited three critics to come on the show to help make sense of what was arguably one of the most content overloaded, and curitorially ambiguous biennales in recent memory.Since its inception in 1980, The Venice architecture biennale has set the tone for global discourse on contemporary design and urbanism, and yet the agenda of this year’s exhibition, curated by the MIT professor and recent guest of this podcast, Carlo Ratti, seemed surprisingly muted and anodyne, calling for architects to marshal the quote intelligence of the natural, artificial and collective”Still there are more complex although perhaps unintended themes to the biennale this year, including the emerging relationship between unaccountable technologies and authoritarianism, quantatitve expansion as a proxy for genuine inclusivity, and perhaps most importantly, the exchange of an independent curatorial vision for an apparent new ideal of algorithmically determined experience. Furter reading:Emily Conklin: We Will Rest: Seeking Resistance and Recovery During Carlo Ratti’s Venice Biennale in the Brooklyn RailFabrizio Gallanti: "Fakery and deception is everywhere at Venice Architecture Biennale 2025" in DezeenPhin Harper: Venice Architecture Biennale 2025 Review: A Tech Bro Fever Dream in Art Review and La Biennale Architettura: A Beginner’s Guide on The Fence.Emily Conklin is the former managing editor of the Architect's Newspaper and is an editor and critic based in New York City. She is trained as a historic preservationist and is the founder of Tiny Cutlery studio. Fabrizio Gallanti is an architect, writer and curator, and directs Arc en Rêve, an architectural center in Bordeaux.Phin Harper is a critic, curator, and sculptor and former Chief Executive of Open City.Correction: the list of Swiss Pavilion curators mentioned in this episode mistakenly omitted Myriam Uzor, who led the project alongside Elena Chiavi, Kathrin Füglister, Amy Perkins amd Axelle Stiefel. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• Patrick McGraw (Heavy Traffic Magazine)

  Patrick McGraw is the editor and publisher of Heavy Traffic magazine. Based in NYC, designed by Richard Turley and featuring contributions as varied as Sheila Heti, Keller Easterling and Dean Kissick, Heavy Traffic understands and reflects the mood of contemporary life in a way that fiction is increasingly well suited to. Literature has the ability to capture our now terminally online consciousness. Architecture, on the other hand—a cultural form that once stood for whole epochs—has in recent decades become anachronistic, divorced from the virtual world that increasingly holds us captive. Patrick’s trajectory is interesting because he originally studied architecture before making a shift into journalism and eventually leading a literary magazine. In our conversation we try to bridge this gap between the world of architecture and fiction. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• Jacques Herzog & Nicholas Serota with Ellis Woodman

  To mark the 25th Anniversary of the Tate Modern this week, the Architecture Foundation's Director Ellis Woodman speaks with two key figures behind the museum's conception: Nicholas Serota and Jacques Herzog.Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. Download the London Architecture Guide App via the App Store or Google PlayBecome an Architecture Foundation Patreon member and be a part of a growing coalition of architects and built environment professionals supporting our vital and independent work. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• Carlo Ratti

  Carlo Ratti is is an Italian architect, engineer and educator, and the curator of the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale. As the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale opens its doors, we speak with this year’s curator, Carlo Ratti—architect, engineer, and a leading thinker at the intersection of design, technology, and urbanism. Under the theme 'Intelligens: Natural. Artificial. Collective.', Ratti explores how new forms of intelligence—from machine learning to natural ecosystems—are transforming not just the spaces we build, but the tools and processes we use to conceive them. In this episode, he reflects on the Biennale's curatorial vision, and the questions it raises about architecture’s evolving role in an increasingly interconnected world. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• Michael Meredith

  Michael Meredith is a co-founder with Hilary Sample of MOS, an architecture practice based in New York.MOS is an acronym derived from Meredith and Sample, with the "O" serving as an abstract, connective element. The name, much like the practice itself and the cultural moment it emerged from in the early 2000s, captures a playful tension between irony and sincerity. It's a subtle nod toward global architectural giants like SOM or OMA, while genuinely embodying Michael and Hilary's playful and collaborative spirit.A hallmark of Meredith and Sample’s work is their ability to balance intentional imperfection with technical precision. They've described their practice as embracing a philosophy that's "horizontal and fuzzy," deliberately moving away from the conventional "tall and shiny" image typically associated with architecture firms. It's a metaphor reflecting their preference for an architecture that's smaller, less bureaucratic, more experimental, and ultimately more alive.Michael's podcast Building with Writing Stan Allen: https://open.spotify.com/show/7CUtD3SnpyKxWUmsNnDmSwMichael's 2025 Princeton Syllabus: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aU1IqdLYJmcldMAzgnxrwOczO1TIrTtCejEziyxZ4-U/edit?tab=t.0Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production, hosted by Matthew Blunderfield. Download the London Architecture Guide App via the App Store or Google PlayBecome an Architecture Foundation Patreon member and be a part of a growing coalition of architects and built environment professionals supporting our vital and independent work. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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