Architect Sean Lally of Weathers runs the podcast Night White Skies: "A podcast about architecture's future, as both Earth's environment and our human bodies are now open for design."

The podcast is in its infancy, but Lally has already logged some really fascinating interviews with the likes of Timothy Morton, architect Mitchell Joachim, and architects/authors Geoffrey Thün & Kathy Velikov. Lally joins us on this week's show to talk about the podcasting+architecture game, and the architect's collaborative role in science and technology.

Beginning today through October 1, Columbus, Indiana will celebrate its architectural history and identity with its very first Exhibit Columbus—an annual event alternating between a symposium and a design exhibition. Known for its rich architectural holdings of work by Eero and Eliel Saarinen, Kevin Roche, I.M. Pei, Deborah Berke, Richard Meier, Robert Venturi and others, Columbus has earned its "Athens of the prairie" tagline, and Exhibit Columbus hopes to honor that proud tradition into the future.

We're joined by key members of Exhibit Columbus, Richard McCoy (director of the symposium's parent company, Landmark Columbus) and Joshua Coggeshall (partner at Shimizu + Coggeshall and co-director of next year's Ball State University installations) to discuss the city's architectural heritage, and what's planned for this year's inaugural symposium.

Alvin Huang, founder and principal of Synthesis Design + Architecture in Los Angeles, joins us to talk about growing his practice into the award-winning firm it is today. Alvin dips back into his time in London, going to school at the AA and working with Zaha, and shares the terror and excitement that is starting your own firm. We also discuss taking criticism on social media, firm/teaching/life balance, and computation's role in design.

In a landmark decision last month, Columbia University graduate students won the right to unionize in a case filed against the National Labor Relations Board. As a result, graduate students in private universities across the U.S. now have the right to collectively bargain. What effect does this have on architecture student labor, and the valuation of architecture overall?

We're joined this week by special guest A.L. Hu, a third-year GSAPP MArch student and key organizer with Graduate Workers of Columbia (GWC-UAW). Hu shared what's happening at the school after the landmark decision, and how these organizing efforts can affect the architecture profession overall.

We're joined this week by Devin Gharakhanian, co-founder and co-creative director of the online platform SuperArchitects, to discuss his work in architecture media and community-building, alongside issues troubling architecture education and the public's perception of the profession.

Gharakhanian was inspired to start SuperArchitects to share architecture theses globally, feeling they are under-appreciated and underexposed. Frustrated by the gap between education and practice he experienced after graduating from Woodbury, he left traditional architecture to focus on exposing architects and their work to as wide an audience as possible, mostly through social media platforms.

Closing out August's special theme of Games, we're joined this week by Quilian Riano to talk through all the ways games can help architects reimagine not only their designs and design processes, but also their own role in the system and structures of city building. We discuss Quilian's recent piece for Archinect on his own work with games in pedagogy, practice and protest, and share our other experiences at the intersection of games and architecture.

This week's show is dedicated to Louisville, and we're delighted to share the mic with longtime Archinect favorite Steven Ward. Steven is an architect and partner at Studio Kremer Architects, teacher and architecture critic/cheerleader for the local independent paper LEO Weekly. We discuss his recent writings, in particular his survey of the recently completed Speed Art Museum, and the differences between local architecture criticism vs national criticism. We also find our what's going on with OMA's Food Port project. 

The term "zoning" recently celebrated its 100-year anniversary in the U.S.'s city planning parlance, and many of our News postings recently have had to do with its fraught, wonky legacy. From racial segregation to housing discrimination to Pokémon Go trespassers, we dip into the debate around zoning, with special guest Mitch McEwen.

Peter Zumthor released new renderings for his LACMA redesign last week, and boy are people not impressed! We talk about the "undercooked" look of Zumthor's snaking concrete inkblot plan for the museum, and experiment with a new segment devoted to ranting. You've been warned.

The last few weeks have been a bit of a downer—we had a big ol' roundtable on how Brexit is changing architecture practice and education, the Democratic and Republican National Conventions raged, and Rio is coping (somewhat) with its Olympic stress. Now, we're in need of some lighter fare. We wanted to take a moment in the summer heat to check-in with what Donna and Ken have been up to, and pass on some of our own recommendations for what to read and listen to this summer.

Also featuring: Ken dishing about Guy Fieri and vegan butchers, Donna giving us the latest on her husband's giant installation in Rancho Cucamonga, and "a really fun text book".

Shownotes:

Archinect's theme for August is Games – check out our open call.

The Olympics begin tomorrow! Get caught up with what's been happening in Rio

At home in a changing climate: strategies for adapating to sea level rise

Revok, the artist who painted Brian's "Native" palm tree installation.

Melania Trump's website disappears after architecture degree claim is debunked

Phoenix May become a Lot More Green (more info here from Donna)

UK architecture students seeking mental health care is on the rise, according to Architects' Journal survey (more info here from Ken)

New Sandy Hook elementary really looks like a church

Summer Recommendations:

What we're reading:

• Donna: Parable of the Sower, by Octavia Butler, and Underground Airlines, by Ben H. Winters
• Ken: Man, Play and Games, by Roger Caillois, Teach Your Chicken to Fly Training Manual, by Trevor Weekes
• Amelia: Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman, and You'll Grow Out of It, by Jessi Klein

What we're listening to: listen on our YouTube playlist.