On this episode of Archinect Sessions we're joined with Alex Baca, a Washington DC-based journalist focused on smart cities, planning, bike advocacy and urban mobility devices. Recent news, and related controversy, surrounding Amazon’s newly announced move into New York City and Washington DC is what initially motivated us to bring Alex onto this show.

This week we’re sharing my conversation with Sou Fujimoto, recorded immediately before his new show opened to the press at Japan House in Hollywood last Friday. The show, titled “FUTURES OF THE FUTURE”, brings together large-scale renderings and photographs, along with over 100 models showcasing a selection of Fujimoto’s distinctive work and process.

Our conversation covers his upbringing in Hokkaido, his academic and personal studies in Tokyo, and how these experiences contributed to his highly unique approach to architecture; investigating primitive lifestyles, blurring boundaries and breaking down walls. If you’re in the LA area, the exhibition will remain until December 12th at Japan House, which is located on the 2nd floor of the bustling, tourist-filled Hollywood and Highland complex.

On this latest episode of Archinect Sessions we talk with Sekou Cooke, Syracuse-based architect, educator and curator of the upcoming exhibition at the Center for Architecture, "Close to the Edge: The Birth of Hip-Hop Architecture", scheduled to open this Monday, October 1st in New York City.

This week's podcast episode is all about podcasting. So meta. We're joined by Sera Ghadaki, a recent graduate of Pratt M.Arch program, and a contributing editor of Tarp: Digital, Pratt’s podcast spinoff from their long-running student publication.

On this latest issue of the Archinect Sessions podcast Ken, Paul and Donna talk with Peggy Deamer  and Shota Vashakmadze , from the Architecture Lobby . For those of you unfamiliar, the Architecture Lobby is a non-profit organization run by and for architectural workers that advocate for the value of architecture to the public, and for the value of architectural work within the industry. The Lobby is rooted in a 10-point manifesto:

1. Enforce labor laws that prohibit unpaid internships, unpaid overtime; refuse unpaid competitions.
2. Reject fees based on percentage of construction or hourly fees and instead calculate value based on the money we save our clients or gain them.
3. Stop peddling a product–buildings–and focus on the unique value architects help realize through spatial services.
4. Enforce wage transparency across the discipline.
5. Establish a union for architects, designers, academics, and interns in architecture and design.
6. Demystify the architect as solo creative genius; no honors for architects who don’t acknowledge their staff.
7. Licensure upon completion of degree.
8. Change professional architecture organizations to advocate for the living conditions of architects.
9. Support research about labor rights in architecture.
10. Implement democratic alternatives to the free market system of development.

One of the most recent initiatives by the Architecture Lobby is Just Design , recognizing firms exhibiting exemplary labor practices. Archinect is currently working in partnership with the Architecture Lobby to profile these firms, which we are excited to announce soon, so stay tuned. Until then, enjoy this conversation with Peggy and Shota... 

Earlier this summer I sat down with Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee to discuss their practice, Johnston Marklee, in front of a live audience at this year's LA Design Festival. We discuss the origin of their practice, their relationship to LA, the eclectic group of collaborators they have worked with over the years, and their unique approach to telling the story of their work in their recently published monograph.

On this week's show, Archinect Sessions episode 124, Ken and Donna look back at this year's AIA National Convention in NYC.

The LA Forum for Architecture and Urban Design has offered a critical look at the city of Los Angeles since the late 80's. The nonprofit has been providing public programming, exhibitions, and publications through its ever-shifting board of directors and volunteer contributors. To celebrate this 30-year milestone, the Forum has carefully selected a collection of pieces published from its origin to today, and has published these in a book under the themes of Experiments, Detours, Hunches, and Santa Anas.

Today, Los Angeles is a major architectural and urban player, but for decades the city was dismissed suburban and centerless. In republishing three decades of material on architecture and design in Los Angeles, the LA Forum Reader reclaims and reconsiders the city’s architectural and discursive histories. It establishes, or reestablishes, a textual context for critical experimentation and urban investigation. This anthological volume includes essays, interviews, and reproductions of publications that have long been out of print, including pamphlets by Craig Hodgetts and Margaret Crawford, as well as early writings by Aaron Betsky and John Chase.

In this week's show I invited editors Mimi Zeiger, Chava Danielson and Michael Sweeney to Archinect's recording studio to discuss the history of the Forum and the process of putting together this anthology. 

Last Wednesday, on the eve of the AIA National Convention, I had the pleasure of talking with Miguel McKelvey, co-founder of WeWork. 

The conversation was held in Midtown, in the Project 6 by AF showroom to an invited crowd of 75 architects. The event was co-hosted by Project 6 by AF and Designer Pages, and sponsored by Graff, Julien, Geberit, Kaldewei and Wetstyle. 

For those of you unfamiliar, WeWork is a co-working startup currently valued at somewhere between $20B to $35B, with almost 400 locations scattered around the world in 69 cities. While WeWork wasn’t the first company to enter the coworking space, they approached it in a very different way, focusing on creating physical environments that connected with workers and business owners, while crafting a culture of super-dedicated members. 

Miguel McKelvey, one of two co-founders, is an architect by education, with a brief work history in the field that includes an active role in the design and buildout of American Apparel's disruptive retail stores in the early 2000’s. As a personal friend that I first met while studying architecture together at the University of Oregon, I’ve followed Miguel’s entrepreneurial path for almost 20 years. In this conversation we’ll talk about that path, and how architecture has played a critical role in the success of WeWork, starting with his extremely untraditional, yet highly relevant, childhood.

This week we announced the release of our latest issue of our print journal, Ed, with the theme “Architecture of Disaster”. For today’s show I’m talking with Nicholas Korody, Ed’s editor-in-chief, to discuss this latest release. Nicholas talks about the conception of the theme and shares some of his favorite pieces. We finish the conversation with a hint at Nicholas’s forthcoming Venice Architecture Biennale coverage.

This week Ken, Donna and I are joined by architect and writer Esther Sperber to discuss the very real and serious issue of mental health in architecture. Esther owns Studio ST Architects, a small practice in New York City, and frequently writes about mental health, with a specific focus on psychoanalysis and it’s relationship to architecture. 

Creative fields, especially those with long hours and high stress levels, are often rife with mental health issues. Anxiety, depression, sleeplessness, chemical abuse... these are just a few of the indicators common in architecture. If you’re not suffering from any of these, you’re likely working around people that are. On today’s show we barely scratch the surface of this extremely complex subject. Our conversation ranges from learning to listen and empathize, to simple daily strategies for coping with mental health issues of your own and those around you, to more addressing more serious problems including chemical imbalances and professional treatment.  

This week Ken, Donna and I talk about some topics in recent architecture news, along with a little discussion about dealing with criticism. 

This week we have Mike Eliason on the podcast, Seattle-based Project Manager at Patano Studio  and proponent of Passivhaus, Baugruppen , and a car-free cycling life. Long-time Archinectors may recognize him by his username holzbox, OP to a forum favorite minimal details . 

On this week's show we are trying out something new by inviting on guest hosts to take over the mics. Our guest hosts today, Mitch McEwen and Marc Miller, are familiar figures to regular listeners of this podcast and readers of Archinect.  

Mitch is the principal of McEwen Studio, co-founder of the studio collective, A(n) Office, and an Assistant Professor at Princeton University’s School of Architecture. Mitch's writing can be found on her Archinect blog Another Architecture. She has also been a guest on previous episodes of Archinect Sessions Equity, Secrets and Relevancy of AIA; 1 Year After #NotMyAIA, Twilight Zoning: What 100 years of zoning hath wrought, and Another year, Another Architecture.

Marc is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture at Penn State University, in addition to being a regular voice of reason and intelligence in our discussion forum and comments section. Marc previously joined us on the podcast to discuss HUD and Zaha Hadid Architects in HUD-winked: Ben Carson takes on housing for Trump and ZHA distances itself from Patrik Schumacher.

This week we release a relatively spontaneous , and completely silly, look at news and features recently published on Archinect. We also turn Ken's famous last 2 questions, "What are you reading and listening to" onto ourselves. 

On this episode of Archinect Sessions, Paul travels to Minneapolis to join Ken in a conversation with Julie Snow and Matt Kreilich of Snow Kreilich Architects, winner of the 2018 AIA Architecture Firm Award. 

This week, we are joined by Nicholas Korody, the Editor-in-Chief of Archinect's new print project Ed, and Ethel Baraona Pohl, co-founder of Barcelona-based architecture publisher dpr-barcelona. We discuss the increasingly-niche industry of architectural print publishing, and the evolving value it offers as digital media continues to thrive.

We also provide a little behind-the-scenes look at the conception and development of Ed. Interested in seeing your work in print? Ed is currently seeking submissions for our next issue on "Disaster". Bracket, a publication project Archinect co-publishes with Infranetlab, is seeking submissions for the upcoming release "On Sharing".