AndrewBlum.net

San Francisco Federal Building (AIASF podcast)

San Francisco Federal Building from AIA San Francisco on Vimeo.

Produced for the exhibition STREET CRED San Francisco: Architecture and the Pedestrian Experience, this podcast features architect Thom Mayne, principal of the Los Angles-based firm Morphosis and designer of the new San Francisco Federal Building, in conversation with Andrew Blum, a Brooklyn-based writer and contributing editor at Metropolis and Wired magazines. Mayne discusses the social implications of his most recently built project—both in terms of how it serves federal employees and the public. Produced and edited by Melanie McGraw, with photography by Keith Baker, Tim Griffith, and an introduction by exhibition co-curator Julie Kim. (link)

Architectural League Emerging Voices (podcasts)

The Architectural League created the annual Emerging Voices lecture series in 1982 to recognize and encourage architects who are beginning to achieve prominence in the profession. Now celebrating its 25th anniversary, the series focuses primarily on built work, at a variety of scales, and is structured to reflect the diversity of contemporary practice–geographically, stylistically, and ideologically.

Interviews were conducted by journalist Andrew Blum and were recorded on the evening of each Emerging Voices lecture.

J. Meejin Yoon & Eric Howeler
Howeler + Yoon/MY Studio, New York City and Boston

Sharon Johnston & Mark Lee
Johnston Marklee and Associates, Los Angeles

Ammar Eloueini
AEDS, New Orleans and Paris

Mark Anderson & Peter Anderson
Anderson Anderson Architecture, San Francisco and Seattle

Trey Trahan
Trahan Architects, Baton Rouge

Lisa Iwamoto & Craig Scott
IwamotoScott Architecture, San Francisco

An Te Liu
University of Toronto, Toronto

Jared Della Valle & Andy Bernheimer
Della Valle Bernheimer, Brooklyn

Greenbuild Podcasts: The Vibrancy of Green (Metropolis)

90 minutes of audio from Greenbuild 2007.

This year’s Greenbuild, the annual conference of the US Green Building Council (USGBC), was all about two things:

Green has gone corporate—and that’s exactly what everybody wanted.
Past gatherings may have been intimate affairs, but this year’s event, in Denver, was a full-scale trade show, with 13,000 attendees walking around with tan totes emblazoned with Honda on the side, lots of corporate-sponsored parties, and a sold-out exhibition hall, with 700 exhibitors hawking their green products. It left little doubt that green, at least as it’s represented by the USGBC, isn’t about the counter-culture anymore. And yet, does that mean green’s gone mainstream?

When it comes to green building, now that we know what to do, how will we do it? USGBC president and CEO Rick Fedrizzi turned the question into a catchphrase: “immediate and measurable.” Green building needs “immediate and measurable” impacts; we need “immediate and measurable results in our efforts to reverse global warming.” It was the topic of the week, and the question that guided the podcast audio interviews you can download here: What can architects, builders, building owners, and building product manufacturers do that will have an immediate and measurable positive impact on the environment? And then, how do we measure that impact? Is it with LEED ratings, carbon offsets, and Cradle-To-Cradle certification? Or maybe one of the new “marks” that were announced at Greenbuild, like a “Living Building” or “Planet Positive.”

Episode 1: Green Standards (mp3)

- Jason McLennan, CEO Cascadia Region Green Building Council: Post-Platinum
- Scot Horst, chair, LEED Steering Committee: LEED’s evolution
- Jay Bolus: Executive Vice President, Benchmarking and Certification for McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry: Cradle-to-Cradle, the product

Episode 2: Green Tools (mp3)

- Guy Battle, Battle McCarthy Consulting Engineers/founder, dCarbon8: Carbon is the new gold
- Phil Bernstein, Vice President, Industry Strategy and Relations, Autodesk: Design tools for green
- Michael Murray, President, Lucid Design Group: A building dashboard

Episode 3: Mainstream Green (mp3)

- Jon Ratner, Director of Sustainability Initiatives, Forest City Enterprises: Developer green
- Clark Brockman, SERA Architects & Chris Ziegler, Sage Hospitality Resources: Portland green
- Patti Purcell, CEO, The Beam and Green Building Blocks: Consumer green

Green Giant: Rick Cook (BusinessWeek Podcast)

As the architect of Bank of America's new super-green building in Manhattan, Rick Cook has a front-row seat for the greening of Corporate America. In this podcast, he talks about his own green conversion, the Bank of America tower, and choosing work that matters. (link) (mp3)

Flexible Furniture (BusinessWeek Podcast)

On the floor at ICFF in New York (mp3) (link)

At this year's International Contemporary Furniture Fair, the only constant is flexibility. From the floor of the Javits Center in New York, BusinessWeek Online Contributing Editor Andrew Blum talked about technology, materials, and how we live today with Yves Behar of fuseproject, Elizabeth Hertzfeld of Remake Design, Jocis Debo of Materialise.MGX, Ivan Luini of Kartell U.S., and Jerry Helling of Bernhardt Design

Green Engineer (BusinessWeek)

Guy Battle's holistic approach (slideshow) (podcast) (MP3)

"Engineers are a hidden hand when it comes to innovation," says Guy Battle, principal of London-based Battle McCarthy Consulting Engineers, who specialize in green buildings and their role in creating sustainable businesses. It's an admittedly unusual combination, at least from the American perspective on the role of engineers. But Battle is an unusual engineer, choosing to chase down new challenges rather than merely solve the ones at hand -- like forgoing air conditioning in the tropics, or combining transparency and bomb-resistance. "We're very much seen as drivers, and that's why architects come to us and ask us to get involved," says Battle. (link)

High Line Aspirations (BusinessWeek Podcast)

Link (MP3)

On Manhattan's West Side, an old elevated freight railway is being reinvented as a public park called the High Line. As part of BusinessWeek's ongoing discussion on New York City's emerging skyline, contributing editor Andrew Blum speaks with Joshua David, co-founder of Friends of the High Line, the nonprofit group behind this unusual and innovative urban transformation.

Amanda Burden (BusinessWeek Podcast)

City of Design (link) (MP3)

New York City Planning Commission chair Amanda Burden is helping to make New York a great place for architects from around the world to visit, and maybe even a favored destination. As part of the ongoing Emerging Skyline podcast series, she talks about how good design, and bringing architects to New York, is good for economic development. (link) (MP3)

Radical Craft (Metropolis)

A Few Stories (and Podcasts) from the Source
Metropolis captures the conference that explored the craft in architecture, technology, fashion, science, and more. (link)

"Radical" means edgy, out there on the fringe, but it can also mean root, or even effecting fundamental changes in current practices. Over two days in March at the Radical Craft conference at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, more than three dozen speakers tried to explain--sometimes directly, and sometimes by demonstrating their own work--what the term "radical craft" means in the world of design. And, consequently, in the broader sense in which we live. It wasn't easy: "craft", like "design", is a slippery idea, especially when it's applied not to macramé but to (among other things) spacecraft, magic, music, lexicography, New Yorker cartoons, and (of course) iPods.

I spoke with six of the Radical Craft speakers, several of the conversations were conducted right after their presentations. Two of the speakers are from design's corporate realm: Claudia Kotchka, Vice President of Design Innovation and Strategy at Procter & Gamble; and Jim Hackett, CEO of Steelcase, who brought along James Ludwig, his director of design. Two speakers approach design as a political tool: Maurice Cox,the former architect-mayor of Charlottesville, VA and a professor at UVA's school of architecture; and Martin Fisher, CEO of KickStart, a non-profit selling a water pump as a means to eradicate poverty. One approaches design from outer space: Constance Adams, spacecraft architect. And finally,Chee Pearlman, guest program director refines the term "radical craft."

A World of Light and Glass (BusinessWeek)

James Carpenter is known for startling designs that make the invisible visible. Now two New York towers that bear his mark are going up (link) (slideshow) (podcast MP3)

There are a lot of things you can say about lower Manhattan: It's the capital of global finance, the cradle of New York City, or the site of the September 11th terrorist attacks. But James Carpenter prefers to talk about the quality of its light. "That's the thing about downtown," he explained recently, sitting at a conference table in his sunny Tribeca studio. "The light down here is amazing, because there's all this atmospheric moisture."

It's an unusual and quiet observation, characteristic of a man who's made a career out of making visible the invisible. He is an artist who shares an office with engineers, an architect who works like a sculptor, and a glass craftsman who often uses steel. When the MacArthur Foundation awarded him one of their "genius" grants in 2004, it termed him a "glass technologist." He may be hard to pin down -- even his collaborators never seem sure of how to describe his role -- but this spring, Carpenter's work is defining the character of two of the most anticipated new office buildings opening in Manhattan.