==

Discussed:

People

• David Gottfried: guest; co-founder of USGBC, founder of WorldGBC (Wikipedia; Regen360)
• Mitch Albom: author of Tuesdays with Morrie, Gottfried's model for the book's dialogue format (Wikipedia)
• Zenobia: third-century queen of Palmyra, namesake of Gottfried's AI thinking partner (Wikipedia)
• Bryan Boyer: co-author of Chain Drain; Taubman College, University of Michigan 
• William McDonough: architect and Cradle to Cradle co-author, cited as a blurber of Regen 360 (mcdonough.com) 
• Frank Duffy: DEGW co-founder and past RIBA president (Wikipedia; RIBA obituary)
• Art Gensler: founder of Gensler and a Gottfried mentor (Wikipedia)
• Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal: 2021 Pritzker laureates known for "never demolish" transformation (Harvard GSD lecture) 
• Patrick Bellew: founder of Atelier Ten; 2023 CTBUH Fazlur R. Khan Lifetime Achievement Award (CVU profile; Atelier Ten announcement)

Books and media

• Regen360: An Operating System for a Regenerative Earth, David Gottfried (regen360.net)
• Explosion Green, David Gottfried's previous book (Wikipedia author page)
• Tuesdays with Morrie, Mitch Albom (Wikipedia)
• Unfrozen 129: Chain Drain, with Bryan Boyer and Greg Lindsay (episode)
• Unfrozen 131: Chatting with Barbarians, with Alexandros Washburn (episode)
• Chain Drain: Why the Built Environment Struggles to Learn and How to Fix It, Boyer and Lindsay, 2026 (chaindrain.netlify.app)

Companies and organizations

• U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) (usgbc.org)
• World Green Building Council (WorldGBC) (worldgbc.org)
• USGBC California and Arup: California Wildfire Rebuilding Guide after the 2025 Los Angeles fires (Architect magazine; 2026 update) 
• Gensler (gensler.com) 
• Blue Planet Systems: synthetic limestone aggregate made from captured CO2, a likely match for the carbon-negative concrete sample Gottfried shows (technology)
• Atelier Ten (atelierten.com)
• Rivian R2: cited as an example of published vehicle life cycle data (rivian.com)
• AI tools named: ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, and Gemini
• Council on Vertical Urbanism (CVU), formerly CTBUH (verticalurbanism.org)

Standards, codes, and rating systems

• LEED (usgbc.org/leed)
• LEED v5: carbon assessment prerequisite and whole building life cycle assessment (One Click LCA overview; LEEDuser NC-v5 MRc2)
• BREEAM (breeam.com) 
• Green Star, Green Building Council of Australia (gbca.org.au)
• WELL Building Standard (wellcertified.com)
• Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) and life cycle assessment (LCA)
• Paris Agreement and COP climate conferences (UNFCCC)

Policy and finance

• PACE financing (Property Assessed Clean Energy) (U.S. Department of Energy)
• Nevada Green Building Tax Abatement and CityCenter, Las Vegas (state project list; Las Vegas Sun)
• Arlington County, Virginia, Green Building Incentive Policy: bonus density (FAR) for LEED (Arlington County)
• San Francisco priority permitting for LEED Gold (SF Environment)
• CTBUH 2023 International Conference, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, Humanizing High Density (see Atelier Ten announcement above)

Interstitial: “She Blinded Me with Science,” by Thomas Dolby

Outro: “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” by Rodgers & Hammerstein, performed by the Liverpool FC Supporters Choir

==

Discussed:

People

• Michael Webb (architecture writer, co-author) — Wallpaper* contributor page
• Thomas Aujero Small (co-author; music critic) — ORO Editions author bio via ACC Art Books
• Elizabeth Valmont (Arup, Americas Technical Services Leader) — Arup staff profile
• Charles and Ray Eames — Eames Office / Eames Foundation
• Richard Neutra (architect, Strathmore Apartments) — Wikipedia
• Charles Garnier (architect, Paris Opera) — Wikipedia
• Hans Scharoun (Berlin Philharmonie architect) — Wikipedia
• Alvar Aalto (Essen opera house architect) — Wikipedia
• Herzog & de Meuron (Elbphilharmonie) — Official site
• Snøhetta (Oslo Opera House) — Official site
• Peter Haimerl (architect, Konzerthaus Blaibach) — ArchDaily project profile
• Thomas E. Bauer (baritone, Blaibach initiator) — Ignant interview
• Willy Brandt (Mayor of West Berlin, Deutsche Oper inauguration) — Wikipedia
• Walter T. Grondzik (co-author, MEEB) — Wiley author page
• Mark Schiller (USC, glare research on Disney Hall) — USC School of Architecture faculty
• Sam Pellman (chime tuning, Tower of Voices) — ENR profile of the project
• Paul Murdoch (architect, Flight 93 National Memorial) — Paul Murdoch Architects

Books

• Michael Webb & Thomas Aujero Small, Music and Architecture in Harmony: Opera Houses and Concert Halls of Europe (ORO Editions, 2026) — Publisher/distributor listing
• Walter T. Grondzik, Alison G. Kwok et al., Mechanical and Electrical Equipment for Buildings ("MEEB") — Wiley product page

Buildings & Venues

• Strathmore Apartments, Westwood, LA (Richard Neutra, 1937; former Eames residence) — Confluence lecture background
• Estates Theatre, Prague (Don Giovanni premiere) — Wikipedia
• Palais Garnier (Paris Opera) — Wikipedia
• Deutsche Oper Berlin — Official site
• Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Berlin — Official site
• Berlin Philharmonie (Scharoun, 1963) — Official site
• Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg — Official site
• Oslo Opera House — Official site
• Teatro di San Carlo, Naples — Official site
• Blaibach Concert Hall 
• Bayreuth Festspielhaus — Wikipedia
• Grand Théâtre de Bordeaux (1780) — Wikipedia
• Musikverein, Vienna — Official site
• La Scala, Milan — Official site
• Walt Disney Concert Hall, LA — Official site
• Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center, Athens (Renzo Piano) — Official site
• LA Memorial Coliseum — Official site
• Flight 93 National Memorial / Tower of Voices — National Park Service page

Institutions & Organizations

• Arup (engineering firm) — Arup SoundLab (R) overview
• University of Southern California, School of Architecture — Official site
• Cranbrook Academy of Art (Eames connection) — Official site
• American Film Institute — Official site
• National Park Service — Official site
• New York MTA / Second Avenue Subway — MTA project page
• Society of Building Science Educators 
  • — Official site
  • — 2005 Conference Award Recipients

Music & Opera Works Mentioned

• Mozart, Don Giovanni — Wikipedia
• Richard Strauss, Elektra — Wikipedia
• Wagner, Das Rheingold (Ring cycle) — Wikipedia
• Andrew Lloyd Webber, The Phantom of the Opera — Official site

Other Items of Interest

--

Discussed:

Alexandros Washburn (author, Chatting with Barbarians)

Chatting with Barbarians (book site)

Greg Lindsay (co-host, urbanist/journalist)

Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan

The Ephebic Oath of the Athenians

P(doom)

Yuval Noah Harari

Yann LeCun
M2 to M1 Learning (Autonomous Machine Learning)

Isovis vs Isocline

AMI / Advanced Machine Intelligence (LeCun's startup)

Mark Zuckerberg

Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic

Stuart Russell (AI researcher, UC Berkeley)

Aristotle

OpenAI

Hugging Face

Meta

Anthropic ("Claudville")

METR (the "meter" AI-safety research org)

Dwarkesh Patel

Waymo

Ford Motor Company

NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration)

New York University

Stevens Institute of Technology

CivicVirtue.ai (Washburn's alignment lab), where you can find MetaGotham

LEAP (Riyadh tech conference)

Robert Moses

Winston Churchill

Timothy "Speed" Levitch

Bennett Miller (director)

The Cruise (1998 film)

Moneyball (2011 film)

Geoffrey West (Santa Fe Institute)

Scale, by Geoffrey West (book)

Santa Fe Institute

Constantinople / Istanbul

Tokyo

Manhattan grid (1811 Commissioners' Plan)

Riyadh

Philadelphia

Erie Canal

Empire State Building

Syracuse University

Washington, D.C. (L'Enfant Plan)

--

Discussed:

People

Ned Resnikoff (guest) — Resnikoff Consulting · Public Comment newsletter

Greg Lindsay (co-host) — greglindsay.org

Dan Safarik (co-host) — LinkedIn

Christopher Cabaldon, California State Senator, former mayor of West Sacramento — Senate biography · Wikipedia

Gabriel (Gabe) Metcalf, Head of Planning, California Forever; former CEO of SPUR — California Forever profile · The Planning Report interview

Zohran Mamdani, Mayor of New York City — Office of the Mayor · Wikipedia

Marc Andreessen — a16z profile

Scott Wiener, author of SB 79 — sd11.senate.ca.gov

Organizations, companies, and government bodies

Ned Resnikoff Consulting — resnikoffconsulting.com

NYC Mayor's Office of Mass Engagement — establishing announcement

California Forever — californiaforever.com

SPUR (San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association) — spur.org

Blackstone — blackstone.com

Cornell Tech — tech.cornell.edu

Metro, Portland's regional government — oregonmetro.gov

Atlanta Regional Commission — atlantaregional.org

Town of Atherton, California — ci.atherton.ca.us

City of San Jose — sanjoseca.gov

County of Los Angeles — lacounty.gov

Legislation and policy programs

California SB 79, Abundant & Affordable Homes Near Transit Act — bill text · California YIMBY summary

Road to Housing Act — U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs

New York City "City of Yes" zoning reforms — NYC Department of City Planning

ULURP (Uniform Land Use Review Procedure) — NYC Planning overview

California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) — Governor's Office of Land Use and Climate Innovation

Publications

Build or Die: How America Is Suffocating Its Cities and What to Do About It, by Ned Resnikoff (Princeton University Press, December 8, 2026) — publisher page

Emergent Tokyo: Designing the Spontaneous City, by Jorge Almazan, Joe McReynolds, Naoki Saito and Studiolab — Oro Editions (see Unfrozen 31, “Emergent Tokyo,” for more).

CRE Daily — credaily.com

Places and building typologies

Amerikamura district, Osaka (site of the zakkyo-building cocktail bar) — Osaka Info

Tokyo Metropolitan Government — metro.tokyo.lg.jp

City of Sacramento — cityofsacramento.gov

City of Austin, Texas — austintexas.gov

City of Portland, Oregon — portland.gov

--

Discussed:

• “Photography: The Middle Class Medium”
• Family Propaganda Portraits
• Photo-Marxism
• Bruce Weber
• Susan Sontag
• Cindy Sherman
• Walker Evans
• Loriel Beltran
• Marvin Heiferman
• Jose Antonio Navarette
• “Avedon Smiles” > Richard Avedon: Nastassja Kinski and the Serpent
• Brene Brown 
• Weegee
• Alfred Dupont Building, downtown Miami
• Allappattah > “Wynwood West”

--

“Navigating through the excuses became part of the performance.”

“The image is more important than the reality it captures.”

“You are poking at people who can squish you.”

“Is taking a picture a crime?”

“I erase myself into these interiors.”

“I left with all the conceptual goodies I could fathom.”

“Interior decorating choices like a bad mixtape…With all of the resources at your disposal, this was your choice?”

“Buildings will eventually be like a Mr. Potato Head, with interchangeable parts.”

“Documenting architecture and fine art, I can map the gentrification that has happened in the last few years.”

--

Discussed:

People

• Bryan Boyer — co-author; Taubman College, University of Michigan (transcript: "Taubin College")
• Greg Lindsay — co-author; U of T School of Cities
• Frank Duffy — DEGW co-founder, past RIBA president; RIBA obituary
• Stewart Brand — How Buildings Learn, source of the shearing-layers framing
• Bobby Fijan — co-founder, The American Housing Corporation
• KP Reddy — founder/CEO, Zero RFI; ex-Gehry Technologies 
• Boon Sheridan — permitting tech lead, EPIC 
• Jon Buerge — president, Urban Villages 
• Jeanne Gang — Studio Gang 
• Joanna Frank — Center for Active Design 
• Federico Negro — CEO, Canoa
• Astro Teller — X, the Moonshot Factory
• Masayoshi Son — SoftBank Group 
• Adam Neumann — WeWork co-founder 
• David Graeber — Bullshit Jobs 
• Austan Goolsbee — Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago
• George Romney — HUD Secretary behind Operation Breakthrough

Companies & organizations

• Anori — company site / X project page; spun out of Alphabet's X with $26M led by Prologis and Builders 
• Consigli AS + AECOM — AEC Magazine on the acquisition; Norwegian AI start-up acquired for roughly $390M 
• Zero RFI — zero-rfi.com; backed by General Catalyst, built on its Foundation Zero intelligence layer 
• The American Housing Corporation — americanhousing.com / Fast Company profile
• Urban Villages — urban-villages.com
• Studio Gang — studiogang.com
• SHoP Architects (Chris Sharples) — shoparc.com
• Gensler — gensler.com
• Autodesk / Revit — autodesk.com/products/revit
• Katerra — Wikipedia; raised more than $2 billion before going out of business 
• WeWork — Wikipedia
• EliseAI — eliseai.com (transcript: "Elise AI")
• Canoa — canoa.com
• EPIC (Environmental Policy Innovation Center) — policyinnovation.org
• Permitting Tech — permittingtech.com
• AvalonBay + Equity Residential → Vivmark Residential — Commercial Observer; more than 180,000 rental apartments, ~$71B enterprise value 
• JPMorganChase / 270 Park Avenue — project page
• Bilt Rewards — biltrewards.com
• PCBC — pcbc.com
• Council for Quality Growth — councilforqualitygrowth.org

Papers, reports & standards

• Chain Drain: Why the Built Environment Struggles to Learn and How to Fix It — chaindrain.netlify.app; Boyer & Lindsay (2026), University of Michigan white paper built on dozens of AECO-sector interviews 
• 2026 Permitting Technology Landscape Report — permittingtech.com; inventory of 305+ permitting technologies
• Construction Disconnected: The High Cost of Poor Data and Miscommunication – Autodesk / FMI, 2018
• Fitwel — fitwel.org
• LEED — usgbc.org/leed
• WELL Building Standard — wellcertified.com
• Toyota Production System — Wikipedia · Six Sigma — Wikipedia
• Operation Breakthrough — HUD User archive

Policy

• 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act (H.R. 6644) — Congress.gov; reduces barriers to building and targets institutional single-family buyers 
• NYC Local Law 97 — nyc.gov
• CEQ Permitting Innovation Center — permitting.innovation.gov

Cultural references

• Hooli, from HBO's Silicon Valley — Wikipedia
• Fucked Company — Wikipedia

--

--

Interviewees:

Greg Lemke, PhD, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Salk Institute

Ryan Rosen, Friendly Futures

John Galante, President, AE Ventures

--

Discussed:

People

Louis Kahn — architect of the Salk Institute

Greg Lemke — distinguished professor emeritus, Salk Institute

Tony Hunter — Salk professor; discovered tyrosine phosphorylation

Jonas Salk — founder of the Salk Institute

Eero Saarinen — architect of Bell Labs Holmdel and IBM Yorktown 

William Pereira — architect of Geisel Library and master planner of UC Irvine

Walter Netsch — SOM architect of Northwestern's University Library

Dawn Clark Netsch — Illinois legislator and comptroller; Walter Netsch's wife

Frank Gehry — architect; designed Facebook/Meta's MPK20 campus

Mark Zuckerberg — co-founder and CEO, Meta

Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss) — namesake of UC San Diego's Geisel Library

Cormac McCarthy — novelist, author of The Road; longtime Santa Fe Institute fellow

Bruno Latour — sociologist of science; co-author of Laboratory Life

Steve Woolgar — co-author with Latour of Laboratory Life

Christian Catalini — MIT economist; research on lab proximity and collaboration

Eric Klinenberg — NYU sociologist; author of Palaces for the People

Jan Gehl — Danish urbanist

William H. Whyte — urbanist behind the Street Life Project

Ryan K. Rosen — founder and creative director, Friendly Futures

Aaron Hurst — founder and CEO, U.S. Chamber of Connection

John Galante — president and founder, AE Ventures

Bryan Boyer — University of Michigan; co-author of Chain Drain ("Brian" in the transcript)

Kelly Alvarez Doran — co-founder, Ha/f Climate Design; formerly MASS Design Group

Buildings, Campuses & Places

Salk Institute for Biological Studies — La Jolla, CA

Salk Institute architecture — history and design of the Kahn campus

UC San Diego — University of California, San Diego

Geisel Library — UC San Diego

UC Irvine — William Pereira's radial campus plan

Torrey Pines Mesa — San Diego's research and biotech corridor

La Jolla — San Diego community

Bell Works (former Bell Labs Holmdel) — Saarinen's Holmdel research campus, now adaptively reused

IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center — Yorktown Heights, NY

Santa Fe Institute — complexity research institute

Northwestern University Library — Walter Netsch's brutalist library

Jussieu Campus — Sorbonne University, Paris

Meta MPK20 — Frank Gehry-designed Menlo Park office

The RaDD (Research and Development District) — IQHQ's downtown San Diego waterfront life-science campus

Gaylord Pacific Resort — Chula Vista, CA

Wild Mile — floating eco-park on the Chicago River

La Jolla Tennis Club — public tennis club, La Jolla

Companies, Organizations & Events

Friendly Futures — Ryan Rosen's social-architecture and neighborhood-games practice

AE Ventures — John Galante's hosted-event company

Builder Innovator — AE Ventures' content platform and summit series

Urban Rivers — Chicago nonprofit behind the Wild Mile

U.S. Chamber of Connection — Aaron Hurst's civic-connection nonprofit

IQHQ — life-science real estate developer

Alexandria Real Estate Equities — life-science REIT and lab campus developer

Scripps Research — La Jolla biomedical research institute

Scripps Institution of Oceanography — UC San Diego

MASS Design Group — nonprofit architecture practice

Ha/f Climate Design — Kelly Alvarez Doran's embodied-carbon consultancy

Zonda — housing market research firm

Future Place — Zonda/BUILDER master-planned community conference

PCBC — Pacific Coast Builders Conference

California Building Industry Association — CBIA

Downtown Denver Partnership — downtown Denver business improvement organization

Mortgage Bankers Association — MBA

White House Council of Economic Advisers — CEA

Bilt Rewards — rent-payment rewards platform

WeWork — flexible workspace operator

Los Angeles Dodgers — MLB franchise

Los Angeles Rams — NFL franchise

Insulating Concrete Forms (ICF) — Insulating Concrete Forms Manufacturers Association

Otter.ai — transcription service used for this recording

Publications, Papers & Works Cited

Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts — Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar (Princeton University Press)

Chain Drain: Why the Built Environment Struggles to Learn and How to Fix It — Bryan Boyer and Greg Lindsay, University of Michigan white paper

Palaces for the People — Eric Klinenberg on social infrastructure

The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces — William H. Whyte, Project for Public Spaces

The Purpose Economy — Aaron Hurst

Aerotropolis: The Way We'll Live Next — John D. Kasarda and Greg Lindsay

Road to Housing Act of 2025 — U.S. Senate Banking Committee housing legislation

Conquest of the Planet of the Apes — 1972 film shot partly at UC Irvine

Discussed:

The Other Housing Crisis: Ending the Deterioration and Loss of Affordable Homes. Todd Swanstrom, A.T. Harrison & Alan Mallach, eds., Princeton University Press, 2026

The American Housing Survey

Housing filtering theory

Place Matters: Metropolitics for the 21st Century by Peter Dreier, John Mollenkopf, Todd Swanstrom

MBA White Paper: Demographic Trends Could Reshape Future Housing Demand

Raj Chetty, et. al: “The Effects of Exposure to Better Neighborhoods on Children: New Evidence from the Moving to Opportunity Project,” Harvard, 2016

Matthew Desmond + Eviction Lab

Measuring and Understanding Home Repair Costs: A National Typology of Households, Philadelphia Federal Reserve, 2019

UMSL’s Home Repair Toolkit

Intro/Outro: “Big Road,” by Jon Spencer Blues Explosion

Discussed:

Transportation and the Shape of Cities

Christoph Spieler

Mandi Chapa

David Copeland Laredo

--

Trains, Buses, People: an Opinionated Atlas of US and Canadian Transit

American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) Green Book

NACTO (National Association of City Transportation Officials) 

Previously visited transportation design fairylands: 
- Copenhagen (Unfrozen 56: Urban Block Cities)
- Amsterdam (Unfrozen 84: Movement)

Dallas Street Design Manual

Woonerfs

Andrew James Gregor

Roscoe

Blue Dog Construction

Embarcadero Center

John Portman

Hyatt Regency San Francisco

The Clift Hotel’s Redwood Room

The Tenderloin

“Hostile” architecture

Interboro Partners: The Arsenal of Inclusion and Exclusion

San Francisco’s “doom loop”

Kansas City, MO’s “Zero KC” initiative

Invisible People Instagram channel

Mary Leakey

Urbz’s interventions in Mumbai and elsewhere (see Unfrozen 115, “Homegrown Cities”)

Patrick Fealey’s “The Invisible Man,” Esquire, 14 November 2024

Rebuilding Together East Bay Network

HOPE (Homeless Outreach Population Estimate) NYC

Discussed:

• Pittsburgh
  • Mark Houser
  • Unfrozen 81: Houser + Hytha = Highrises
  • Cathedral of Learning
  • The Pittsburgh Agreement
  • Richard Florida’s “Eds and Meds” theories
  • Pittsburgh Regional Transit’s former interurban trolley lines
  • The Inclines
• Tokyo
  • Thanks, Points Guy!
  • Shinjuku Park Tower / Park Hyatt (Kenzo Tange, 1994)
  • Lost in Translation, Sofia Coppola, 2003
  • Midtown Tower (SOM, 2007)
  • Roppongi Hills (KPF, 2003)
  • Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building (Kenzo Tange, 1991)
  • Imperial Hotel – Frank Lloyd Wright, 1922-1967; Mitsui Fudosan, 1970-present; next edition coming soon-ish
  • Hotel Okura (Yoshiro Tanaguchi, 1962-2019; Taisei Corp. 2019-present)
• Hong Kong
  • M+ (Herzog & De Meuron, 2XXX)
  • Eric Chen
  • Shirley Surya
  • Archigram Archives
  • Nakagin Capsule Tower
  • Eric Ho, via Greg’s “Hacking the City: A New Model for Urban Renewal,” The New Republic, 10 December 2015
• Sao Paulo
  • Dan’s Vertical Urbanism article on his trip
  • Cracolandia
  • Japan <> Brazil polestar
  • Fasano Hotel Sao Paulo (Isay Weinfeld)
  • Hotel Unique (Ruy Ohtake)
  • SESC Pompeia (Lina Bo Bardi, 1986)
• KPF Tech Week
• Upcoming Greg Lindsay / Brian Boyer White Paper for University of Michigan on “Chain Drain”
• Autodesk: time wasted communicating about construction
• Navigant survey on RFIs
• McKinsey survey on construction costs
• Argues for the need for a standard of governance and/or quality 
• Can/should we Wal-martize our A/E/C supply chain?
• Pokemon Go’s 10th anniversary: 6 July 2026
• EU Digital Product Passports
• Local Law 97
• 270 Park Avenue
• NYRA 50th Edition: Goldberger vs Krotov
• Jamie Dimon’s back to office call – is any data being collected?
• Brian Potter, Construction Physics: “Welcome to Another Day in Katerra-dise” 9 June 2021
• Anori (born from Google X, The Moonshot Factory) and BIM 2.0
• The Lacaton & Vassal Model: Just Don’t Build It
• Google repurposing lumber from the Moffett Field blimp hangars for its building in The Dalles, Oregon
• Florida + BCG: Rise of the Urban Knowledge Campus
• Mass Design: Alan Ricks
• Ha/f Climate Design: Kelly Alvarez Doran
• Bobby Fijan, American Housing Corp.
• WeWork
• Phil Kirschner : The Workline
• Canoa
• Sidewalk Toronto
• The Baumol Cost Disease Effect
• Niantic Spatial
• Keyhole (In-Q-Tel)

Greg’s next appearance: 

FWD50 7 July 2026

Intro/Outro: “Got to Do It,” by Andrew W.K.

--

Discussed:

• Amateur Architecture Studio: Wang Shu and Liu Wenyu
• A surreal and uncanny live translation of the press announcement. Sample sentences, per AI:
• “Then tell your ego can contribute to tie your to the total, one lie or toggle lie or drone gorgeous, so it will usually kind of boil in here.”
• “So it a general fish on the Gita woman sound lion eating the Minion, and Villa means young Jewish show that comes in the currency.”
• “Yes, we shall defund the pushes away, and the way this would come dark.”
• Is this the China-max Biennale?
• Marco Polo reference (visited Hangzhou in 1275)
• Shades of Lacaton & Vassal, curators of the 2018 Biennale
• Shades of, and throwing shade at, Mindfulness City from the 2025 edition
• Complexity of taking on the US Pavilion responsibility in this timeline
• The 2025 edition, PORCH: An Architecture of Generosity
• Our somewhat lame attempt at Fantasy Biennale:
• Post-warfare architecture / rebuilding schemes from Ukraine or Gaza?
• One source of ideas: Constructing Hope: Ukraine | Chicago Architecture Center
• Expected returnees:
• Francis Kere
• Lacaton & Vassal
• Probably not Ma Yansong
• Probably not Ai Weiwei
• Question mark over Russia and Israel pavilions, which were unoccupied and closed for renovations, respectively, in 2025
• The 2026 Art Biennale debacle
• Death of curator Koyo Kuoh
• No Golden Lions for nations accused of war crimes
• Potential Greg- and Michèle Champagne-led activation: EU-CAN Alliance:
• Greg: Classic OMA-AMO content, shitposting, that kind of thing. 
• Michele: An alliance around new Bauhaus principles concerning housing.
• Exclusive first right of refusal obtained for Mind Enterprises performance
• Will the menagerie of pavilions make space for protest and dialogue around the more controversial entrants?
• Sorkin’s take on the Rafi Segal-designed Israeli National Library and its cancellation
• Austrian pavilion bridge to the adjoining neighborhood
• Venezia FC
• Closing of current arena on the Venetian lagoon, Stadio Pier Luigi Penzo
• Opening of a new stadium in Mestre
• Enter the Canadians:
• Major investment from Drake
• New management from Toronto FC
• Giuseppe Saputo (Quebecois) owns Bologna FC
• Flashback to episode 119, Paul Goldberger’s interview and comments on the politics of sports and their arenas
• Como FC

Intro/Outro: “Ya Got Trouble,” by Robert Preston (Original Cast Recording of “The Music Man”)

-

Discussed:

“All-American City: Bluster, Boom and Bust in Wichita,” by Chase M. Billingham

“The Midwest Revival: A Well-Kept Secret,” Alan Arenhold, in Governing, April 21, 2026

Unfrozen 118, “Migrant Midwest”

Unfrozen 108, “NORTH”

The Chisholm Trail

Cessna

Beechcraft

Stearman Aircraft

The Coleman Company

White Castle

Pizza Hut

Spirit AeroSystems

Wichita’s non-annexation agreement with the Aerospace Industrial District, renewed 2021

Overview | Aerospace | Industry... | Greater Wichita Partnership

Rise of the Creative Class, by Richard Florida

The Cheesecake Factory arrives in Wichita – stop the presses

Jack De Boer 

Gilbert and Mosley chemical bloom,1986

“The Minnesota Guys” – David G. Lundberg and Michael Elzufon
- Arrest for fraud

“Harvard-educated” James Chung: 2015 Focus Forward

Marshall Murdock and the Wichita Eagle

“The City as a Growth Machine: Towards a Political Economy of Place,” (1976) by Harvey Molotch

“Urban Fortunes,” (1987), Harvey Molotch and John Logan 

Markus Moos, University of Waterloo: “Youthification”

Tulsa Remote Program

Choose Topeka Program

Modern Romance, by Aziz Ansari and Eric Kleinenberg

Century II (1970), by John M. Hickman

Wichita Public Library (1967), by Schaefer, Schirmer & Eflin

Naftzger Park (2019 edition, Garver)

Naftzger Park (1979 edition)

--

• “Dwelling on Earth,” by Stefan Al
• “Supertall,” by Stefan Al
• Unfrozen 29, “‘Al’ in on Supertalls”
• Etymology of “oikonomia” = “economy” in ancient Greek
• The Nebelivka Hypothesis
• “The Poetics of Space,” by Gaston Bachelard
• Pierre Bordeau’s theory of “habitus”
• The Roman insulae
• “The Island at the Center of the World,” by Russell Shorto
• Angkor Wat
• Lidar scanning
• Mesopotamia’s use of plaster leading to deforestation
• The Frankfurt Kitchen
• Communal living at TU Delft
• Bosco Verticale, Milan
• Mjostarnet, Brummundal, Norway
• ICON Technology
• 3D printing on the Moon

--

Discussed:

• “Lunch on a Beam: The Making of an American Photograph,” by Christine Roussel
• “The Art of Rockefeller Center,” by Christine Roussel
• Rockefeller Center history
• Tishman Speyer acquired in 2000
• Nelson Rockefeller
• John D. Rockefeller Jr.
• The Ludlow Massacre
• John R. Todd
• Raymond Hood
• Wallace Harrison
• Andrew Reinhard
• Delirious New York (Rem Koolhaas) and “Manhattanism”
• Empire State (Empty State) Building
• Ivy Lee
• Merle Crowell
• Charles Clyde Ebbetts
• Thomas Kelley
• William Leftwich
• Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), est. 1971

Discussed:

Paul Goldberger

“Trump Will Destroy Washington if It’s the Last Thing He Does,” New York Times, March 13, 2026

More Times analysis on the White House ballroom plans

Godwin’s Law

Albert Speer

Benjamin Latrobe

Alternate venues, that would not require a new ballroom at the White House:

• National Building Museum
• Mellon Auditorium

Moynihan Train Hall

Saarinen's Dulles Airport design 

“Fedlandia” – a plan to rebuild 230 acres of Federal downtown Washington

East Potomac Golf Links Trump takeover plan, and the resistance

National Garden of American Heroes

Christopher Columbus statue, Baltimore

White House ballroom architects

• James McCrery
• Shalom Baranes

Arc de Trump – Justin Shubow

Suit against Kennedy Center renovations

Mamdani’s Trump-whispering to get funding for the Sunnyside Yards overbuild

Dulles Airport overhaul proposals

Original Dulles Airport mobile lounges

John Foster Dulles

Trump offer to release Gateway Tunnel funds in exchange for naming Penn Station after him

Renaming of Palm Beach airport, after Trump

Renovation and expansion of the US Embassy in Delhi, India (Edward Durell Stone > Weiss Manfredi)

Penn Station reconstruction under Trump:

• Move Madison Square Garden?
• AECOM joint venture to lead project management
• ASTM + HOK + PAU Plan: Keep MSG, remove Hulu Theater

Moynihan Train Hall

Ballpark: Baseball in the American City

FIFA Sites include:

• Gillette Stadium, Foxborough, MA
• Arrowhead Stadium, Kansas City, MO
• SoFi Stadium, Inglewood, CA
• AT&T Stadium, Arlington, TX

Chuck Klosterman: “Football” as a “hyperobject”

Milan San Siro (Stadio Giuseppe Meazza)

NY Jets plan for West Side stadium

Upcoming Goldberger book (11/17/2026): “The Imperfect City: Design, Serendipity, and the Real Life of Cities”

--

Outro: “The Leopards Ate My Face,” by Franchesca Ramsey

--

Discussed:

Jonathan Burkham

Migrant Midwest

Ed Glaeser – “Human Capital Follows the Thermometer,” New York Times, April 19, 2011

Civic Federation’s report “Chicago's Budget Growth: 2019–2025”

Minneapolis’ resilience and defense of its Somali community against ICE raids

Springfield, Ohio – myths and realities about its Haitian population

Milwaukee – population trends 1960-2024

Michigan governor Rick Snyder’s 2014 call for 50,000 visas

Michigan’s population growth, 2021-2025

Nick Reding, “Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town”

Canadian Provincial Nominee Program

Backlash to the CPNP + no housing growth

Canada’s population decline – 102,000 in 2025, the first since Confederation in 1867

Allan Mallach – Smaller Cities in a Shrinking World – Unfrozen 61 

Jesse Keenan – North – Unfrozen 108

“Climate-proof Duluth” 

Daryl Fairweather, Redfin chief economist, new resident of Williams Bay, WI

National Association of Realtors migration trends 2024

--

Discussed:

Japonica Brown-Saracino

The Death and Life of Gentrification: A New Map of a Persistent Idea

The Gentrification Debates

Explicating Divided Approaches to Gentrification and Growing Income Inequality

Sarah Schulman: The Gentrification of the Mind

Ruth Glass and the coining of “Gentrification” as a term in 1964

Jane Jacobs: The Death and Life of Great American Cities

Robert Goldman: Renovating Value: HGTV and the Spectacle of Gentrification

Sharon Zukin: Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places

Neil Smith: The Rent-Gap Theory

Vida

Gentefied

The Curse

Loretta Lees: Super-Gentrification

Wendy Griswold: Regionalism and the Reading Class

Part 1: White-Hot Mid-Century Blowout

• The Lautner Compound (Hotel Lautner)
• Lucien Hubbard
• John Lautner
• Albert Frey
• Frey House II
• Tamarisk trees
• “Racist Trees,” the movie, and the blowback from Tucker Carlson

Part 2: Palm Springs Mod Squad tours by Kurt Cyr

Transition: “Loose Caboose,” by Henry Mancini

• Home 1: The Wentworth, Fairway Estates, Donald Wexler, 1965; addition by Robin Abrahams, 2022
• The Alexander Construction Co.
• Pilkington float glass
• Canyon View Estates – Palmer & Krisel for the Alexanders -- home of “Barbie” and “Don’t Worry Darling” 
• Atomic Ranch magazine
• Roman tubs

Transition: “Caravan,” by John Buzon Trio

• Home 2: Kurt Cyr home, Kurt Cyr, 2020
• Lawrence Crossley and the Crossley Tract
• Washingtonia filifera (California palm)
• Hortus conclusus
• Kenny Irwin Jr. robot designs, feat. “Winston”
• Hans Wegner
• Room 606, SAS Royal Hotel (Arne Jacobsen)
• Craig Ellwood
• Danish case study houses, per Wallpaper*

Transition: “Miniskirt,” by Esquivel

• Home 3: The Desert Star Apartments (Motel), Howard Lapham, 1956; Converted to private residences in 2005
• “Car decking”
• Uba Tuba marble
• Calico marble
• Carrara marble
• Nichols Company Chinese Art Deco rugs
• The Palm Springs School, by Alan Hess, (Rizzoli, 2025)
• Florence Knoll

Transition: “This Must Be the Place (Naïve Melody),” by Talking Heads

Part 3: An Archipelago of Disney Lifestyle

• Mad Men: Season 2, Episode 12, “The Mountain King.”
• Storyliving by Disney: Cotino, Rancho Mirage, CA
• Sunnylands
• Storyliving by Disney, Asteria, Pittsboro, NC
• DMB Development
• It’s not Celebration, FL
• Crystal Lagoons – “Swimming pools are things of the past.”
• Dubai Festival City
• "Aerotropolis: The Way We’ll Live Next"
• ULI Florida Summit, Orlando
• Joshua Harris
• “The Anti-Social Century,” by Derek Thompson, in The Atlantic, February 2025
• TestFit
• Greg’s address to the ULI Global Governing Trustees Meeting, Washington DC
• “Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community,” by Robert Putnam (2000)
• Firefly by Candlelight Homes, Eagle Mountain, Utah
• Stonethrow, Dallas
• Christopher Leinberger

Transition: “Terms and Conditions,” by Dan Safarik, recorded on the Teenage Engineering Riddim EP-40 dub machine

Part 4: Terms and Conditions of Cotino

Transition: “The Community of Hope,” by PJ Harvey

Part 5: The Community of Hope

• Artifacts of an optimistic age:
• New York World’s Fair 1964
• Montreal Expo 1967
• “Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?”, by Mark Fisher
• “Welcome to the Desert of the Real,” by Slavoj Zizek
• BNP Paribas Indian Wells Open, sponsored by Emirates Airlines and the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia
• The destruction of the present and perhaps the future: Dubai’s neo-liberalism vs Iran and the rest of the world coming to its doorstep with bombs
• Palm Springs International Airport Main Building, Donald Wexler, 1966

Outro: “Crawl Home,” by Desert Sessions (Josh Homme feat. PJ Harvey)

--

Discussed:

• Homegrown Cities: Reclaiming the Metropolis for Its Users
• Dharavi, Mumbai (including Koliwada)
• Emergent Tokyo
• Shanghai Shikumen
• Urbz: The Slum Outside
• Stewart Brand: “How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They’re Built”
• James C. Scott
• Hernando de Soto and land title
• “Ad-hocracy”
• Open House: Levittown intervention by DS+R, Droog & EFGH, 2011
• MoMA Foreclosed project: Cicero, 2011

Uneven Growth: Tactical Urbanisms for Expanding Megacities | MoMA, 2014-2015

Intro/Outro: “Afrique Victime,” by Mdou Moctar

--

Discussed:

Africa’s Buildings: Architecture and the Displacement of Cultural Heritage

Siege of Magdala, Ethiopia, 1867-8 > Request for return of items, 1872

Benin Expedition of 1897

Egypt is in Africa!

Netherlands’ return of the Benin bronzes 

Benin Dialogue Group

US museums’ return of Benin bronzes

Flashback to Episode 57: Looty (Chidi Nwaubani) - raiding the British Museum in “digital repatriation”

Lesley Lokko //  Venice Biennale 2023 // African Futures Institute

Museum of West African Art (MoWAA), Benin City, Nigeria (ex-Edo-Benin), by Adjaye Associates

Demonstration against MoWAA, November 2025

Musee de Civilization Noir (MCN) Dakar, Senegal

Colonial Williamsburg (reconstructed village / open-air museum) model applied to Africa?

… or Xintiandi, Shanghai

Village Museum, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

Jos Museum, Northern Nigeria

Julia Watson – Lo-Tek

MASS Design Group, Rwanda

Koyo Koouh – Art Biennale – Zeitz MoCAA

Pan-African Biennale of Architecture – Nairobi, Kenya, September 2026 (Omar Degan)

Outro: “Disappointed,” by Morrissey

--

Discussed:

- The Disappointed Tourist – site and project

- Atlantis

- Berlin Nightclub, Chicago, closed 2023

- Birmingham Central Library – J.H. Chamberlain, Birmingham, UK, b. 1882, d. 1974

- Birmingham Central Library – John Madin, Birmingham, UK, b. 1974, d. 2015

- Black Wall Street – Tulsa, d. 1921

- Cathedral of Christ the Saviour – Konstantin Thon, Moscow, b. 1883, d. 1931

- CBGB & OMFUG – New York, b. 1973, d. 2006

- Colossus of Rhodes, d. 226

- Commuter Carpet by Ellen Harvey – Francisco CTA Station, Chicago, b. 2007, d. 2025

- Great Synagogue – Warsaw, b. 1878, d. 1943

- Kim’s Video – New York, c. 2014

- Mormon Temple – Nauvoo, IL, b. 1843, d. 1848

- Other Music, New York, b. 1995, d. 2016

- Penn Station – McKim, Mead & White, New York, b. 1910, d. 1963

- Riverview – Chicago, b. 1904, d. 1967 

- Robin Hood Gardens – Alison & Peter Smithson, b. 1972, d. 2017

- Tower Records – New York, b. 1983, d. 2006

- Ukraine

- World Trade Center – New York, b. 1973, d. 2001

- The World Before Plastic, d. 1907

- The Montreal Forum, b. 1924, r. 1998

- Temple B’Nai Jehuda, Clarence Kivett and Ralph Myers, Kansas City, b. 1967, d. 2003

Utopia Machine

--

Intro/Outro: “In the Future,” by Sparks

--

Discussed:

Urban Plans, Cities & Experiments

• Lisbon earthquake, 1755
• Commissioners’ Plan of 1811 (NYC Grid)
• Brasília
• Arcosanti (Paolo Soleri)
• Riverside, Illinois (Olmsted & Vaux)
• New York Parkway System
• Baldwinville, Massachusetts
• NEOM (Saudi Arabia)
• Lagos (Nigeria)
• Jakarta (Indonesia)
   

Key Figures in Architecture & Planning

• Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, 1st Marquis of Pombal
• Baron Georges-Eugene Hausmann
• Ebenezer Howard
• Carlos Moreno
• Cesar Marchetti
• Lúcio Costa
• Oscar Niemeyer
• Juscelino Kubitschek
• Paolo Soleri
• Paul Romer (Economist; Charter Cities)
• Frederick Law Olmsted
• Peter Cook (Archigram)
  (en.wikipedia.org in Bing)
• Jan Gehl
• Andrés Duany (New Urbanism)
• Clarke & Rapuano (via Robert Moses)

Infrastructure, Policy & Governance

• Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956
   

Political Economy, Land & State Power

• Henry George
• Seeing Like a State (James C. Scott)
• The Modernist City (James Holston)
• The Land Trap (Mike Bird)

--

Discussed:

• American Bridge: Reinventing Building, Making History
• Gregory Dreicer
• Lattice bridge patented 1820 by Ithiel Town
• A.J. Davis
• Nationalism and national character (e.g. “American,” “British”)
• Wooden bridges and iron bridges
• Evolutionary analogies (“technology evolves”)
• Evolutionary hierarchies
• Industrialization myths
• Industrialization of construction
• Invention of the beam
• Uniform parts
• Knowledge types: “technology” and “science”
• Howe truss, patented 1840
• Warren truss, patented 1848
• Invention as networked, transnational process
• Lo-TEK: Design by Radical Indigenism, Julia Watson
• Britannia Bridge, Robert Stephenson
• Railway boom and Bezos’ “good bubble”
• Railway construction labor
• Tom F. Peters’, Manhattan grid, redundancy
• Structural redundancy and Key Bridge, Baltimore
• Iron as symbol
• Covered bridges
• Techno-utopianism
• History of engineering and design
• Myth of abundance of wood in the US

Intro/Outro: “Beancounter,” by The Cooper Vane

--

Discussed:

• Incorporating Architects: How American Architecture Became a Practice of Empire, by Aaron Cayer
• Episode 90 – Magalopolis
• Episode 104 – Make Gaza Great Again
• Caudill Rowlett Scott, 1946-1994
• The Architects Collaborative, 1945-1995
• Halliburton
• Bechtel
• Gensler
• AECOM / DMJM
• John Portman
• URS, 1951-2014
• Brooks Act, 1972
• Bohemian Grove
• GLUCK+
• Booz Allen Hamilton
• Litton Industries, 1953-2001
• The Crying of Lot 49, by Thomas Pynchon
• Pierre Bourdieu
• Albert Kahn
• Albert Kahn Inc.: Architecture, Labor, and Industry, by Claire Zimmerman
• Final report to the General Court of the Special Commission Concerning State and County Buildings (Massachusetts, 1980)
• Iron Mountain
• Cesar Pelli
• Anthony Lumsden
• Titan (rocket family)
• Jack Martin Smith
• Another Science Fiction, by Megan Prelinger

Intro/Outro:

“Sub-Rosa Subway," by Klaatu

--

Discussed:

• Alfred Ely Beach
• Oscar Munn
• The Scientific American
• “Boss” Willam Tweed
• Tammany Hall
• The Tweed Courthouse
• The Great Barbecue: Vernon L. Parrington
• Alexander T. Stewart
• West Side and Yonkers Patent Railway > IRT Ninth Avenue Line
• William Steinway Tunnel
• Interborough Rapid Transit (IRT) subway
• London Pneumatic Despatch Railway
• L'arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat, Louis Lumiere
• Second Avenue Subway
• Ghost Road, by Anthony Townsend
• Siemens dynamo
• Hyperloop
• California High-Speed Rail
• The railway accident at Staplehurst, Kent, England, 1865, that almost killed Charles Dickens
• Panic of 1873
• Stanley Yale Beach
• Water tower speakeasy, Arlo Hotel, Williamsburg, Brooklyn
• 258 Broadway

--

Intro/Outro: “System Error,” by The Cooper Vane

--

Discussed:

San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank report on reversal of the migration to the Sun Belt

“What Climate Change Will Do to America by Mid-Century” - The Atlantic

Climate gentrification: from theory to empiricism in Miami-Dade County, Florida

Sean Becketti, Freddie Mac, April 2016: Will Markets Absorb Climate Change?

A Climate Minsky Moment?

Mitigation vs adaptation vs resilience

Rachel Minnery’s efforts at the AIA to include climate adaptation as part of architects’ standards and duty of care

“Climate-proof Duluth” in the New York Times

There were never any climate havens: The Guardian

The lesson of Asheville: The flooding was the beginning of its role as a “receiving zone,” not the end

“Climate havens” = media clickbait

Marketing of Buffalo as a “climate haven” by Mayor Byron R. Brown

Alan Mallach’s Unfrozen take on reviving legacy cities

“This is about growth management and urban planning 101 at the regional and local level”

For many “climate havens” rhetoric is not about recruiting new residents; climate mobility is a rhetorical arm for the existing residents for core sustainability development.

“The Midwest will ultimately grow for the exact same reason the Sun Belt grew”

Storming the Wall by Todd Miller

The Climate Credit Score

Hurricane Pass, Pinellas County, Florida

“Sodom & Gorlando”

Climate intelligence arms race, e.g., AlphaGeo

Spencer Glendon – “The money is slow and dumb”

--

Intro/Outro: “Beancounter,” by the Cooper Vane

--

Discussed:

Hell money, in sextillion-dollar denominations

Feng shui

People’s Action Party

Ghost Month (Ghost Festival)

Bomoh (Malay spirit doctor)

Winchester Mystery House

ION Orchard

Gateway, by I.M. Pei

AI Ghosts

John Calvin’s hatred of speculation

The Clayford Sisters

Thanatechnology

--

Intro/Outro:
“System Error,” by The Cooper Vane

--

Discussed:

Institute for the Future

What Is The Insurrection Act? Here’s What Happens If Trump Invokes Law

Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence

Frogs of Portland

Ilana Lipsett

Meta Ray-Bans

Frend.AI

ImmigrationOS

San Francisco Proposition E - Police drone authorization

The beleaguered Whole Foods on Market

ICE Ramming in Chicago

Grand juries say no to sandwich crimes

DDS Waymo Jam

Barbara Walter at UC San Diego: How Civil Wars Start

Abyss gazing

UrbanistAI

One Big Beautiful Bill

One Big Beautiful Aftermath

--

Intro/Outro: “Beancounter,” by the Cooper Vane

--

Discussed:

Gumshoe Architectural Mystery Series

Thomas Weaver (AA Files)

Villa d’Alva, OMA

S, M, L, XL

Luis Bunuel

City of Glass by Paul Auster

Ways of Seeing by John Berger

Aramis, or the Love of Technology by Bruno Latour

The Purloined Letter by Edgar Allen Poe

Mannerism

Madelon Vreisendorp with Teri Wehn-Damisch: The Film of Delirious New York

Countryside, The Future

Dali’s paranoiac-critical method

Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye

Next up: Oscar Neimayer’s Communist Party Headquarters, Paris, by Littell Shaw

Then: The Parthenon

Then: Case Study House by Craig Ellwood

Poelzig’s I.G. Farben Building, Frankfurt

Raymond Chandler

James Ellroy

Discussed:

Washington Post article
Wall Street Journal article
Financial Times article
GREAT Trust deck
Pre-GREAT Trust Hebrew version of the deck
Gaza Riviera TikTok video
Scarlett Johansson on SNL: Complicit
Boston Consulting Group
Gaza Humanitarian Foundation
Tony Blair Institute
Ebenezer Howard
Baron von Haussmann
SimCity
Paul Romer’s Charter Cities
Shout back to Episode 92, The Hidden Globe
AECOM
Studio Boeri Architetti
IMEC = India-Middle East Corridor
UN rapporteur communique on Gaza report: Economy of Occupation to an Economy of Genocide

Intro/Outro:

“24 Hour Limes,” by The Cooper Vane

--

Discussed:

The Greenest Building is the One That is Already Built

Work and the City, by Frank Duffy

MASS Design Group

Kéré Architecture

Lo-TEK Design by Radical Indigenism, by Julia Watson

Empire State Building retrofit vs One World Trade Center: Both LEED Gold

Passive House

PassiveLogic

WUFI Modeling

Susan Roth

Mini-splits

--

Intro/Outro:

“24-Hour Limes” by The Cooper Vane

--

Discussed:

Hero towns leading the charge to accept climate migrants and flourish:

• Clinton, IA: Brownfield redevelopment and corridor revitalization
• Gorham and Milan, NH: Community Forest and Open Space Conservation Program
• Madison, IN: Main Street Program
• Morris, NY: Livingston County Development Group
• Norfolk, NE: North Fork Whitewater Park
• Ord, NE: Vibrant Future Fund
• Rock Port, MO: Wind Capital Group – First town in U.S. to be 100% wind-powered
• West Windsor, VT: Ascutney revitalization

Jesse Keenan – Climate-Proof Duluth

New York State Small-Town Revitalization

T-Mobile hometown grants

Parag Khanna, ecstatic nomad

--

Intro / Outro:

“24 Hour Limes,” by The Cooper Vane

--

Discussed:

• Graham, Anderson, Probst & White
• Charles Beersman
• Julia Morgan
• Arts Club of Chicago
• Joe Mansueto
• Joe and Rika Mansueto Library, Helmut Jahn, 2011
• John Vinci
• Phillip Wrigley
• William Hale “Big Bill” Thompson
• Girilda Tower, Seville
• Chateau Chambord, Loire Valley, France
• New York Municipal Building, Stanford White, 1914
• The Carter Family
• Tribune Tower, Howells and Hood, 1925
• London Guarantee Building, Alfred Alschuler, 1923
• 333 North Michigan Avenue, Holabird & Roche, 1928
• Belden-Stratford Hotel, Meyer Fridstein, 1923
• Waldor-Astoria Chicago, Lucien Lagrange, 2009
• Chicago Fire Stadium
• Stanley Tigerman
• Studio Blue, Cheryl Towler Weese

--

Intro/Outro: “Bounder of Adventure,” by The Cooper Vane

--

Discussed:

-      Olly Wainwright: Can robots make the perfect Aperol spritz? – Venice Architecture Biennale 2025 review | Architecture | The Guardian

-         Rowan Moore: Venice Architecture Biennale review: ‘a hot mess of pretension’ | The Observer

-         The New York Architecture Review crew: Nicolas, Chloe and Sammy

-         International Exhibition in the Arsenale

o  Robots, hemp, bio-concrete, 8-point font with AI-assisted summaries

o  Kate Crawford and Vladan Joier’s megascale text: Calculating Empires

o   Bjarke Ingels Group’s entry: Ancient Future, with Bhutanese carvers paced by an ABB robot

o  Christopher Hawthorne’s Speaker’s Corner

o  Shades of Rem Koolhaas’ 2014 Fundamentals edition

-         Kate Wagner’s review:

o  Dated techno-optimism

o  Cannibalism of architecture by art and exhibition design

-         National Pavilions:

o  Austria: “Agency for Better Living”

o  Canada: “Picoplanktonics” by The Living Room Collective

o  Denmark: “Build of Site”

o  Estonia: “Let Me Warm You”

o  Romania: “Human Scale”

o  Saudi Arabia: “The Um Slaim School: An Architecture of Connection”

o  Slovenia: “Master Builders”

o  South Korea: “Little Toad, Little Toad”, but mainly this cat

o  Spain: “Internalities: Architectures for Territorial Equilibrium”

o  UAE: “Pressure Cooker”

o  USA: “Porch: An Architecture of Generosity”

§  Curators:

·        Peter MacKeith, Fay Jones School of Architecture, University of Arkansas

·        Rod Bigelow, Executive Director, Crystal Bridges Museum of Art

·        Marlon Blackwell, Marlon Blackwell Architects

·        Susan Chin, Design Connects

·        Stephen Burks, Man Made

§  Shades of the timber-themed 2021 exhibit, but with a twist

§  Interview with Mark Cavagnero, Mark Cavagnero Associates, on participation in Porch and his work updating the original 1969 design of the Oakland Museum of California by Kevin Roche and Dan Kiley

o  Uzbekistan: A Matter of Radiance

-         Interview with collaborators on Art-Tek Tulltorja, conversion of former brick works into a tech hub and community center, Pristina, Kosovo:

o  Rafi Segal, Associate Professor, Architecture & Urbanism, MIT

o  Marisa Moran Jahn, Director, Integrated Design,Parsons School of Design

o  Bekim Ramku, OUD+ Architects

o  Nol Binakaj, OUD+ Architects

-         Interview with Jeanne Gang, amidst a Bio-Blitz powered by the iNaturalist app and featuring a “disco ball for bees”

-         Unfrozen’s nominations for 2027 Biennale curator:

o  Carolyn Whitzman, Senior Housing Researcher, Schoolof Cities, University of Toronto and author of Home Truths: Fixing Canada’s Housing Crisis

o  Diane Longboat, Senior Manager, StrategicInitiatives, Center for Addiction and Mental Health, Toronto

§  See: Sweat lodge at the Center

o  Patrick Bellew, Chief Sustainability Officer, Surbana Jurong (Atelier Ten)

§  Gardens by the Bay cooling system,powered by incinerated tree trimming waste

o  Peter Barber, Peter Barber Architects

o  Eyal Weizman, Forensic Architecture

-         Stafford Beer: “The purpose of the system is what it does.”

--

Intro/Outro: “Bounder of Adventure” by The Cooper Vane

--

Intro/Outro: “Elevator,” by The Cooper Vane

--

Discussed:

2025 Venice Architecture Biennale: “Inteligens: Natural, Artificial, Collective” – Carlo Ratti

Speakers’ Corner / Re-staging Criticism series, part of the GENS Public Program

-         Florencia Rodriguez, Director, School of Architecture, University of Illinois Chicago

-         Mark Lee, Sharon Johnston of Johnston Marklee

-         Inspiration: “Vincent Scully: Architecture, Urbanism, and a Life in Search of Community,” by A. Krista Sykes

-         9 May: “Exhibition as Critical Vessel”

o   Florencia Rodriguez, Moderator

o  Lesley Lokko, 2023 Biennale curator

o  Aric Chen

o  Pancho Diaz

o  Sarah Herda

o  Michael Meredith (MOS) > Building with Writing

-         10 May: Conversation on L.A. Fires

o   Michael Maltzan

o   Alejandro Haiek Coll

o  Florencia Rodriguez

11 May:

o  Kate Wagner

o  Samuel Medina

o  Sam Jacob

o  Shumi Bose

1980 Venice Architecture Biennale – The Presence of the Past - Paolo Portoghesi

-         Strada Novissima, feat. Rem Koolhaas, Frank Gehry, Arati Isozaki, Robert Venturi, Denise Scott-Brown

-         Teatro del Mundo, Aldo Rossi

-         Critic’s Corner, feat. Vincent Scully, Charles Jencks, Kenneth Frampton & Christian Norberg-Schulz

Why “The Brutalist” Isn’t Really About Architecture

Kazuyo Sejima

Writing About Architecture - Alexandra Lange

Caught practicing without a license: Frank Lloyd Wright and Thomas Jefferson

International Committee of Architecture Critics

Salon de Mobile

Ada Louise Huxtable

You Have to Pay for the Public Life, by Charles Moore

Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, Robert Venturi

Charles Jencks Foundation

--

Intro/Outro: “Bounder of Adventure,” by The Cooper Vane

--

Discussed:

Going Underground -> The Space Below w/ James Parakh

·        Toronto PATH

·        Montreal RESO

·        Chicago Pedway

·        Minneapolis Skyway

·        Houston Tunnels

·        Oklahoma City Underground

·        Hong Kong Central Elevated Walkway

Zohran Mamdami –Make the Subway Great Again

Smart City Expo, New York City

Business Facilities Live eXchange, New Orleans

Curbivore, Los Angeles

Jonah Bliss

Joshua Harris, Fordham University

Marchetti’s constant

Zipline

Austin Baker Tilly Conference

CosMc’s

National Association of Realtors survey

Waymo

RoboCop

Sidewalk Toronto

Downstate IL secession movement

Snow Crash – Neal Stephenson, feat. Mr. Lee’s Greater Hong Kong

Paul Romer

Charter Cities

The Voluntary City - David T. Beto, Peter Gordon and Alexander Tabarrok

How to Run the World - Parag Khanna

Hell on Earth – The 30 Years’ War Podcast

The Network State - Balaji Srinivasan

Global Parliament of Mayors / Ben Barber

Polarization of reality > revenge of sovereignty

Praxis: Med Charter City > Greenland feat. Steven Harper

The evermore-relevant Hidden Globe episode

Exit, Voice and Loyalty - Albert O. Hirschman

Patri Friedman

The lost art of imagining the future

“My Brain Finally Broke,” - Jia Tolentino in The New Yorker

Bruce Sterling – Atemporality