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Through the lens of social justice that Karen Kubey brings, this episode takes a deeper look at the question of how we bridge the gap between politics and design within the framework of affordable housing. Karen Kubey is an urbanist and architectural educator specializing in housing and health. She co-founded both the Architecture for Humanity New York chapter (now Open Architecture/New York) and the New Housing New York. She was the first executive director of the Institute for Public Architecture. She guest-edited the Architectural Design (AD) issue "Housing as Intervention: Architecture towards Social Equity." She has recently collaborated with the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and the New York City Housing Authority. Trained as an architect at the University of California, Berkeley, and Columbia University, Karen began her career in affordable housing design. Here we get to know her projects and her perspectives.   

Chybik + Kristof is a studio based in the Czech Republic. It consists of two halves, Ondřej Chybík and Michal Krištof, a team of 55, 3 offices, and more than 350 projects. In this episode, recorded virtually as we are working from home due to the current health crisis, NESS editors Renee Carmichael from the US and Magdalena Tagliabue from Argentina get to know Ondřej and Michal. The conversation covers how the studio began, non-hierarchical processes, exploring theory through curiosity, buildings getting old, thinking globally in times of coronavirus—and it even includes a football metaphor. It leaves us with more questions than answers, in a good way.  

Stefano Romagnoli is a landscape architect originally from Argentina. He has a Master’s degree in Landscape Architecture from Harvard University. His investigation focuses on projects that collaborate environmentally, socially, economically, and infrastructurally—at multiple scales. His work has been exhibited and published in international platforms from Mexico, Italy, and the United States, among others. His team recently won a Research in Practice Grant from the LafargeHolcim Foundation to continue their research on ocean energy in the Patagonian coast of Argentina. With this project on the horizon, Stefano found himself—again—in Buenos Aires at the same time as our French Editor Lisa Naudin. We took advantage of the opportunity to learn more about the project and his perspective on landscape. 

Following our series on cultural agitators in the architectural scene, Carlos Mínguez Carrasco, Head Curator at the Museum for Architecture ArkDes in Stockholm, tells us about the show Kiruna Forever, which celebrated an online vernissage on June 2nd. As a public institution, ArkDes is responsible for entangling discourses and materials relevant to architecture and urban design with Swedish representations. Kiruna Forever, in that sense, explores the relocation of the arctic town Kiruna due to massive mining. This complex and multifaceted story poses sharp questions about notions of heritage, extraction, and urban planning. Also, marking the end of the conversation, Carrasco shares his views on the opportunities of curating (architecture) in the digital now that Covid-19 has imposed its accelerated implementation.

After winning several competitions, the founding of the Gualano + Gualano studio was inevitable. Brothers, graduates, and professors of the University of the Republic in Montevideo, Uruguay, Gualano + Gualano celebrated in 2019 the twentieth anniversary of the inaugural milestone of their practice: el Salto del Penitente project. In this episode, they tell us about their beginnings, their references, their implementation strategies both in the rural and urban environment, and the game between different scales.

Through curating and producing, Agustin Schang manages to bring people, objects, and communities together. He understands architecture as a tool to navigate through different disciplines in the expanded field of cultural production. The reinforcement of local communities and minorities and accessibility are at the center of his work as he continuously strives for new strategies to expose architecture to a general public. In this episode, we addressed three projects or scales of engagement: Schang’s role in the Emily Harvey Foundation, the GSAPP Incubator, and the Mile–Long Opera

Somatic Collaborative is a research-based design practice that focuses on a speculative approach to architecture, landscape, and urbanism founded by Felipe Correa and Anthony Acciavatti in 2008. Cutting across multiple scales—from interior furnishings to open territories—Somatic uses the architectural commission, design competitions, and diverse forms of applied research as conduits that facilitate an inventive construction of space.In this episode, Florencia Rodriguez speaks with Felipe Correa, founder and managing Partner, and with Devin Dobrowolski, Director of Applied Research Projects, about the singularity and scalability of their practice, the role of research, activism. 

Trained as an architect at the Plitecnico di Milano and starting her career as an editor with Lotus International, Giovanna Borasi is a proactive figure in the thinking of architecture today. As Chief Curator at the Canadian Centre for Architecture since 2014, we have already caught a glimpse of her alternative and forward-thinking ideas. Starting in January 2020, she will take over the role of Director of the CCA. Florencia Rodriguez catches up with Giovanna during the Chicago Architecture Biennial and gets the inside scoop on what’s to come (for the CCA).  

Gonzalo Casals wears many hats: Argentinian, New-Yorker, architect, cultural producer, community builder, active participant in queer and civic life, and believer in cultural democracy. Originally trained as an architect, he has continued to become an important player in the development of innovative cultural programming in New York and beyond. He is currently the director of the Leslie-Lohman Museum, the only dedicated art museum in the world to focus on queer arts and culture. In this episode, Florencia Rodriguez speaks with Gonzalo about how his training as an architect relates to his position as cultural producer as well as his experience in cultural planning and community building. 

Sebastián Adamo and Marcelo Faiden have been working together since their university days. In 2005, they became official partners when they founded the firm adamo-faiden. They also teach in different universities and consider this academic activity as an important framework for their work. Based in Buenos Aires and recognizing it as a place with its own attributes to explore, they talk about the uses, the references, and the images of the buildings that fill the city as well as the attitudes of contemporary architects. As they have now achieved a substantial quantity of projects in different scales, they are able to reflect on their practice with a thoughtful distance. This conversation, with Florencia Rodriguez, is in Spanish. 

BowerBird is an online platform architects use to get published in magazines, newspapers, websites, and Instagram accounts around the world. As it says on their website “Architects don’t advertise, they get published.” In this episode, we are pleased to welcome Nic Granleese, the founder of BowerBird and Elliott Baxter, the BowerBird Explorer for Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile. The conversation with our editor in chief Florencia Rodriguez goes from the beginnings of the platform to going global and from publishing architecture to exploring new media. 

In 2008, Jing Liu and Florian Idenburg ran into each other on the streets of New York. They had first met a few years before while working for the architecture firm SANAA. That accidental encounter in New York marked a turning point in their lives and the start of a very personal encounter. As they describe it, the two of them started to ‘softly’ leave their previous jobs, to open SO – IL, Solid Objectives. Together they would find a unique—and consistent—mode of understanding architecture. In this episode, our Editor in Chief Florencia Rodriguez speaks with Jing Liu about this unique process, shedding light on their multiple narratives. 

Playing with juvenile features and Instagram-ready images, Jumbo, the New York based design studio founded by Justin Donnelly and Monling Lee, is not your average design studio. As part of our interview series, we invited Justin Donnelly and Juan Garcia Mosqueda of Chamber Projects and Quick Tiny Shows. The conversation ranges from the consumption of images, the chair, and the cool to curating design, the interiors moment, and Neoteny.