A is for Architecture Podcast

For Episode 188 of the A is for Architecture Podcast, Nele De Raedt and Maarten Delbeke discuss some small parts of the 2025 book, Beauty in Architecture: Perspectives from Theory and Practice, which they edited and published with Bloomsbury. 
Beauty in Architecture connects ideas from across practice and theory that consider how beauty might again become central to architectural discourse. Beauty has re-emerged in public debate, but sadly it remains contested in critical discussions, often treated with suspicion – as an issue of politics, more or less. But, as we discuss, perhaps by taking beauty seriously, architecture might permit of – and articulate - broader reflections on values, identity, class, ecology and the notion of a shared cultural life.
Nele is Associate Professor in History, Theory and Criticism of Architecture at the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium and is on LinkedIn and can be found on Instagram at her research group super_positions. Maarten is Professor in the History and Theory of Architecture at ETH Zürich in Switzerland and is on Instagram. The book is linked above.
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Music credits: ⁠Bruno Gillick

In Episode 187 of the A is for Architecture Podcast, Fernando Lara, professor of architecture at the Weitzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania, discusses his book, Spatial Theories for the Americas: Counterweights to Five Centuries of Eurocentrism, published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in 2024.
Spatial Theories for the Americas critiques the dominance of Eurocentric, cartesian and elitist frameworks in architectural and urban studies, imposed through the colonial-modernist project, particularly as they impinge upon the articulation of indigenous practices, spatial knowledges and cultural forms. Fernando argues that these perspectives failed to reflect the unique realities of the American built world as it was when first encountered by Europeans in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the legacy of which persists to this day. To address this, the book proposes new theories from multiple disciplines forming a fresh - self-determined – Amerindian vision. 
Fernando can be found at work here, on his personal website here, on Instagram and LinkedIn. The book is linked above.
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Music credits: ⁠Bruno Gillick 
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In Episode 186 of the A is for Architecture Podcast, neoclassical architect Francis Terry, founder of Francis Terry and Associates, discusses his upbringing, education, drawing, work, practice and the imposed politics of it all.
In our binary times, it seems strange to think of traditional classical design -still so popular among the public - as somehow controversial, and yet here we are. The institutional profession certainly preferences contemporary modernism – look at all the prize winner – but perhaps this is hardly surprising given widespread disinterest in- and lack of practical knowledge of – the techniques and patterns of traditional design in architectural education. Classicism is of course tainted by its association to a certain politics; modernism by contrast remains rhetorically linked to emancipatory social movements. 
Even so, whilst classicism retains its hold on the public imagination as rooted, reassuring and legible, architects like Francis - versed in the Doric and the Tuscan, in fluted shafts, acanthus leaves and egg and dart, in astragal, dentils and domes - remain very busy. 
Francis Terry and Associates is here, and one of his books, Francis Terry: A Life in Sketchbooks, is linked here. Francis is on Insta and LinkedIn.
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In the latest episode of the A is for Architecture Podcast, recorded at the end of last year, Fatina Abreek-Zubiedat spoke to me about her new book, A Territory in Conflict: Eras of Development and Urban Architecture in Gaza, published by the University of Pittsburgh Press.
The Gaza Strip was formed after the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and served to accommodate fleeing refugees. Until 1967 Administered by Egypt, Israel's occupation of the region after the Six Day War saw settlement building and military governance, till in 2005 it withdrew and Hamas took control. But the story of Gaza’s form – it’s spatial and material history - isn’t just one of conflict, but really an interplay of competing forces, ideas and identities. 
Fatina’s is an extraordinary book, really, and quite other as a piece of history writing, made more pertinent now that so much of the material history of this strange and embattled place needs making again. 
The book is linked above. Fatina is Assistant Professor and Head of the Spaces-in-Transition Lab at Tel Aviv University. She is on Facebook and Insta.
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Music credits: ⁠Bruno Gillick 
#ArchitecturePodcast #ArchitecturalHistory #UrbanStudies #SpatialHistory #CriticalUrbanism #ArchitectureAndPolitics #PostcolonialUrbanism #BuiltEnvironmentStudies #MiddleEastArchitecture #ResearchInArchitecture #AIsForArchitecture

For the first episode of 2026 for the A is for Architecture Podcast, we’re starting slow and steady – but rather inspiringly I think - with Patrick Hutchison, a builder. 
Patrick’s very recent book, Cabin: Into the Woods with a Clueless Craftsman, which he published with Harper Collins in November 2025, tells the story of his journey from copywriter to carpenter and now, bestselling author and carpenter, via the renovation – the discovery, in a manner - of a small cabin in the woods. 
It’s an elegant story indeed, which beyond a sort-of practical how-to for other itchy-footed office-jockeys, is one tangentially rooted in an American romance and myth – from indigenous peoples, Thoreau, pioneers and non-conformists. Through the cabin and through the book, Patrick describes his journey of discovery, at once a DIY adventure story and a meditation on how to find meaning, community and identity through making, through building and through acts of ordinary creation. Architecture has long been allured by the idea of the homes of our forebears, the original dwelling, the cabin in the woods. The preference, as Gombrich put it, for the primitive. 
But finding a gap in modernity’s matrix? That’s the dream, isn’t it?
Patrick can be found on his personal website, on Instagram and LinkedIn. The book is linked above, and has been reviewed everywhere, with Patrick having done quite a bit of TV about it too. Have a wander on the internet and you’ll probably find him.
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Music credits: ⁠Bruno Gillick