architects

Architects Jessie Reiser and Nanako Umemoto, recipients of The National Academy of Design award, admit they once avoided their alma mater, Cooper Union, for years—“we would detour three or four blocks or else the PTSD would kick in.” They recall their time there as something out of The Paper Chase or Whiplash—but with less compassion. This episode also features Dogen, a 3-D printed object, and Randy’s Creatures: wolves in Greek mythology, with music by Karl Schwartz.

Host Randy Cohen speaks with co-founder of WORKac, professor and dean emeritus of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation Amale Andraos; and Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, Former Vice President for Design Excellence of the New York Chapter of the AIA and co-founder WORKac Dan Wood on what inspires them and what inspired them to build WORKac.

To be a great architect — or painter or poet or almost anything — do you need a great patron? Certainly that helps, but according to architects Sara Caples and Everardo Jefferson, you have to bring the talent and vision and invention. The conversation takes places at the Louis Armstrong Center, a building they designed.

Does use determine design, or does design shape our behavior? Architect Claire Weisz asserts the latter: “A certain object does make you behave a certain way or do certain things.” Her example? A humble lime-squeezer. Designing large and small. Produced with the National Academy of Design.

Israeli-American architect Eran Chen likes buildings, of course, but it’s the spaces between buildings that he loves. “It’s a blur between public and private, it’s a stage, it’s sort of an in-between territory, a threshold to the city, a place of in-between.”

The Linde Center for Music and Learning is designed by William Rawn Associates Architects, led by William Rawn and Cliff Gayley, and is the largest…