Unfrozen

108. NORTH

Jesse M. Keenan is the Favrot II Associate Professor of Sustainable Real Estate and Urban Planning at the School of Architecture and the Built Environment at Tulane University. In his upcoming book North: The Future of Post-Climate America, he outlines the complexities of America’s handling of climate change and its effects on not only migration, mitigation, and real estate, but also our institutions and societal fabric. Simultaneous conclusions: There are no climate havens, but adapt we will. Join us for the fascinating Unfrozen interview.
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Intro/Outro: “System Error,” by The Cooper Vane
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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”

107. Spectropolis

Just in time for Halloween comes a spooky story of speculation and specters in the world of real estate. Joshua Comaroff, a professor at National University of Singapore, is the author of Spectropolis: The Enchantment of Capital in Singapore. He tells Unfrozen that, despite being one of the most assertively modern nations in the world, mysticism and geomancy are very much part of the design and construction process in the island nation-state. Woe be to the development (and its occupants) that does not undertake elaborate rituals and pay the requisite respect (and sometimes burnt “hell money” offerings) to ghosts that may be resident on the site. We hope you enjoy this tale of spirits and the material world…
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Intro/Outro: “Beancounter,” by the Cooper Vane
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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

106. Insurrection

Depending on how you look at it, it is either a great or rough time out there for speculative fiction, as reality continues to bite at the heels of even the most dystopian visions. Jason Tester is a futurist with a knack for telling prescient stories about our imminent urban realities, in a startlingly graphic way. The visually compelling Insurrection: an American Future predicted troop deployments in San Francisco in early January 2025; by June, a real-life version of that story began unfolding in Los Angeles, then Washington, Chicago, and Portland. Tester gazes into the abyss with Unfrozen, in another episode a bit too close for comfort.
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Intro/Outro:“System Error,” by The Cooper Vane
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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

105. The House of Dr. Koolhaas

Rem Koolhaas is nothing if not enigmatic, which makes him and his first major built work, the Villa dal’Alva, Paris (1990), an ideal first subject of the “Gumshoe” series of architectural mysteries. Cutting through the conventions of academic jargon and trade press, The House of Dr. Koolhaas reopens the “cold case” of Koolhaas and examines evidence in a pulp-detective novel format. Unfrozen turns the lamp back on writer/editor team Francoise Fromonot and Thomas Weaver.
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Intro/Outro: “Beancounter,” by the Cooper Vane
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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
 

104. Make Gaza GREAT Again

Dismayed by the destruction and death in Gaza? Fear not, the wizards at Boston Consulting Group have a plan – a 38-slide deck that will Make Gaza GREAT Again. It’s a molten nugget of consultant-speak, SimCity planning moves, weirdly proportioned AI slop renderings, and tokenized real estate transactions that place a thin veil of “solutioneering” over what looks an awful lot like ethnic cleansing. Don’t worry – it will all be covered by private investment and all kinds of familiar corporations in the tech, design, construction and security businesses are invited, whether they know it or not. Our hot take on this hottest of messes.
Discussed:
Washington Post articleWall Street Journal articleFinancial Times articleGREAT Trust deckPre-GREAT Trust Hebrew version of the deckGaza Riviera TikTok videoScarlett Johansson on SNL: ComplicitBoston Consulting GroupGaza Humanitarian FoundationTony Blair InstituteEbenezer HowardBaron von HaussmannSimCityPaul Romer’s Charter CitiesShout back to Episode 92, The Hidden GlobeAECOMStudio Boeri ArchitettiIMEC = India-Middle East CorridorUN rapporteur communique on Gaza report: Economy of Occupation to an Economy of Genocide

103. Going for Zero

A former president of the American Institute of Architects (AIA), Carl Elefante has led the field in finding common ground between two things seemingly in conflict: sustainable design and historic preservation. He is a Principal Emeritus with Quinn Evans and a charter member of the Climate Heritage Network. In addition to his work on the intersection of historic preservation and sustainability, he has spent decades focusing on building-sector decarbonization, community vitality, and urbanism. His new book is Going for Zero: Decarbonizing the Built Environment on the Path to Our Urban Future.
Intro/Outro:
“24 Hour Limes,” by The Cooper Vane
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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
 

102. Revitalize | Resettle

Hillary Brown, Professor Emerita of Architecture at the City College of New York, joins Unfrozen to discuss her book Revitalize | Resettle, which explores how climate migration and rural revitalization can solve interlinked crises. Brown emphasizes that large U.S. cities alone cannot absorb climate-displaced populations due to infrastructural limits and rising costs. Instead, she proposes strategic resettlement in small towns and “micropolitan areas”—places often overlooked but rich in cultural value and potential.
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Intro/Outro:
“24-Hour Limes” by The Cooper Vane
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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

101. The Wrigley Building: The Making of an Icon

Chicago’s Wrigley Building, constructed in 1921, is the “whited sepulcher” of Michigan Avenue, gleaming in terra cotta like the rows of teeth ostensibly cleansed by Wrigley’s Chewing Gum, the company that built the Beaux-Arts edifice. But its extravagant looks are only part of the story. Unfrozen hosts Robert Sharoff and William Zbaren, who wrote and photographed the new book from Rizzoli, The Wrigley Building: The Making of an Icon, to hear the rest.
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Intro / Outro:
“24 Hour Limes,” by The Cooper Vane
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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

100. Dancing About Architecture

The Unfrozen crew hit the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale with all the furious energy our 100th episode deserved. A rollicking roundup of robots, pans, picks, porches and pavilions, with special guest interviews: Michele Champagne, Kate Wagner, Marisa Moran Jahn, Bekim Ramku, Rafi Segal, Jeanne Gang, and Mark Cavagnero. And finally, while Rome picked a pontiff, we had our own mini-conclave in Venice and humbly offered up our picks for the 20th Biennale curator. Join us for this extra special centenary episode.--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 Arsenaleo  Robots, hemp, bio-concrete, 8-point font with AI-assisted summarieso  Kate Crawford and Vladan Joier’s megascale text: Calculating Empireso   Bjarke Ingels Group’s entry: Ancient Future, with Bhutanese carvers paced by an ABB roboto  Christopher Hawthorne’s Speaker’s Cornero  Shades of Rem Koolhaas’ 2014 Fundamentals edition-         Kate Wagner’s review:o  Dated techno-optimismo  Cannibalism of architecture by art and exhibition design-         National Pavilions:o  Austria: “Agency for Better Living”o  Canada: “Picoplanktonics” by The Living Room Collectiveo  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 cato  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, MITo  Marisa Moran Jahn, Director, Integrated Design,Parsons School of Designo  Bekim Ramku, OUD+ Architectso  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 Crisiso  Diane Longboat, Senior Manager, StrategicInitiatives, Center for Addiction and Mental Health, Toronto§  See: Sweat lodge at the Centero  Patrick Bellew, Chief Sustainability Officer, Surbana Jurong (Atelier Ten)§  Gardens by the Bay cooling system,powered by incinerated tree trimming wasteo  Peter Barber, Peter Barber Architectso  Eyal Weizman, Forensic Architecture-         Stafford Beer: “The purpose of the system is what it does.”

99. The Venetian Scheme

The Unfrozen squad descends on Venice to experience inperson the full blunt force of the Biennale. Special guests include: Carlo Ratti, the curator of the 19th Architecture Biennale, Anastasia Sukhoroslova, CEO of All Things Urban, and Michele Champagne, graphic artist and contributor to Volume magazine.--Intro/Outro: “Bounder of Adventure” by The Cooper Vane