Unfrozen

89. That Was a Year, Wasn’t It?

Dan and Greg recap Unfrozen in 2024 and look ahead to 2025.
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Show Notes:
Intro/Outro: “I Still Wear the Uniform,” by The Cooper Vane
- Our Spotify Wrapped Stats for 2024
- AndrewAndrew
- That time in 2005 when Greg wrote that podcasts would
never amount to anything. If you find it, send us the link!
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TOP EPISODES OF 2024:
- Top episode of 2024 was also the top episode of 2023: Show Me the
Bodies
- Horror in
Architecture, with Joshua Comaroff
- Glass
Houses, with Madeline Ashby
- Domo Arigatou,
Mike 2.0 with Robert Otani
- On
Balance: Architecture and Vertigo, with Davide Deriu
- Innovation
Design Consortium, with Peter Devereaux
- Salty Urbanism,
with Jeffrey Huber
- Cornell Tech Urban
Tech Summit
In 2025…maybe?:
- Jane Jacobs the Musical: A Marvelous Order
- La
Biennale Architettura 2025 – curated by Carlo Ratti
- Who will build the Wall?
- Who has built the Line – and died?
- Data Towers:
-             33 Thomas Street –
the AT&T Long Lines / Neutron Bomb Building
-             1
Brooklyn Bridge Plaza – the Verizon telephone exchange

73. On Balance: Architecture and Vertigo

Mankind’s quest for verticality has an underexplored dimension:
the queasy feeling of vertigo many experience when close to the edge of a sheer drop. Davide Deriu, Reader in Architectural History and Theory at the University of Westminster, London, has taken on the relative lack of research into the subject with an interdisciplinary approach, captured in his book On Balance: Architecture and Vertigo. Come, stand on the edge with us.
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Intro/Outro: "I Still Wear the Uniform," by The Cooper Vane
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Discussed:
          
Vertigo, Alfred Hitchcock, 1958
        
Vertical: The City from Satellites to Bunkers, Stephen Graham, 2016
        
Vertigo in the City program at University of Westminster, 2015
      
The Eiffel Tower and Other Mythologies, Roland Barthes, 1979
        
Funambulism
            
Jean François "Blondin" Gravelet – Niagara Falls wire walk, 1859
      
Philippe Petit, World Trade Center wire walk, 1974
            
Jan Gehl on humans’ “natural” habitat in horizontal planes
          
Singapore’s HDB social high-rises
           
Mies’ insertion of ventilation grilles in front of the glass curtain wall at the Seagram Building, 1958
         
Prosper Meniere, father of the vestibular sciences

44. ”Olive the Seal” - Unfrozen in 2022

Dan and Greg recap the highs and lows of the first full year of Unfrozen – 33 episodes – and look ahead to 2023.
Did you know? You don’t have to catch the stars as they fall. You can listen to any episode from our web site, or on your favorite podcast platform, at any time!
Intro/Outro: “Our Lips are Sealed,” by The Go-Go’s
Discussed:
- A high number of episodes devoted to Peter Rees, the former chief planner of the City of London
o Episode 37: The City is Here for You to Use
o Episode 22: The Engine Room, the City, and Color Commentary
o Episode 21: This is London: Rees Reminiscences
- Stats and demographics
- Fan fave episodes: tied for 125 plays each:
o Episode 32: Future Storage: From Mineral Extraction to Data Forestry (Marina Otero)
o Episode 31: Emergent Tokyo (Jorge Almazan)
- Greg’s favorites:
o Episode 13: What Fresh McMansion Hell is This? (Kate Wagner)
o Episode 26: Big Time (Patrick MacLeamy)
o Episode 27: A Skyscraper Superfan Aims High (Changsub Lee)
o Episode 34: Chicago: Two Guides, One Cast (Laurie Petersen, Vladimir Belogolovsky
o Episode 41: Imagine a City (Mark Vanhoenacker)
o Episode 43: Who is the City For? (Blair Kamin)
- Dan’s favorites:
o Episode 42: 1972: A Spatial Oddity (Noritaka Minami, Iker Gil)
- Guest & adventure pipeline for 2023
o Juan Miro, Miro Rivera Architects on windowless dormitories
o Andrew Shanken – author, The Everyday Life of Memorials
o Andmore Partners – Architects as Developers
o Dan in Hradec Kralove, Czechia
o Greg: The Metaverse Metropolis @ Cornell Tech Urban Hub
o What is the Figma of Autodesk?
o Zach Katz – Transform Your City

43. Who is the City For?

Pulitzer Prize–winning architecture critic Blair Kamin has long informed and delighted readers with his illuminating commentary. Kamin’s newest collection, Who Is the City For?, does more than gather fifty-five of his most notable Chicago Tribune columns from the past decade: it pairs his words with striking new images by photographer and architecture critic Lee Bey, Kamin’s former rival at the Chicago Sun-Times. Listen to the Unfrozen interview with Kamin, and understand why “city planning is not a game of 2D checkers but of 3D chess.”
Intro/Outro: “Chicago” by Benny Goodman
Discussed:
INVEST South/West
Maurice Cox, Chicago Planning Commissioner
The pandemic’s effect on rapid urbanization
Spread of crime from poor to rich neighborhoods
The city’s not “out of control,” but it is in need of reinvention
Lower Manhattan’s adaptive reuse of older skyscrapers does present a template
Decentralization of the central business district, ex: McDonald’s HQ in the Fulton Market
Prospects for Lincoln Yards and The 78 – shades of Cityfront Center?
The Chicago Spire pit / 400 N Lake Shore Drive replacement project
DuSable Park and the Riverwalk
“We have to think of the city not as a 2D checkers game but a 3D chess game.”
Buffalo Bayou Park extension project, Houston
O’Hare Global Terminal
Chicago River Boathouses
AIA design competition for the next bungalow
Committee on Design
“Plop” architecture
1611 W Division  – look ma, no parking!
Red Line South extension
“There are those who say ‘who gets what’ is a tired trope of architectural criticism – let me vehemently disagree.”
Chicago as a participant in global economic and architectural design exchange
Chicago Architecture Biennial
The City that Works > The City that Plays
Investment of Chinese capital in St. Regis Tower
Cloud Gate
Crown Fountain

41. Typological Drift

Cities that produce only underwear, blue jeans and extras in domestic films are among the fascinating objects of study in Typological Drift: Emerging Cities in China by Shiqiao Li and Esther Lorenz. Journey with Unfrozen and Shiqiao Li to reveal the surprising urban realities of China that escape normative urban theories, with several stops along the way in philosophy and linguistics.
Typological Drift: Emerging Cities in China by Shiqiao Li and Esther Lorenz
Interviewee: Shiqiao Li is Weedon Professor in Asian Architecture, School of Architecture, University of Virginia, where he teaches history, theory, and design of architecture, and directs PhD in the Constructed Environment Program. He is author of Understanding the Chinese City (2014), Architecture and Modernization (2009, in Chinese) and Power and Virtue, Architecture and Intellectual Change in England 1650-1730 (2006). He recently contributed an essay to the Routledge Handbook of Chinese Architecture (2022).
Inro/Outro: “Drifted” by Groove Armada
Discussed:
Drift Triggers
Ten Thousand Things
Yiwu International Trade City
Borges: “The map of the empire is the size of the empire itself.”
Figuration
Wilhelm von Humboldt
Francois Jullien: The Silent Transformations
Nanhui New City
Hengdian World Studios
Minmetals Hallstatt
Thames Town
Lujiazui
The Bund
Tongji Architectural Design Group Co. Ltd.

39. Seeking the Superfruit of Urbanism

Michael Eliason is an architect and founder of Larch Lab, a studio focused on prefabricated, decarbonized, climate-adaptive, low-energy buildings and livable ecodistricts. Eliason, based in Seattle, had a transformative experience while living in Germany – the American residential model could be greatly improved by adopting some of the principles of Baugruppen – self-developed co-housing, without the granola trappings. Hear the Unfrozen interview – and then listen to his podcast, Livable Low-Carbon City.
Intro/Outro: “Spacelab” by Kraftwerk
Discussed:
Black Sheep Development Co., Larch Lab’s baugruppen partner, headed by Aaron Yankauskas
Ascent, Milwaukee
Jeremy McCloud, Nightingale, Melbourne
California development legislative changes
First Passivhaus in the US: Smith House, Urbana, IL
Minneapolis’ single-family housing zoning rollback experiment
St. Paul’s rent control battle
Product recommendation: Corsi-Rosenthal Box
The north star of Baugruppen: Gleiss 21, Vienna

39. Towards a Non-Combustible Practice, Away from Mundane Endeavors of Indifference

Hanif Kara is a civil and structural engineer and professor in practice at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design and the co-founder of AKT II, a 350-person engineering practice based in London. The firm won the Stirling Award for Peckham Library in 2000 (with (Will Alsop), the Sainsbury Laboratory in 2012 (with Stanton Williams), and the Bloomberg European Headquarters in 2018 (with Foster + Partners). He is co-author of Blank: Speculations on CLT with Jennifer Bonner, and the recipient of the 2022 Fazlar Khan Lifetime Award from the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat.
Intro/Outro: Great Things, by Echobelly
Discussed:
One Park Drive (with Herzog & De Meuron)
Castilla (with Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners)
240 Blackfriars (with AHMM)
The Tower and the Bridge by David P. Billington
Joint studio with Farshid Moussavi, using reclaimed steel
Google HQ London (with BIG & Heatherwick Studio)
The Francis Crick Institute (with HOK & PLP Architecture)
Culture flaps at SCI-Arc and The Bartlett

37. The City is Here for You to Use

Unfrozen interviews Peter Wynne Rees, Professor of Places and City Planning, The Bartlett School of Planning, University College London, who was previously City Planning Officer for the City of  London, from 1985 to 2014. He is a founding member and director  (1990-2022) of the British Council for Offices and received their  President’s Award in 2003 for “presiding over one of the most extensive  periods of redevelopment in the City’s long history”. This is his first appearance on the program, but he has been the subject of two prior episodes, #21, This is London: Rees Remembrances and #22, The Engine Room, the City, and Color Commentary.
Intro/Outro: "The City Is Here for You to Use," by The Futureheads
Discussed:
CTBUH Lynn Beedle Lifetime Achievement Award
Shoreditch
20 Fenchurch Street
Metropolis
Canary Wharf
Favelas
The East End
The cult of home ownership, enforced by government
The Elizabeth Line
HS2
Lifespan of buildings vs building products
What architecture and planning students should be learning

36. Big Time: Patrick MacLeamy

Patrick MacLeamy was the CEO of HOK from 2003 to 2017, capping off a 50-year career at the venerable firm responsible for the National Air and Space Museum, Moscone Center, and Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, and is credited with creating "The MacLeamy Curve," a touchstone of business guidance for the built environment. In his semi-retirement, he is a founder and chairman of buildingSMART International, which encourages the adoption of Building Information Modeling (BIM) and more open collaboration between the design and construction industries. He recently authored "Designing a World-Class Architecture Firm: The People, Stories and Strategies Behind HOK." Hear some of his lifetime's worth of colorful anecdotes and sage advice on this special episode of Unfrozen.
Intro/Outro: "Elevation" by U2
Nuggets:
“We need to think about contractors as our valued colleagues and friends, and change the way we think about our industry. It needs to be more collaborative – design-bid-build is going into the dustbin of history. Collaborative design-build is the way forward.”
“Managing risk and complexity is much easier to do collaboratively. We have to wake up and smell the coffee. The old way of designing and building is changing. If architects want to rejoin society in a special place, they have to adapt. The world needs us, but we need to get the rules of the game changed so we can be successful again.”

35. Architecture of Normal

Daniel Kaven is the author of Architecture of Normal: The Colonization of the American Landscape, a book that views the built environment through the lens of successive developments in transportation. An architect and visual artist hailing from Albuquerque, now calling Portland home, Kaven takes on suburbanization, flying cars, and why “Generation Z needs to get out in the streets and be really pissed off about work-from-home.”
Intro/Outro: The Big Country, by The Talking Heads
Discussed:
Ed Ruscha
Cibola – one of the Seven Cities of Gold
COVID as accelerant of moving from an experiential lifestyle to a destination-based lifestyle
Instagram feeds are the new main streets of America
United Airlines buys Archer – an air-taxi company
Henry Ford’s flying personal cars department
Prediction: First place to adopt flying cars – Saudi Arabia
The Main Street and Mall Retail Apocalypse
Future infrastructure and traffic planning will be about stratification of means of transport, literally
Just because we have the technology to do something, doesn’t mean we should
Do we want to live in places where we just order online and it gets delivered to a drone pad?
The Big Tech companies are nation-states, or partners thereof
Urbanism had a good run from 1990s to just before COVID.
The post-COVID boom is in places like suburban Boise – Boomtown ZoomTown, and it’s already fizzling.
“Generation Z needs to get out in the streets and be really pissed off about work-from-home.”
Architecture firms have really phoned in their responsibility to make places where people want to be – as a counterpoint to work-from-home, the tone of which is being set by Facebook and their brethren.
“There is no future with goggles on.”
“We don’t need to rip America apart and build the Metaverse.”
“How can people live a more spacious life in an urban environment?”
“We’re going to regret having made all these 5-over-1 wood-frame buildings with cheap materials.”