Join us On the Steps of 36: a question-and-answer conversation that crosses thresholds into our guests’ histories, lives, influences and stories, shedding light on the person behind the work.
In this episode, Ryan Dillon is in conversation with Tom Emerson, cofounder of 6a Architects and Professor of Architecture at ETH Zürich who recently launched his book Dirty Old River at the AA.
AirAA podcasts are conceived, recorded, mixed, edited and distributed from the Architectural Association School of Architecture, which is based in Bedford Square in London. Special thanks to Dainius Kacinskas and Thomas Parkes for their contribution to the production of our episodes.
The opinions expressed in AirAA podcasts are solely those of the participants and do not represent the opinions of the Architectural Association as a whole.
Ryan Dillon:
Join us On the Steps of 36, a question-and-answer conversation that crosses the thresholds into the histories, lives, influences and stories of the person and figure behind their work. A podcast by AirAA at the Architectural Association. Today I welcome Tom Emerson for another episode of on the steps of On the Steps of 36.
Thank you, Tom, for joining us today.
Tom Emerson:
Thanks for having me.
RD:
So we're just going to get right into the questions. We have that we'll go through, and we'll start with number one.
The first question we have is, what is your full name, and what generation would you say you come from?
TE:
My full name is Thomas Vincent Emerson, and I am right in the middle of Gen X. Gen X.
RD:
Well, we have that in common. And you go by Tom, correct?
TE:
Yeah.
RD:
Not Thomas. Yeah. And question number two. What is something about you that you want to include in your professional bio?
TE:
I guess by now my bio changes all the time for whatever purpose it's needed, but maybe something that's never been in it and not many people know is I was called up to do French national service, which I ducked out of for following a fairly extended legal process.
RD:
Wow. And so you have French nationality?
TE:
I do, but I sort of claimed I didn't for quite a while, but then after Brexit, I reclaimed it. Right.
RD:
For the right passport. Well, it's good you didn't have to do the service.
TE:
Yeah, I'm quite pleased with that.
RD:
I always thought I have flat feet and supposedly that gets you out of the service in the US So I was going to use that as an excuse. Those are a couple of general questions. We're going to shift to childhood. So question number three. Where did you grow up?
TE:
Okay, well, related to the previous question, I was born in France, just outside Paris, and lived in Paris until I was about , and then I spent most of my childhood in Belgium.
RD:
Okay, and when did you wind up in the uk?
TE:
I came to university in the uk.
RD:
Okay.
TE:
So I'm. I, I, I, I became British relatively late.
RD:
Okay. Like many of us here at the IA Actually, question number four.
Growing up in, let's say, both France and Belgium, what kind of building did you grow up in?
TE:
Well, I don't remember much of our time when we lived in Paris. It was an attic apartment in the center of Paris, although the.
That is mainly through what I've been told and photographs I've been seen, rather than what I remember most of the time, most of my childhood. I grew up in a rural suburb of Brussels to the south of Brussels, in maybe something that might have Been a small farm once upon a time.
It was a sort of semi detached kind of low rise house with a garden.
RD:
And do you live in the urban context now?
TE:
Now I live in central London, yeah.
RD:
And do you miss the rural atmosphere?
TE:
No, not at all.
RD:
Okay. Not at all. Okay.
I grew up in rural as well, and I do miss it from time to time, but whenever I go back, I want to come back to the city almost immediately. So it's more of a mental image of what I miss. When you were growing up, did you know your neighbors?
TE:
Yes, I knew neighbors well, not just the people next door, but generally had a kind of village atmosphere. And so on one side there was an old builder called Rene and his partner Agni was a cleaner. And then on the other side, the sort of.
The side we were attached to was, predictably enough for Belgium, a chocolate factory. And they made chocolate truffles. And so they were definitely our friends.
RD:
Could you smell the chocolate?
TE:
Yeah. And their kids used to come around and play with us and bring buckets of chocolate truffles around. And it was.
Yeah, it was like a little factory building next door and they made nougat and truffles. Wow. So, yeah, so that was quite fun. But we kind of.
It was very villagey and so we sort of knew, you know, knew more or less everybody down the street.
RD:
And do you. Is. Is the factory still there? Do they still make.
TE:
I have no idea.
RD:
Okay.
TE:
I haven't been back for a very long time. I would be surprised. I think that that village has really turned into a kind of commuter suburb over the last years or something,
RD:
since, like most rural areas right outside the cities.
TE:
Yeah.
RD:
So you mentioned some of your neighbors.
Were any of them sort of inspirational to you or did you have anyone close that inspired you as a child that you think about often now and sort of where you've become in terms of a practitioner?
TE:
Yeah. I don't want to sound mean spirited, but I think there wasn't one single person. But the environment was pretty good.
We were surrounded by nice, interesting people. It was quite multi generational. Lots of other kids around.
I think like a lot of people in my generation, most of our time was spent outside riding around on bikes. So generally. And we were right beside an amazing forest.
There's a huge forest, the Void de Soigne, to the south of Brussels, and we were right on the edge of that. And so that was a kind of sort of slightly enchanted place.
And so I think that that and the people around it was sort of the environment but our family, grandparents, things like that, didn't live anywhere near. So we were sort of slightly amongst our community.
RD:
Right. So the inspiration came more from the place itself, the forest, and individual people, in a sense.
TE:
Yeah.
RD:
So question number seven. Is there a certain belief you held as a child quite dear to you that you now find strange or ridiculous?
TE:
There is, and it's definitely on the ridiculous side. When I was small, small kid, and I traveled in Europe, but I never traveled to the States or to Asia.
And I was really interested in whether places on the other side of the world had the same kind of gravity as we did.
RD:
Okay.
TE:
And I think I was in my teens, about , when I first went to the States, and I was a little bit disappointed that it felt exactly the same.
RD:
Right. Well, I mean, probably didn't feel exactly the same, though.
TE:
In lots of ways it was very different, but the gravity was somehow. You had the same foot strike on the ground.
RD:
Did you ever have an interest in space?
TE:
Not especially. It just seemed that these places seem so far away, so how could it be the same? That was quite logical.
RD:
So question number eight. The last of the childhood section. What was a special place for you growing up?
TE:
I think it was that forest.
RD:
The forest.
TE:
It's a very ancient beech forest. Very, very, very tall trees, and quite dark because it had sort of connected canopies.
And it was just a place that you could, you know, spend literally a whole childhood kind of riding around on your BMX or walking or making camps and. Just. Amazing place.
RD:
Could you, like, spend the night in it? And were there rules and regulations or was it quite.
TE:
There were. There were a few abandoned buildings in it, and there was what was rumored locally to be a psychiatric hospital.
RD:
Okay.
TE:
And that occasionally an inmate would break free. And so. But I think that that was probably kids telling stories to scare each other, which worked.
So that was part of the enchantment of the place, that it was a bit dangerous as well as sort of very wonderful and kind of damp, kind of slightly rotting smell of forest floor and stuff. So that's a very special, very special memory.
RD:
Right. And do you still think about it at times in your life now as a. Or when you go to New Forest or let's say, Epping Forest? Is it something.
TE:
Yes, absolutely.
So when my son was younger, he's left home now, but we used to go on weekends for a bike ride in Epping Forest, and some of that kind of feeling returned when we'd be riding around on our bikes, and it would remind me a little bit of this thing. And so I've always found forests very magical.
RD:
Yeah, Epping Forest is a wonderful place.
TE:
Yeah, beautiful. And it's got that great little calf at the middle for the bacon sandwich which then sorts it all out, gives
RD:
you the energy you need to get through the forest. Now we're going to shift to questions about your work and practice. Question number nine. How would you describe to our listeners what you do?
TE:
I would say I am a practicing architect in a sort of maybe slightly old school type in the sense of. I'm a general, a generalist. I have a practice that I run with my partner, Stephanie MacDonald.
And so yes, we operate still, you could say the traditional design led architecture practice, mainly focusing on kind of culture, reuse spaces for art and collaborations. But nevertheless it is kind of. I am an architect and I've taught architecture for as long as I practice. So those two things kind of go hand in hand.
RD:
And do you think education is shifting away from that traditional sort of approach to design, or do you see that in certain schools?
TE:
I think it varies from school to school. And I started my teaching career here at the AA in .
And you could say that at the AA there is a very sort of wide ranging bouquet of approaches, or at least there was then. That was between, you could say the tectonics on one side and the digitals on the other and the activists and so on.
And I suppose that that range has extended over the last years. Even the forms of practice have extended massively. So that's why I say I'm a slightly old school architect in the sense that.
Not that many of us are anymore.
RD:
Agree.
TE:
But then the school where I teach now at ETH in Zurich is probably traditionally much more kind of tectonic, focused around building culture, and has a maybe a stronger kind of architectonic design core, although that too is changing a lot.
So the number of both technologically, politically, socially led kind of different forms of teaching, different forms of practice is also extending there. So I think it's not. Doesn't belong to one school. It's what's happening in the discipline generally.
RD:
Right. Because there's so many different forms of practice out there and that's what students are inspired by.
TE:
Absolutely.
And I suppose that the way in which students learn has also changed so fundamentally that the idea of a singular path is just not only not possible, but not even desirable.
RD:
And sorry to stick on this question for a bit, but do you in sort of teaching, I mean, as an educator, I was taught how to draw, how to build Models, that was such a focus of what we were doing. And now as a teacher, we tend not to focus on that in terms of a traditional way.
As you said, students have such different ways of learning now through online tutorials, et cetera. Do you find that has shifted as well in your teaching, or do you still focus on those traditional kind of mediums and techniques?
TE:
Yes, a. Still focus on the drawing as an artifact and also on the model, the prototype, the making as an artifact. But I don't teach how to.
So we set certain criteria, certain themes, certain methods that we would like to pursue which we think are relevant to the program, but then they sort of learn how to do it. And through a kind of critical exchange, those skills sort of grow.
And I suppose maybe one of the differences between ETH and the AA is that it's a semester program, so people are changing studios twice a year rather than once a year. So they move across different methodologies, different values, maybe quicker, which has its advantages and disadvantages.
Maybe there's a level of depth and trial and error that can be missing, but also there is a kind of quickness, which is also really interesting, that it's almost like act first and reflect later. There isn't. You don't have time for a long, drawn out sort of immersion into a subject. You have to kind of go from to immediately.
RD:
Yeah. And, yeah, there's those consequences on both sides of things.
At the aa, we'll have long periods of thinking, reading, engaging in the topic, and that sometimes delays, actually the making and the sort of intuitive process. And other times it's quite nice just to indulge in that.
TE:
Exactly. So there will always be. There will always be.
Be their kind of their strengths and shortcomings, but that's the sort of the structure of the place, which is. Yeah. I mean, it's a great school, so this one. So I don't think there are any complaints on either side, really.
RD:
Question number . As a practicing architect, did you always know that's what you wanted to be when you were growing up?
TE:
I think I knew I wanted to be an architect probably in my mid teens.
RD:
Okay.
TE:
I think I'd always been into making things.
I'd been quite into drawing, particularly making things, and I'd never met an architect, but I did some babysitting for when I was about , for the grandchild of someone who turned out to have been an architect. And that person was kind of. I didn't really know them well, but I found their house interesting. Their studio was full of Models and drawings.
And I, you know, next day I went and I asked my, you know, that person I babysat for, what do they do? And I think my mum said, I think he's an architect. And that somehow seeded something.
RD:
Okay. And that was it from there.
TE:
And then I sort of started to maybe look into it and read about it. I think the first architecture book I've read was Tom Wolfe's From Bauhaus to Our House, which I thought, you know, is actually quite a lively entry.
You know, it's kind of quite spiky. This is fun.
RD:
Right. And so that was a stepping stone to you.
TE:
That was a stepping stone.
I mean, that was when I was still at school, so I really didn't know anything, but it was enough to seem kind of exciting and maybe be quite close to the kind of skill set I might be able to bring to it.
RD:
Right, and then that led you to looking into schools around Europe for architecture specifically, or did you.
TE:
Well, actually, I looked at La Cambre, which is a school in Brussels, which was actually. By then, my parents had moved into the city, and it was actually very close to where they lived. And so I thought I'd rather leave.
And coming to the UK for university seemed exciting. I had a rather unsuccessful application period. I ended up in Bath. They were the only ones who would take me. But that was a really amazing experience.
It was. It was really. I started in , so right at the end of when the Smithson. When Peter Smithson was head of school.
But still there was a kind of quite a big aura around the Smithsons. It was in the first year that used their building, so their building had just opened.
So even though he had retired, somehow you were in the presence of. And some of the older faculty members had been very close. So it was.
I think at the time it felt maybe more technical than I would have wanted, but with hindsight, I'm very grateful for it, actually.
RD:
Yeah. I mean, it's such a beautiful place to be as well.
And I always find not necessarily what university you're at, it's when you're there, I think is most important. It sounds like it's quite a important moment for Beth, this kind of transition from Smithson to the next era, I'm sure.
Was there a tension kind of between.
TE:
It wasn't so much tension as you could feel that there was a certain generation passing. So other people who were there of that older generation were people like Patrick Hodgkinson, who designed the Brunswick.
Ted Happold, the engineer who was who taught first year engineering.
RD:
Wow.
TE:
Which was amazing.
RD:
Yeah.
TE:
I mean, you know, we didn't know really who he was or what his kind of reputation or experience was. He was just an incredibly charismatic teacher.
RD:
That's amazing.
TE:
And so you were kind of. You were sort of caught up in, you know, his descriptions of how to.
How they cast the first iron bridge in Yorkshire, or how he designed the Pompidou center on his own, you know, on the deck of Renzo Piano's ship. And so his storytelling was amazing.
RD:
That's incredible.
TE:
And that somehow got you really engaged in the matter.
RD:
Did he ever write these?
TE:
Not as far as I know. I remember he used to give these lectures with. He had an open packet of Dunhill cigarettes in his shirt pocket.
RD:
Okay.
TE:
And then the slide projector clicker in the other hand. And then there would be, like, plumes of smoke going through the projector's be. And it was quite.
The whole thing was sort of quite mesmerizing and, you know, so, yeah, there was a really good foundation and subject, and they got really interesting people to speak, and I think their network was very good. You know, we saw. In my second year, I think it was , we saw Herzl and de Meuron speak.
RD:
Wow.
TE:
You know, were really unknown in the uk, apart from a little group in nine age.
RD:
Right.
TE:
And that was. That was so wild.
RD:
Yeah.
TE:
You know, they, They. I think that they had a model of the copper signal box. It wasn't even built yet.
RD:
Incredible.
TE:
So long, long before Tate Modern, and this was like, you know, this was a Tuesday evening, but, you know, it was kind of amazing.
RD:
That's amazing. That's what I mean about timing. I mean. Yeah, seemed like the right. Really great moment to be there.
I mean, that's one of my favorite favorite buildings, the signal box.
TE:
Oh, it's incredible. It's incredible. And that period, from the. Through the s into the early s, creatively, was spectacular.
So, yeah, so I think, you know, by the time I left, it was. I was very keen to leave and then come to London and do other things, but I think with hindsight, I'm very grateful for the grounding it gave me.
Technically, there was a very good design culture, drawing culture, and so, yes, I'm very, very grateful to it. Even though this gets to a point where you want to go where you want to move on.
RD:
Yeah, sometimes that's good as well. You're excited for the next step. Question number . If it wasn't for architecture, would there be a. Another field of study? You would consider,
TE:
I think if I wasn't an architect, I think in, let's say, one of my, in my bolder moments, there's definitely a fantasy film director in me and maybe in my quiet moments it would be a writer. Okay, they would be.
RD:
But you do write. So what sort of like fiction or fiction? Fiction. Okay. Yeah.
TE:
I mean, basically I would say I'm drawn towards storytellers, so whether they're visual, film time based or writing or in language.
And I suppose to some extent the work that we do in the practice with Steph has quite a strong narrative structure to it, to the way that we approach the, let's say, the exploration of what the backstory of a project is, what its kind of hinterland is, and how we can make use of that to sort of take that story forwards, to change it, to transform it, and so on. So that's somehow always very strong in how we do things.
RD:
And do you find yourself reading more fiction and storytelling stories and then architectural writings and texts?
TE:
Much more. And it's grown over time rather than. I think I used to spend more time with theory and now much less. And I much prefer.
I think it's because in fiction, while fiction can carry many of the ideas or subjects that theory and cultural discourse kind of is engaged with, but in fiction it also is driven by the imagination.
And I think that, that's the bit that I think is I'm most interested in being able to draw from and I'm most interested in seeing in how architecture is produced. Of course, there's a lot of serious issues, practical issues, environmental issues, programmatic, political.
But in the end, and it's a new idea that needs to carry it forward. And where do new ideas come from? And they come from the imagination as well as from specific data or criteria or constraints or whatever.
RD:
Good imagination and writing can also touch upon a lot of seriousness.
TE:
Absolutely.
RD:
Out there as well.
TE:
Yeah, yeah. I think it's not that the imagination is sort of flippant or somehow superficial.
It's more that it can maybe carry ideas without necessarily having to resolve them for a little longer.
And I think that that in architecture is important because if you try and take your, you know, a relatively small project and try and solve the world, it will fail as a project when actually what you need to do is do something that is engaging, relevant, and can last and can change. And that should be, you know, that should be very special. And I think that's where, you know, I hope the imagination comes in.
RD:
Yeah, I % agree. Question number to spark this imagination in you. What space do you prefer to work in? What type of space?
TE:
I can work more or less anywhere.
RD:
Okay.
TE:
I'm very, very flexible. I can work while traveling. I can. I mean, the office is not that far from here.
It's about minutes walk east of here in Lambes Conduit street, which is a really nice s office building. So concrete frame. We've got the top floor with nice kind of balcony and little garden. And I like working at home. That's also. That's also good.
Kitchen table, living room. So I'm very. Basically, I have very few, very few needs. You know, a biro, a laptop. I'm good.
RD:
Right. And do you like to work in different places throughout the week or do you like more being very routine based?
TE:
No, I think I quite like moving around. I get quite itchy, Pete.
RD:
Right, all right, question number . Is there a particular book throughout your career that has a significant impact on the way you sort of approach what you do?
TE:
At the risk of it being a little bit of a cliche, I would say George Perek's Life A User's Manual is the book that opened up ways of thinking, ways of seeing the way that it. So it's based around a prison apartment building.
So it's extremely urban and spatial in its structure, so that somehow, you know, will hold the architect's attention.
But I also weaves together kind of rather kind of epic stories with the minutiae of everyday life and the kind of ordinariness and this kind of endless exploration of kind of what might be seen as ordinary things. And they're always spatially constructed. All the stories about loss, about memory, about. As well as sort of great successes and exploration.
So it's a story of many, many stories. So it's very. It's quite complex and quite playful, but it also has a kind of pathos to it.
And somehow for me, when I read it as a student, I remember feeling like it kind of contained more or less everything. And you can somehow go back to it as a book of short stories or you could look at it in terms of its structure or its form and so on.
And it's always got something new to give you.
RD:
Yeah, well, you don't have to convince me because it's a very dear book to me as well. I wrote my MA thesis here largely sort of around it as well.
It's a fascinating sort of collection of, I don't know, every ordinary sort of object clashed with spaces, clashed with architectural references, literature references, the whole constraint system is just really mind blowing.
TE:
And it's got some very beautiful, very lyrical stories in it. Very moving stories of people passing through life. People passing through the city. Exactly. So, yeah, so it's a very. I think. Yeah.
I also wrote my diploma dissertation on it and. No, that was an amazing discovery.
When we were students, so Steph and I met a student at the rca and we sort of around about that time that that came into our orbit.
RD:
And was it part of an architectural syllabus or did you just happen upon it?
TE:
No, it wasn't. It was. So when we were at the rca, Steph lived in a shared house in Ladbroke Grove. And there was a pair of houses.
There were two houses side by side, both student houses. And in the neighboring one there was a poet called Miles Champion, a young poet.
And one summer party, I guess, more or less this time of year, on the kind of roof, he. He introduced us to him. Okay, like. But from. As a, you know, from a kind of literary point of view.
RD:
Right.
TE:
And we liked him. He was really engaging and interesting person. So kind of went off and read it and it was just, you know, it exceeded expectation by.
And I think spent the whole summer only reading that. And I think that really put us on a certain course.
To do with paying attention, I think I would say that's to do with looking really carefully at what already exists and looking again and finding something else a second time. And I think that that's somehow foundational to our practice.
RD:
Excellent last question for this section. If there's one device you could invent that would aid your work and the world around you, what would it be?
TE:
I'm probably not one who is super dependent on devices. And I would say the thing that might help me the most would be slightly fewer devices. Actually, I would be quite happy if you took a couple away.
Maybe the phone.
RD:
The phone.
TE:
I would be quite happy if there was a kind of epic shutdown of transmitters for a little while just to. I think there was a couple of months ago in Spain and Portugal.
RD:
That's right.
TE:
And I remember looking on and of course, you don't wish your power cut on anyone, but I thought, oh, that must have been momentarily incredibly restful for the eyes, the mind, the ears. So I would be very happy if I had one less device for all four.
RD:
Do you ever do that on holiday or anything? Just put your phone in a drawer for a day or two?
TE:
I don't literally. I'm relatively disciplined at not looking at it all the time.
And Sometimes I go back to it and then there's this kind of pile up of messages and, you know, people getting quite antsy about me not answering. But no, I kind of. I know that it can really. It can sort of consume time.
And I think I've been getting better at being a little bit like, you know, just leave it, and it's in my pocket, but I don't need to look at it.
RD:
That's good. Should be some rules set for. For how to do that, I think. All right, next section on architecture in the city. Question number . We touched upon that.
You live in London. London's obviously a big, big city. What area of London do you live in?
TE:
I live In Holborn, about minutes walk east of here in a couple of converted workshops, sort of hidden behind a terrace. So it's quite hidden away. Little oasis. Right.
RD:
And how long have you lived there?
TE:
Since .
RD:
Okay, so you found it before?
TE:
We found it before. In fact, when we first moved in, we lived in there illegally. It was a commercial property that we rented and we. And it was really cheap.
RD:
Right.
TE:
And the roof leaked and there was no internal plumbing.
RD:
So like camping?
TE:
Yeah, it was kind of like camping, but it was cheap camping in the center of London. So it was great. And we were more than, you know, it was. It was cheaper than house shares in Finsbury Park.
RD:
Right.
TE:
And then, you know, we've stayed there ever since and somehow brought in internal plumbing.
RD:
Right. That's good.
TE:
Even central heating.
RD:
Right.
TE:
And so we've been there, like, you know, years now, and it's. It's still unfinished, which is also wonderful.
RD:
Yeah.
TE:
And there's no. Feel, no pressure to finish it. Just tinker with it here and there when I have time. So it's like what my partner does.
RD:
It's a living project in that sense. Yeah. And did you have to convert it to residential?
TE:
Yes, we did eventually. I think about years after we moved in, we fessed up and got a change of use.
RD:
Right. Was that difficult?
TE:
No, it wasn't actually. It was quite risky because we bought it by then.
RD:
Okay.
TE:
And if we hadn't been able to.
RD:
Right.
TE:
Then we would have. It would have probably been quite a stupid thing to own. But once it became. Once our home was allowed to be our home, then it was all good.
RD:
Yeah. Those are the unique properties, I think, around the city. You see them kind of in little corner lots or stuck back behind mews or.
TE:
I think there are fewer and fewer.
RD:
I was just gonna say they're much harder to come across.
TE:
Yeah, I think that, that I think we probably were. We probably came right at the tail end of the kind of the little lost corners that nobody was really paying attention to.
RD:
Yeah. I live in southeast London near Hither Green and there's a small little commercial building that I just keep having my eye on.
Cause it seems it's a bit too small for a house. But I feel like you could figure out a way to convert it to one.
It feels like it's one of the last places that I see in my area that you can do something like this.
TE:
Yeah, I think, I mean, my only advice is you should go for it.
Because the number of those things that I've seen and then somebody did do something and then you kind of go, well, actually they just jumped on it and they took the risk. I guess it's all to do with kind of risk and means and is it the right moment?
RD:
Right, I'll give it a think. Question number . Is there one hidden building or space within London that you would recommend to our listeners?
TE:
Probably not a building, but I find that I'd say in its broader sense, London waterways, okay, so the canals, the River Lea and the Thames, okay, they always give. And it doesn't really matter which bit you go.
Some bits are most more picturesque than others, but I find them always endlessly kind of thrilling, both in their nature and also in their kind of activity, the Thames in particular. And it doesn't really matter which bit.
Where you take the leafy bits in West London where it's all sort of rather kind of picturesque or the central London kind of rather sort of high charged embankments or when you go out in the estuary and Dagenham and places like that, Thamesmead, it's kind of epic. And so I would say that, you know, that's always a good one because every visit is its own. Will be a unique visit.
RD:
Yeah, I was out in Rotherhide yesterday walking along the river and it's just. It's quite magical in a way. And also another area is Three Mills.
TE:
Yeah.
RD:
Oh yeah, it's one of my favorite places.
TE:
There's that funny little kind of intersection of canals and the river Lee and infrastructure and some amazing, amazingly inventive kind of bridges to get across things which are improbably steep and. Exactly, yeah, yeah, that's really nice. And there's some very beautiful sort of. Are they th, th century mill buildings?
RD:
Absolutely, yeah. The whole area is just beautiful. There's also sort of a long. I took a canal.
My parents Were here for a week and they wanted to go on the Regent's Canal.
And they brought up, which I've known for a while, the lost rivers as well, which is quite amazing to me that you're walking through sort of Sloane Square tube station, and there's a pipe. It's actually a river. So there's a whole. The whole network is quite incredible.
TE:
Yeah. We did a project that we finished about six months ago where we dug into the Woolbrook river in the city, and now it's part of the project.
It's dried out, but the culvert is now visible.
RD:
That's amazing.
TE:
We knew that it was somewhere around there. And then in the excavations, they actually found it was maybe a couple of meters away from where it was thought to be.
RD:
Okay.
TE:
And we actually had to change quite a lot in the project in order to not destroy the culvert.
RD:
Okay.
TE:
And there's a little bit of it. There's a section of it that's actually now open to the air in the kind of rear courtyard. And it was amazing. It was a kind of thrilling discovery.
RD:
That's incredible. Is that building open to the public?
TE:
Semi. It's one of the livery companies, skinless hall. Hopefully it'll be open for. Or open house.
RD:
Okay.
TE:
But, yeah, that was a great sort of discovery. And even in the topography of London, you can feel it.
So when you go, let's say from here, from Bedford Square, going east, let's say along New Oxford street, and then suddenly there's this sort of. It goes down towards Farringdon Road and then back up again, and then that dip is the valley of the fleet.
RD:
Right. Yeah.
TE:
So if you cycle, for example, your ups and downs give you a pretty good sense of the hidden rivers.
RD:
Okay. I didn't know that.
TE:
If you kind of, you know, if you're riding a route that you do all the time, and it goes down, then up again, and it does it sort of in a similar way within the neighborhood, the chances are that down is a river.
RD:
Okay. Hmm. I'll think about that next time I'm recycling.
TE:
Yeah.
RD:
Question number . If you could live in any building in the world, which one would you choose to inhabit? It's quite tricky one if we're going
TE:
to go with architecture with a capital A. Frank Gehry's own house.
RD:
Ah, excellent.
TE:
I think I could take that. I could live there. And I think our place has a bit of that spirit. It's not quite as.
RD:
Okay.
TE:
It doesn't quite have that same exuberance, but it Has a little bit of that sort of do it yourself kind of slightly shonky improvised quality to it. But I think his. What he did with that little suburban house in Santa Monica is absolutely amazing.
RD:
Yeah, it's the. I think the setting is, in its context makes such the difference in that house. I think it was somewhere else.
There's something about the Santa Monica suburban that just kind of, I don't know, enlivens it even more.
TE:
Absolutely. Yeah.
Because there's something very sort of genteel about, you know, and everything is very proper and well kept and suddenly it seems like there's been this kind of whirlwind that's brought in all this kind of.
RD:
Yeah, sort of.
TE:
All these materials have been sort of brought in a gust of wind and sort of smashed around the house. It's a bit Buster Keaton.
RD:
It is. Yeah. Yeah.
TE:
And, and yeah, I think it's just one of the most original and playful kind of type of reuse projects. Yeah, I absolutely love it.
RD:
I take my students on unit trips to la. I've been, I think three or four times now and we always go there and twice.
Like a neighbor has been walking their dog and they'll say, oh, you're looking at this house and they're going to talk to them. Them. And they said this is the ugliest house in the neighborhood. We ha. We all hate it. And they're very like. They get angry. They get quite.
You can see the emotion that they just think it like brings down the neighborhood.
TE:
But now, I mean. But now it must bring up the neighborhood. Like it's the most famous thing in that bit of Santa Monica.
RD:
Absolutely. Yeah.
TE:
But, yeah, and I think actually if I'm not allowed that one, I'll take any of that generation's projects.
RD:
Okay.
TE:
Like Spiller House or Indiana Ave. Or. I mean, they're just wonderful.
RD:
Yeah, yeah, there's. Yeah, there's something about that for me as well. Being from the U.S. originally, there's such a American quality to them.
TE:
That's sort of what I really. Yeah.
When we did our little conversion in our place and we did a little roof, this little roof that connects the two workshop buildings and this timber frame roof. And I asked the carpenter to make it with mil rafters, not . And he said, but it's cheaper to get . No, I want .
I want it like the American ones, one and three quarters. And there's something about the proportions of American timber framing which is, I don't know, I get a little came out of.
RD:
I also think the radicality of him in that moment in time in architectural kind of practice and education in the States.
It was a real kind of in your slap in the face to kind of the high art approach to architecture and to strip it down in that way and to expose kind of those mundane mutations materials in the States. I mean, chain link fence, asphalt in the kitchen. I mean, this was just. I mean.
TE:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And. Yeah. And that sense that. That sense almost that anybody could do it. There's something very open and democratic about it.
This is not high finance, high concept stuff. This is like. Yeah, open your eyes, look around you, and it's. It's either in the house already or it's not far.
RD:
Exactly.
TE:
Yeah.
RD:
You just have to look at it slightly different. Yeah. There's a per. Quality to it.
So similar question, but if there's one piece of architecture that no longer exists in the world that you could visit, what would that be?
TE:
I think if it was in London, I think it would probably have to be the Crystal Palace.
RD:
Okay.
TE:
I mean, what an insane, crazy thing that was. And there's a very. In Sadie Smith's new book, the Fraud, there's a very nice passage when the character. It's like a historical novel.
And there's a very nice passage where the character visits the Crystal palace and it's somehow her narration of it and the stuff she sees and the kind of wonderful. And horror is just. It's worth the whole book, that passage. It's a really nice book. But that passage is.
That was the last time I really thought about the Crystal palace as like a regular visitor. The way that she wrote it. And it must have been extraordinary.
RD:
Yeah, I have to read that.
TE:
But I think I would say in. I would say the other ones I would be. Would be some of the kind of ancient wonders like the Hanging Gardens of Babylon or the Library of Alexandria.
Those seems. They are so full of myth. That would be an extraordinary thing. I mean, maybe we shouldn't actually know what they're like.
I was just gonna say maybe it would just ruin the mythology. Yeah.
RD:
I'd be worried that it would take away its mystique.
TE:
Okay, I'll keep the hanging garden in my head and go and visit the Crystal Palace.
RD:
It's because I. From my kitchen window, I can see Crystal palace and I always just imagine what the. What it would look like.
But when I read about it, it's actually inside that seems more intriguing. And what are the events that took place?
TE:
The events, the stuff, the way that they kept some of the mature trees in Hyde park and they became the way. The speed at which they did it. I mean, the whole thing is utterly baffling, I think.
RD:
And how quickly it was also gone.
TE:
Yeah, yeah. And the world it represented, you know, which is also, you know, another thing which now is of course, you know, really in everybody's mind again.
RD:
Exactly. Question number . We talked about the forest, but is there a particular landscape or outdoor space that's meaningful to you now?
TE:
Yeah, well, we've mentioned forests. So forests are quite high up on my sort of ideal landscape. The parks in London are invariably fantastic.
You know, from hyde park and St. James's region, Victoria park and then even the kind of maybe the looser spaces along riverbanks and stuff. But I would say London, I mean, it's maybe a sort of truism, but I think London doesn't do public space particularly well.
But it really knows how to do green space.
RD:
Definitely.
TE:
And so. Yes, so they're my ones of choice.
RD:
And also there's. They're quite different, like Hempstead Heath compared to Richmond park compared to Greenwich.
TE:
The variety as well. So I think most of them predate the idea of the municipal park.
RD:
Right.
TE:
So they end up being quite idiosyncratic. Either they were places where of extraction, like Hampstead Heath or Royal hunting grounds or, you know.
So they all have these sort of slightly non municipal origins, which is perhaps what gives them very special characters.
RD:
Exactly. All right. And final question for this section. If you could remove a popular building from its pedestal, what would you choose to replace it with?
TE:
That's a very difficult question. I suppose generally speaking, I. And we are not really in the business of removing things. In fact, we try quite hard not to. Right.
There's far too much demolition going on. But if there's one building which over the last decade, decade and a half, sort of feels like it's always poking me in the eye.
It's that tower at Elephant Castle with the three non operating windmills.
RD:
Absolutely.
TE:
I find that's like a middle finger coming up from real estate at London with a significant topping of greenwash.
RD:
Yeah.
TE:
And it somehow irritates every. It somehow everything that's wrong in the way that London manages its housing, its development rights, its real estate. It somehow it represents.
And that one. And it's somehow so visible. It's. It's always somehow reappearing in. It doesn't matter where you are in London. It's sort of somehow.
RD:
Yeah, because it's in everything else around there is so flat it just stands up. And also, I mean, the audacity to think that three wind turbines would sweep.
Not even the fact that they don't work, but just even three small turbines.
TE:
Yeah. And so it feels like kind of fuck you to London.
RD:
Exactly.
TE:
I mean, there's lots of other bad developments, but that one seems particularly brazen in its kind of affront. Yeah.
RD:
Yeah. Well, I would agree. What would you replace it with?
TE:
I wish we could replace it with a new model of housing that maybe combines the best of the kind of the Camden Housing Department era with maybe some of the kind of continental cooperative models that you see. I just think that at the moment, London gets its housing so wrong, even when it's well intended.
And there are so many good examples, both in London from that period of Camden architects or the lcc. And there are so many interesting models going up in continental Europe.
So we don't have to go that far to see more models that work economically, socially, architecturally. Exciting.
RD:
Yeah.
TE:
I just don't understand why everything has to be biscuit brick.
RD:
Yeah, yeah.
TE:
And, you know, deep plan and.
RD:
Yeah.
TE:
Makes me really cross.
RD:
Right. Well, that's a good replacement. I think we need more housing in London. More.
TE:
More good housing, thoughtful housing. Yeah.
RD:
All right, next section's more sort of cultural. Question number . What would you consider to be your perfect meal? And it doesn't have to be specific on food. It could be a setting or people.
TE:
I would say one thing that I feel is, let's say one of my strengths is I like all food. There is nothing I don't like and there's nothing I won't try. So I'm quite game for anything.
So I would say my perfect meal is much more to do with the company I keep than what I'm actually eating. If we're in good company, it's. It's a great meal.
RD:
Right.
TE:
Regardless of what it is. So that's the perfect meal, is just good company.
RD:
All right. Anyone in particular?
TE:
I think it could be at home. It can be my partner. It can be with friends, with colleagues, with old friends, new friends.
No, I just think that that's a meal is a meal is just such a good way of generating the kind of social. Social glue and excitement and exchange.
RD:
Sounds good. And around this, this meal that you're having, would you recommend a non architectural book to architects?
We've mentioned Parek and Life Users Manual, but maybe maybe another one.
TE:
Okay. So, yeah, so we've covered, let's say, with the starters, the Perek book.
I would Say, let's say maybe a very contemporary retake or a contemporary book, but that has some of the thematics of the Perek in relation to the city would be Lauren Elkin's scaffolding.
RD:
Yes.
TE:
Which is a really nice story that happens over two different generations living in the same apartments and how their lives unfold, their relationships.
And it's not really about the apartment, but the apartment becomes an important sort of canvas onto which the relationships get painted and the stories unfold. I think that's a really wonderful one. I would say almost anything by Leila Slimani, especially the first three books, they're pretty tough going.
I mean, they're. Their subject matter is pretty harsh, but they are so beautifully written. Yeah.
So I would say Leila Slimani and Lauren Elkin would be the ones that I would be sharing with people at the moment.
RD:
Excellent question. Number , what's the last cultural event, film, cinema, music event that you attended?
TE:
I haven't seen. I haven't gone to see live music for a long time, I have to admit. And the last film I saw was the Phoenix.
RD:
Wes Anderson. Yes, yes. Was it good?
TE:
It was fine.
RD:
Yeah, it passed the time.
TE:
It was nice. I mean, it's, you know, it was sort of entertaining and great to look at. I'm not sure if it's going to go down as Fred, but yeah, it was a nice.
It was a nice evening out at the Curzon in the Brunswick.
RD:
Okay.
TE:
That was quite fun. I've been watching, actually, my partner and I this weekend, watched a couple of films on Mubi.
RD:
Okay.
TE:
Not. Don't mean to kind of plug a platform, but Ashimera and La Cucina. La Cucina.
One film about cooking, about a restaurant, and the other one is this sort of rather kind of whimsical tale of an archaeologist who goes tomb raiding.
RD:
Okay.
TE:
But his relationship to a kind of a lost love. And they were both very beautiful films, actually, I enjoyed those. And I mean, partly related to work, we see quite a lot of exhibitions.
RD:
Right.
TE:
It's sort of in our world. Peter Hooja at Raven Row earlier this year was amazing. That was a real highlight. And.
But yeah, I mean, that's one of the nice things about central London is you're. I mean, you're half an hour away from something amazing.
RD:
Yeah, yeah, it's incredible. Just every week something else is happening and I mean, galleries are constantly changing
TE:
over and I mean, it's more like you get parody, like the FOMO gets kind of problematic or it can become
RD:
overwhelming that you just Kind of shut down. So. Next question. Bit a trickier one. Question number . If you could inhabit one film or artwork, if it came to life, what would it be?
TE:
If you could inhabit one film, I think I would quite like to be. Be sitting at a table in the bar in. To have or to have not with Lauren Buchall and Humphrey Burgott.
Particularly the scene where she takes to the piano and sings. It's just one of Those sort of s kind of film noir bars.
RD:
Yeah.
TE:
And just the atmosphere in that room and the kind of. The sort of. The sort of emotional tension going on and the way that it gets played out with the music. I mean, just to be one of the extras.
RD:
Okay.
TE:
At the bar or at a table. That would be pretty. Pretty nice.
RD:
And is that era something you would love to live in, like s era, or is it just that scene? Okay.
TE:
No, no, but I like. I. I like film noir. I quite like films from that period. I like the. The sort of. The straight.
The way that they basically paint with the film and light and dark and snappy dialogue. And everything is sort of. Everything is very cinematic.
RD:
Right.
TE:
It's not very real.
RD:
Okay.
TE:
And have a tab. Not. Is just sort of. That's a great comfort. It's like comfort cinema.
RD:
Right. All right. Question number . Shifting to television. What's the TV show you've rewatched the most?
TE:
I don't rewatch that many TV series. Perhaps the Wire.
RD:
Okay, excellent.
TE:
But I think that might be a lot of people, or certainly if you're of a certain age, then that would be the TV of your generation.
RD:
It's the only show. I have all the discs.
TE:
Yeah. It's funny. It's one of the only ones. I have the disc because when it came out, it was before streaming service.
RD:
That's right.
TE:
So you had to buy the box sets and you literally. I remember we were with my partner, we were. We'd watch them, let's say maybe watch two episodes. And then it'd be like just one more. Just.
Just one more. And then we'd be watching until am and be so tired at work the next day. But it was kind of. It was completely compelling stuff.
And it's so well written. And the narrative arcs, the characters.
RD:
Yeah.
TE:
The small events, really, the acting that
RD:
the actors were actually not actors at all. They were picked up off the street, in prison, etc.
TE:
And some grandees, amazing theater actors as well. So the way that, yeah. It constructs its cast is kind of. Of quite Extraordinary. No, that was a very. That was very good.
And I would say at a much more sort of trashy end. My son sent me, maybe six months ago, a link to an archive of all the past episodes of Columbo.
RD:
Okay. Wow.
TE:
That was quite fun. Partly also because it films Los Angeles amazingly well. And there's even one. Talking about Giri.
There's even one episode that is shot in one of Giri's temporary structures from the late s.
RD:
Really?
TE:
The concert hall made out of the big cardboard tubes.
RD:
Yeah, yeah.
TE:
That's the setting, really. And that building doesn't exist anymore. So as far as I know, it's the only record. Wow. Of that building.
And you get a bit of Columbo as well, in his raincoat and all that. So, yeah, I would say that's my sort of slightly fast food version of rewatching.
RD:
You might have to send me that link.
TE:
Yeah, it's good.
RD:
I did watch Columbo when I was a kid. It was always. There was something. His curmudgeon attitude always kind of intrigued me.
TE:
And also, the format was always the same. It was like, here's the crime. You see it as a viewer now. Columbo comes in, he doesn't know who it is, but you do as a visitor.
And so all you're watching is him working it out.
RD:
Exactly.
TE:
And it's like it's. And then he was such a sort of good character.
RD:
Yeah.
TE:
But they film LA very well, so I quite like it for that, too. Okay,
RD:
question number . What's the first piece of music that really impacted or resonated with you?
TE:
This. This is quite a tricky question because it's sort of, you know, music can impact you when you're a kid and it's stuff that you never listen to again.
RD:
Exactly. Yeah.
TE:
But I think I might go. Let's say if I take my criteria of things that I bought rather than things I heard on the radio or whatever. So something that I actively.
I would say that the Age of Consent by Bronsky Beat.
RD:
Okay.
TE:
I remember buying it. I think I'd heard some of the singles. I bought it with a friend and we went back and we listened to it back to back, you know, just flipping it over.
We must have listened to it a dozen times, sort of going over the sleeve notes and everything and, you know, very innocently not really understanding what the title meant.
RD:
Right.
TE:
Or the fact that it was part of a kind of, you know, queer. Queer activism and things like that. Actually just loving the music and the look of the band.
And the graphics and just the whole thing, the sound, the synthesizer sound. And that was a kind of, you know. And then got quite into other synth bands of the time, early mid-s.
But I remember that one very specifically as the sort of, you know. You know, the journey back from the record shop, you know, taking far too long before you can actually listen to it. Right.
RD:
Do you still listen to it now?
TE:
I listened to it fairly recently because I think I saw somewhere, possibly on Instagram or somewhere that it was the. Would it be the th anniversary?
RD:
Okay, yeah, makes sense.
TE:
It would be the th anniversary of the album.
RD:
Yeah.
TE:
And I remember thinking, oh, my God, that's like, you know, that's like. I really didn't see the time pass. And then I listened to it again and I thought, it's amazingly good. Actually.
There's a really, really good cover of It Ain't Necessarily so on it, which is just perfect for Jimmy Somerville's voice with a really good clarinet solo in it. Right. I'd completely forgotten that. It's like, buried on the second side or something.
RD:
That's. That's a sign of a true, true piece of art when that you can go back to it so many years afterwards and.
TE:
And it's still. And of course it was. I also had a lot of memories attached to it and.
RD:
Of course. Yeah.
TE:
But, yeah, I would say that one. That one definitely impacted me. I haven't.
I don't listen to it super regularly since, but it's sort of put a kind of a direction on musical taste and developed and went into other places later.
RD:
So sticking with music. Next question. Do you listen to music when you work? And if you do, what. What type of music do you. Sort of helps you when you're working?
TE:
I don't listen to music when I'm working.
RD:
Okay.
TE:
I can't. Well, I can, but then if I put. If I put, let's say, an album on and then start working and it gets to the end of the album, I haven't heard it.
RD:
Right.
TE:
It's just. It's just ambient. It's like. And I sort of. I don't really like music as kind of ambient. I don't like music not listened to.
RD:
Right.
TE:
So I do listen to music, but then I'm listening to music, so.
RD:
So you're focused on that.
TE:
So I'm actually paying attention. So it's not that I. I could listen to music when I'm working, but I just don't.
RD:
Right, so last question for. For this section. What was the Last post you made on social media and on what platform?
TE:
I don't use social media very much. I think I have an Instagram account which I use possibly as much as twice a year. Okay.
And I think the last post I made was maybe about six months ago, and it's when I got a copy of my book back from the printer.
RD:
Okay.
TE:
Yeah. And it came back from the printers and I took a picture of it. Blackfriars Bridge overlooking the Thames.
I occasionally repost stuff, and then so something that I find interesting or I like or by someone I like, I'll repost it as a story, but then it sort of disappears into the ether. I don't consider that to be really posting.
RD:
Right, yeah, I agree. Yeah. And so it has to be a real special moment, sort of like the. The book coming out that you'll post. Yeah, yes.
TE:
And that one, I also, you know, the publisher said, like, you need to. You know, you need to start promoting it.
RD:
Right.
TE:
And I felt a little bit uncomfortable, but then, yeah, taking a picture of it over the. Over the Thames was fine.
RD:
Right, right.
TE:
Yeah. I don't. I don't. I don't use it. I think about it often.
RD:
Right.
TE:
I. I take a lot of pictures and I often think, oh, I should post that.
RD:
Yeah.
TE:
And then I don't.
RD:
Yeah. I have the same. I have. My Instagram personal account is blank, and I have the same thing. I have even a folder for Instagram images, but I've never.
TE:
Yeah. Somehow I'm excited. I thought, oh, I should. I should post that. And I always go, it's not really interesting enough to post.
And then nothing ever gets posted.
RD:
Exactly. I always say, I'm not a photographer, so why am I? All right, next two questions. We'll turn a bit to the serious side. Question number .
What do you think is sort of a major cultural issue. Sorry, cultural, political issue that's really relevant at this moment in time that you would like to discuss?
TE:
Well, we're recording this right at the end of June , and politically, I think it's been a really rough month. I mean, there are very few places or events that haven't demonstrated the most terrible capacity of humans inflicting violence on other humans. Right.
So it's a kind of. It's really difficult to pick an issue that you feel like, you know, from Gaza to Ukraine, Gaza, Iran, Ukraine, even Los Angeles and ice.
It seems like the capacity for cruelty and violence seems desperate. And so I think it's a really. It feels. It feels a moment where one can feel really impotent. Actually, you know, we.
My partner and I, we went down to one of the demonstrations outside the American Embassy a few weeks ago. But it felt very. You sort of after it, it felt like it was very ineffectual.
It didn't feel like it had the momentum that, say, other protests we've been on. I remember the Iraq war or some of the Palestinian protests, where you really feel like there is a kind of a resistance to something which is.
Has momentum and is having an effect and is being discussed in a kind of progressive way. This last month's just been dreadful, so I'm not sure I'd be able to really pick one.
RD:
Right, yeah. And you sort of mentioned the ineffectual aspect. And we talked about Parechi a bit.
And I remember reading For Leo, I believe, talking about after , where they were quite.
Also from the ineffectual kind of results of that, which is where Parek really began to look sort of at the infraordinary and sort of from the ground up, ways of kind of changing. Do you feel it's a similar kind of inflection point, because it was also a really difficult moment, as well.
TE:
It's an interesting thing to write. I hadn't thought about it in those terms, but I know that you're right that Peric actually sat out the protests of May .
He was actually in some friend's country house or an old mill or something like that where writers used to go to. Somebody used to let writers stay at to write. So he kind of slightly sat it out. And I think he was quite uncomfortable with direct political action.
I think he had his own demons. And I think it was very much to do with the aftermath of the Holocaust and the tragedy of his own family. Exactly. So I think that his kind of.
He didn't have that same sort of engagement. But I think, yes, I think that there is a very powerful politics to his kind of infraordinary.
His obsession with the details of everyday life, with not taking anything for granted, with being attentive to how the world performs, conducts itself.
And so, yeah, I mean, I would hope that, you know, I think that at the moment we're living in a time when there seems to be a rather unstoppable rise of the populist. Right.
RD:
Yes.
TE:
Which I would say pays absolutely zero attention to everyday life.
RD:
Right. That
TE:
will not look carefully at the world around it.
And I hope that maybe those kind of values can eventually lead to some Kind of resistance and turnaround to the way that politics is conducted rather than this kind of high handed rhetorical falsehoods which seem to now pass unchallenged. And they're sort of, they're almost ordinary in their own right in a way that perhaps a generation ago a lie at that level would be called out.
Maybe now they're just exchanged. So I hope that, I guess that when it comes to the US there was McCarthyism, there was Nixon.
So the US has had its kind of, of peaks and troughs and you know, it gets out of them eventually.
So one, one can only hope that, that there will be different ways of, I don't know, restoring some kind of optimism and kind of progressive social movements
RD:
and, and sort of returning to June and being generation X. Is this kind of, it's right, obviously really sort of visceral right now because it's just happening to us.
But do you find this is sort of one of the worst moments in your generations, our generation's sort of time?
TE:
The worst.
RD:
The worst.
TE:
I think, yeah. There have been other big events.
I mean Obviously things like was very much, I don't know your generation, but certainly was totally my generation from Berlin, Eastern Europe and Tiananmen Square. But there was a lot of very positive future focused energy around him. I mean not everything turned out great, but the energies felt optimistic.
Then there's been, I think, other kind of, let's say, important landmarks which are more maybe disaster led, like , , terrorism led. But I think this is the one where it feels most sort of.
Both widespread and sort of deeply encrusted across particularly in some of the most powerful corners of the world.
RD:
Absolutely.
TE:
And I think that that's the bit that really is really problematic is it's the capacity for the most powerful to inflict the most damage. And that is something I don't think I've ever witnessed before.
RD:
Yeah. At such a large scale across so many different kind of borders and terrains.
One other point on this, you had talked about sort of not wanting your phone and sort of aspects of technology.
And I often think about sometimes how the media constant kind of streams on our phones almost make it very difficult if not impossible at times to actually see the everyday around us because we're just giving so much information all the time and in that kind of context and what's happening in the world and how we actually get our everyday information for me seems to be quite problematic.
TE:
Yeah, I completely agree. That's one of the reasons why I put the phone away. Because I think that.
I don't think that the perpetual real time feed is useful to proper reflection on the issues at hand, because otherwise you are constantly overstimulated and under. Reflected. And so, yes, I tried to be quite occasional of when I will dip into things and if I can read something in print, I will try to.
Because it just slows it down.
RD:
Exactly.
TE:
And just have a moment to feed because other to think otherwise, you end up. You've half read another article and Trump said another.
RD:
Exactly.
TE:
Insane thing. And then you kind of go like, I can't keep. I can't keep up and I can't process.
RD:
Exactly. Yeah.
TE:
And it's also really distressing if you're on it all the time. You know, I think you get. I think one can become really anxious.
RD:
Yeah.
TE:
And angry and quite, you know, rightly. Because it's like bad stuff.
RD:
Exactly. Yeah. So maybe linking to that question number , what lesson or belief was the hardest for you to unlearn?
TE:
The hardest. The hardest lesson to unlearn, maybe in the context of this conversation, is that people are irredeemably violent.
And I think one has to unlearn that one and actually kind of go, no. People are generally predisposed to being good and being kind and wanting to live with one another in a peaceful way.
And I think one has to try to relearn that one because it can get very ragey on all sides and not a lot of empathy.
So I think that they're the ones which are maybe, let's say, not quite unlearning, but it's reminding ourselves that in all this kind of horror that there are still many million billions of people who are good.
RD:
Exactly.
TE:
And want good things for one another. And I think we have to keep that one.
RD:
Yeah. It used to be such a common thing, people would say, like when I was a child. And I never hear it anymore.
You never hear someone say, oh, they're inherently a good person, even if they've done something wrong or, you know, when,
TE:
you know, people used to wear peace badges.
RD:
Yeah.
TE:
You know, it doesn't change the world, but it's a sign.
RD:
Yes.
TE:
CND badges.
RD:
Yeah.
TE:
I kind of. I. There's one in a painting that I know, which I like a lot. And every time I see it, I will sort of have a kind of slightly warm smile.
They're like, oh, so when there was a time when you would commonly wear a CND peace badge.
RD:
Right.
TE:
That's pretty sweet.
RD:
Yeah. Do you think you should we start wearing them again?
TE:
Maybe we should. Yeah, maybe we should. It's, you know, and maybe you can
RD:
do that and post it on Instagram.
TE:
There you go. That would have been my next Instagram me with a. With a C and D badge on it.
RD:
I'll be looking for it. All right, now we're going to go for the conclusion with some quick fire questions. Question number . A morning person or night owl?
TE:
Was night owl. Now firmly morning.
RD:
Okay. Was there a specific reason to make the adjustment or.
TE:
No, I think. I'm sad to say. I think it's kind of getting older.
RD:
Okay.
TE:
And I just really like early mornings.
RD:
Okay. All right. I do, too. I've always been a morning person. You can get a lot done. Question . What are you currently reading?
TE:
I'm currently reading Sheena Patel's I am a Fan.
RD:
Okay.
TE:
Very sharp and slightly dark.
RD:
Okay.
TE:
In fact, very sharp and very dark.
RD:
Are you enjoying it?
TE:
Yeah. And also it's got very witty, very like, it's very. It's got this sharp, dark humor about it in which we all get brutally satirized and rinsed.
RD:
Oh, this sounds good.
TE:
Yeah, it's good.
RD:
All right.
TE:
Anybody who thinks they've got good taste is going to get it.
RD:
Oh, really?
TE:
Yeah.
RD:
Okay. I need to read this. You're giving a lot of good recommendations for our listeners. Question . Do you have a guilty pleasure?
TE:
I think I mentioned it earlier on re watching Old Columbus. All right.
RD:
Do you do that often or is it like a one time?
TE:
No, I. Well, there's a finite amount, so you have to kind of ration them, but yeah, the old ones from the s, s. Okay. Yeah, it's quite fun. All right.
RD:
And question . Hopefully it's not Columbo, but what's your most prized possession?
TE:
I'm not really a possessions person, so I don't really have that many things that I would say anything. It would probably be anything made by my son. He's a very good maker. Okay. A really good maker.
Anything that he's made then has a very, very attached to and. Or any drawing by my partner, Steph.
RD:
Okay.
TE:
She draws amazingly.
RD:
Okay.
TE:
And there's a couple I can think
RD:
of which are very beautiful architectural drawings.
TE:
No, no, they're either. They're usually either quite kind of natural history plants, gardens or kind of social human landscapes.
RD:
Okay.
TE:
There's a really nice. She did a drawing of a slipway which is now a public beach in Sicily. Just absolutely packed with summer. Absolutely packed with all the locals.
Kind of sort of almost like sardines. And it's just such a good drawing. And it speaks of summer and it speaks of kind of Italian kind of busyness and kind of public life. And it's really.
It's an amazing drawing.
RD:
Right. And if your wife draws, and you said your son is a maker, what's he make?
TE:
He studied art, but so I think that his heart is as a filmmaker, but he's a very good maker. So he works at UCLA in film, the fine art department, in the fab lab.
RD:
Okay.
TE:
And just makes loads of things, from furniture to installations to shows to. Yeah. Sort of turn his hand to everything.
RD:
Right, Excellent question, number . What was your first experience of the AA?
TE:
It was probably not the AA proper. It was. Was when the bookshop at the AA was the Triangle Bookshop.
RD:
Yes.
TE:
So it was actually independent of the AA, and it was in the basement of number , I think. You've got robots there now.
RD:
That's correct, yeah.
TE:
And was it run by a guy called Colin?
RD:
That's correct, yeah.
TE:
And so when I was a student, particularly part one student, and you'd come through London for whatever reason, and that was a big deal, coming to London and then.
And then part of that would be to go to the Triangle Bookshop and see the new books and maybe if you could afford it, buy one or buy like an Elk Rockies or something like that. So this would have been in the early s.
And so I really associated it with the bookshop first and then probably came for some lectures and then ended up teaching here from about .
RD:
Okay.
TE:
And then I sort of maintained a fairly steady relationship with the place ever since.
RD:
Right. Because you were an external examiner as well for a while.
TE:
Yeah, I was on council for a couple of years as well, and then. External examiner. So I've been sort of, kind of involved and I had many friends here. So. Yeah.
So it's always been sort of part of my kind of architectural world.
RD:
Right. So for our final question, number , as part of this world, can you describe the A in one word?
TE:
Not in one word, maybe two.
RD:
Okay.
TE:
Pirate ship.
RD:
Okay. All right. That's a good. That's a good conclusion. Do you know, can you explain why?
TE:
I think maybe because I've been involved with architecture schools for a very long time, this one for quite a few years and taught in other schools, and last years I've been at ETH, and I sort of think often people ask me to compare them, and I sort of think that the department of Architecture at ETH is like a supertanker Right. And the AA is like the pirate ship, the super tank. It can travel with enormous cargo very, very long distances.
RD:
Right.
TE:
But it's, it's momentum use, it's very, very slow to turn.
RD:
Okay.
TE:
Whereas I think that the aa, partly because of its governance structure and everything, it's able to respond very quickly to change and it can change direction very quickly. It gets a new director or even a couple of new units and the whole culture of the place can shift very fast. And it's very self determined as well.
It's not, you know, ETH is a publicly funded, government funded national institution. So it can't suddenly decide it is accountable to lots of places beyond its walls.
Whereas again, the aa, its governance means it has this kind of independence. I know it's got now, whatever it is, university charter or degree awarding powers, I think, which means it is a bit more accountable than it was.
But nevertheless, I still think that, let's say if ETH is a supertanker, the AA is nimble, is quick, and somehow I just think that those maritime metaphors maybe are useful way of understanding the two schools.
RD:
Right. All right, well, a ship full of pirates.
TE:
Ship full of pirates.
RD:
All right, well, excellent. Thank you, Tom. I appreciate your time. It's been enjoyable and thank you for all the great references for our listeners.
TE:
Well, thank you. It's been a pleasure. Thanks.
RD:
Thanks.
Speaker C
Thanks for listening to this episode. Air AA podcasts are developed, recorded, mixed and edited by the Architectural association from our home on Bedford Square in Central London.
To find more episodes, view the show notes and explore other Air AA series, visit air.aaschool.ac.uk. The views and opinions expressed in these podcasts are those of the individuals involved in each episode.
Opinions expressed by the hosts and guests can change at any time and are not representative of the aa.