Alice Grandoit-Šutka:

Welcome to the Architectures of Planetary Well-being podcast, an audio and sense-making space exploring the interconnection of our social and ecological systems. Each season, we partner with climate visionaries to shape a series of conversations, bringing together lived experiences with the intention of weaving the threads between architecture and climate action. For season two, we've partnered with KoozArch, a research-driven studio and digital magazine, exploring architecture and design beyond their built form. Today, I'm joined by Shumi Bose and Federica Zambeletti of KoozArch for a behind-the-scenes on the theme for this season.

Shumi and Federica, it's a pleasure to have you both in the studio with us today. As key members of the KoozArch editorial team, we are thrilled to have had you both lead the conceptual framing and editorial oversight for this season of the Architectures of Planetary Well-being podcast. And so, my hope is that listeners who are joining us can get a sense of the work that the both of you are doing with the platform KoozArch, and also give them a sense of what they might expect from this season.

Federica Zambeletti:

Yes, Alice. Thank you so much for inviting us, at KoozArch, to curate this second series of episodes. I'm Federica Zambeletti. I'm the founder of KoozArch. KoozArch is a project which I founded at the Architectural Association a few years back—actually, when I was a student at the Architectural Association, really recognizing that there wasn't an infrastructure and network of ideas which connected projects that one might develop within a single academic institution to other academic institutions. And so, it really started off as a student-born project with the mission of creating a network of ideas. Then, I graduated; of course, I started working and I realized that, beyond buildings, the practice was very much still engaged with research—or at least there were a number of practitioners who really saw research and critical thinking as part of their practices. And at that point, I thought, “Okay, maybe it's the time to continue, let's say, cherishing and nurturing the voices of young practitioners or young students”—but at the same time, also opening up to more established practitioners.” And that's when KoozArch really developed into a more structured editorial project.

We launched KoozArch as a proper magazine two years ago, in 2022. And since then, our values have remained the same—the idea of really exploring unbuilt architecture and design imaginaries. But somehow, our attention has shifted, has enlarged, has become more inclusive. So once again, as I said, still nurturing the young student, but also juxtaposing their voice to that of the established practitioner—and also, in that sense, not only defining ourselves on the basis of the role of the architect, or at least the discipline of architecture, but really expanding to diverse disciplines. So at the moment, we really see ourselves as a platform which wants to nurture new imaginaries on how we can rethink the way that we inhabit our built environment.

Shumi Bose:

All right. I’ll join in that chorus to say thank you for inviting us. It’s been huge fun. My name is Shumi Bose. I am the chief editor at KoozArch; I've been working with them for just under a year now. And I’m not a practicing architect. Just to kind of tell you what I do, I've been working in and around architecture for about 15, almost 20 years now, doing various things like teaching most of all, which is why there's a strong connection between... I’ve watched KoozArch become a sort of research platform that is both accessible to students but also formative of critical discussions. But also—curating hosting events. I feel like my practice, such as it is, is kind of gathering and holding space for certain conversations. So, whether that’s a curatorial outcome, whether it’s an exhibition, or a publication, or a book, or a magazine, or a website, it’s about holding space for that discussion, which is why it’s been such a wonderful experience to work on the podcast. Because that's exactly what we're doing: trying to find voices that work well together, subjects that mesh well together, and then just seeing what happens in the conversation. So yeah, I want to echo Federica's gratitude there.

AGS:

Thank you both for sharing. I'm really excited about the different kind of experiences and points of view that you've brought to this work, which I feel are very much present in the conversations that people will experience. This season in particular is called Between Us, and I'm really curious about how you arrived at this title, and also, what does it mean?

SB:

I guess I'll take this one, because it came to me and then didn't leave. In terms of Between Us, there's an implication of distance and intimacy, I think. And that was one of the things we wanted to distill in these conversations—that in a sense, the practitioners we're speaking to and that we've put together have rarely worked together or encountered each other. They might know of each other, but they don't have a shared practice or any kind of shared work on the whole. In many cases, they haven't met each other at all. So there's always a distance to bridge in terms of people's life experience, perhaps in terms of their professional practice. But at the same time, the way that we curated these conversations, we were hoping—and sort of slightly matchmaking—hoping for certain intimacies to reveal themselves, certain parallels to come forward. And obviously, for that distance between the speakers, and between those of us listening to the conversation, is somehow reduced over the course of the conversation.

I think the words “between us"” tend to be used often when we're saying, "Well, just between us..." And it's about a sort of informal closeness that allows one to be honest and share one's opinion in a conversation. So I think that was the genesis of the idea “between us,” and then we've been playing around with these elasticities of distance and time, people whose practices are varied, people whose ages are varied, people whose geographies and personal experiences are varied. Somehow, in the course of these conversations, many of those things have bridged and knitted and stitched together, and some beautiful parallels have been found. I don't know, Federica, if you want to add anything to that.

FZ:

Yeah, Shumi, thank you for putting it so eloquently and generously. When Shumi came up with the idea—the title at the moment—I was a little bit resistant because it seemed so intimate. But then really thinking about exploring this intimacy, challenging this distance, was something which I thought was very attuned to, also, when we need to think of architectures for planetary well-being. And at the same time, it really also echoes how we operate at KoozArch—so in the sense, we really try to nurture voices, opinions, ideas, and KoozArch always takes a step back. Most of the material, the contents that we publish, are conversations—conversations in which KoozArch acts as a moderator, offering little moments of thought, of questions, and then really, it's up to our conversation partners to explore their ideas and their research. And that was always the way that the project operated. And recently, actually, in the past year, we've ever so more started challenging this idea of what a conversation can be, to really think of how that can put in conversation different practitioners in terms of disciplinary backgrounds, in terms of moments in which they find themselves in their career. So, it seemed extremely fitting both as an evolution to what we had already been doing and hosting on the KoozArch website, but also in regards to the theme, which really takes into question, what is planetary well-being? And it's clear that we cannot do this alone—not at all. Rather, it requires a number of conversations, a number of actions, that we can only do collectively.

AGS:

I think that there is something about the betweenness of disciplines and experiences and generations that kind of are made visible in this season. So, I'm just kind of wondering, what types of possibilities do you feel like have arisen from these intersection points—the kind of in-betweenness of all of these experiences, especially in relationship to planetary well-being?

SB:

I mean, man, there were so many connections between our speakers. And I'll say also personally, I now feel connected to all of these conversations. I think we put a little bit of ourselves into everything we do, so that's normal. But I think some of the instances that I'm proudest of, in the course of making this podcast, are certain emotional resonances that have come through between speakers—so whether that's because people have been struggling with certain political circumstances, as in the case of Samia Henni and Noura Al-Sayeh, or in the case of Sumayya Vally and Natasha Ginwala, both of whom have been working on diasporic and migratory cultural practices. Neither of them knew each other directly, but there were so many crossovers in terms of where they've worked, what they've absorbed, the experiences that they've felt, and what they've tried to distill in their work. I think those sorts of echoes have been, in some part, what we were hoping for when we were putting these people together. Also, in the case of decolonizing, with the conversation between Emanuel Admassu and Setareh Noorani—their works, their teaching practices, their artistic practices have found parallels in the way that we hoped, but there are also emotional connections and things to do with how individuals have negotiated certain challenges. Those have been really wonderful to listen to, because you can hear the work of one practitioner almost strengthening another— and as you say, Alice, kind of generating new energies and synergies between people. So, I don't know whether it's been the most surprising. But I think what's been surprising is the connections that we anticipated have been found, but then there have been even more things that have blossomed from those things overlapping. I hope that makes some sense. Federica, what do you think?

FZ:

No, I think the beauty is that a lot of the times and the conversations that we hosted at the end, there really was this... Well, there had been a moment of discovery in the conversation, and obviously also probably in the prepping, too, the conversation with respects to the speakers, finding out who they were going to speak to. And at the end, most of the conversations, I ended up saying, "Okay, we need to continue to be in touch. Maybe we could collaborate on certain projects”—so really reinforcing also the idea of KoozArch wanting to establish a network, and also re:arc establishing a network of like-minded people who want, step by step, to change. And I'm not saying change the world but change, potentially, perspectives—and just opening up new possibilities. And I think the real advantage or the real success for me has been these kind of potential collaborations which could come out of it—and which then, themselves, can have a continuous, let's say, cascading effect, and maybe they open up to other possibilities.

And once again, thinking back geographically, I think it was extremely important—and it's something that we paid attention to when curating the series—to ensure a variety of geographies coming together, so that it was also interesting to understand how, culturally, people came to a specific discourse and a specific topic and brought that kind of baggage and background with them, and then might have been opened up to the kind of cultural perspective of someone else. So, at the end of the day, it's about the multiplicity of the geographies and ideas that we were able to weave—and hopefully of the collaborations that these then can nurture going forward. I mean, even simply the first conversation I was having with Seetal Solanki and Nzinga [Biegueng Mboup], there were clear overlaps. They had never worked together, and Nzinga works as a practicing architect, whilst I define Seetal as a little bit of a cartographer of materials. And there is a super strength which can come out in those two practices—meeting somewhere around the world and deciding to undertake on a project together. So hopefully—yes, that's where I will leave my answer.

SB:

If I could just rejoin a tiny bit. I also want to give a little shout-out to the format and the kind of tone of conversation that that allowed. I know I've spoken about it before, but this intimacy that's generated by a small conversation with... Of course, either Federica or I are there as moderators, but the real purpose is to give the conversation between our two guests to blossom. And in that, I think it's just very different from a performative panel discussion held in public. There are certain things that can happen when one person is talking to another.

So, the moments for me and Federica—as well as the sort of generative "let's do this more" conversation—is when speakers felt comfortable to ask each other, "You know, how did you cope with that? How did you manage with that?" There’s a sort of… Yeah, that's where the conversation gets really live because people are talking to each other without that sort of burden of performativity, and there is real exchange going on that was useful to each practitioner. I hate to say “useful,” but perhaps something that added to their knowledge or something that added to bolstering their own practice, somehow.

Those were really great moments that, I find—they can't happen in public, they can't happen sometimes when there's too many speakers and the goal is to really share what you've been doing in a small amount of time. I think the generosity of these conversations, of allowing two people to actually get to know each other over at least an hour, has been really great, has been really beautiful to watch. So I just want to thank re:arc and the whole crew, really, for enabling those conversations to happen on behalf of our speakers, but also allowing us to listen in to them. It's been really beautiful.

FZ:

Yes, and I think the podcast format really allows for that to happen, because somehow also... And I hope that the audience who will tune in will be able to simply maybe just switch off and just tune in into the same intimacy without having images bombarded to them. But rather, just take a moment off—whether it is a moment or whether you're, I don't know, cycling to work or doing the dishes or something else—tune into this generosity, which is really genuine and pure. Yeah, I would like to echo Shumi's thoughts on re:arc establishing this as a format, because it's something that we certainly have also learned a lot as a team and as individuals.

AGS:

Shumi and Federica, everything that you both just shared is a real reminder and testament to the journey of media-making as this kind of rich, generative site where in a way, we're being transformed as we listen and edit and publish new stories. And so, I think my last question is just maybe some reflections on how your understanding of the concept “between us” has kind of changed across the making of this season, or if anything has come to the forefront of how you might approach editorial moving forward, or even some of these conversations.

FZ:

On my end, it's simply just enrichened it 1,000 times. And really going back to the work of the editor and, really, also the role that you play as a magazine—it's got me ever so more convinced that as KoozArch and as re:arc, it's important that we continue nurturing these stories and nurturing these ideas. I am quite shocked sometimes when I open other magazines—mainstream magazines—in which there is still a culture of talking about built buildings as self-absorbed objects, and defining architecture and design only looking at artifacts, and even praising the way that they're built at a moment in which our planet is exhausting its resources. So, I think there really is an important step to be taken by editors who put content out there and saying, "Okay, why are we still praising this extractive mode of doing architecture and talking about architecture? And why are we not, on the other hand, talking about the power of architecture to connect individuals?"

And that's something that these past few months of conversations that we've been having has really pushed us to really think about and to really revisit—always, in a certain sense—our values and our priorities and ensure that they exist strongly and are challenging what the mainstream, on the other hand, continues to push. I mean, if one opens a magazine, a lot of the time, there's really shiny new buildings, and there's nothing in the sense of restorative practices—or still very little—and nothing about the architect beyond practice, but the architect also as a policymaker, the architect as a thinker. So, for us, I think it's really been that continuously enriching. That's what we want to continue to do: enriching the discourse as we have, ourselves, been enrichened by the conversations that Shumi and I were able to host, thanks to your generous invite to curate this second series of episodes.

SB:

Yeah, I guess I'll just echo most of that in the sense that these sorts of generative conversations... Look, I'm going to say upfront that I’m a little bit older, I think, than most of the people involved in this team. What I want to say quite emphatically, is that generosity and pleasure and joy have been really important to the production of this series. That might sound like I'm sort of sublimating all the hard work, and the sweats, and the emails, and the spreadsheets, and the organizational labor, but I think each of these conversations was offered and hosted with as much generosity as we could manage. And I think what we were trying to do, was to kind of keep joy and pleasure within... Certainly, I loved having each of these conversations. I'm quite sure that our guests did, too. And I think approaching this kind of editorial production, whether it's media, or written, or indeed curatorial with this kind of generosity, is the best way to get something honest and that's a joy to work on, but also that produces something of value.

So when I talk about generosity, I mean that our speakers were absolutely free to talk about whatever they wanted to in terms of their political perspectives, in terms of their personal experience. And people did, because the space was held—I don't want to say safely, but at least as generously and as, let's say, sincerely, as we could manage. And so this is something that we've been trying to do on KoozArch, too—in the sense that I'm really lucky that neither re:arc nor KoozArch are particularly tied to, let's say, the construction industry or any kind of industry or commercial concern to a huge extent; in the sense that the stories, the sort of discussions that we have, can be more contextual and less tied to commercial concerns. The kind of conversations that we try to host on KoozArch are not about chasing news stories, or even trying to get the most clicks.

It's much more important that we have a conversation that is generous also to the reader, so that there's context, so that we're bringing things into relationship with global politics, with social concerns, with planetary concerns most of all. So that space to do that, maintaining that generosity in a sort of working situation, I think that's something we will really try and keep from the re:arc experience. We really try to apply that with KoozArch too, which is to say, "Just hold on. Let's think about the best and most joyous way to do this"—the best conversation we can have, the most insightful interlocutors, and as much comfort as we can allow to our speakers, so that people feel encouraged to be honest. I think I'm on danger of repeating myself now, but that's something that we've really cherished over this process and we'll try and keep with us.

FZ:

Yeah. And I think the podcast format also made us reflect a lot on accessibility, in the sense that KoozArch already is a totally open access endeavor and it's important that we keep it as such. So, you need an internet connection and you can access all of the content, obviously for free. But when the invite to participate and curate this podcast series came along, Shumi and I also started reflecting on, "Okay, how can we maybe also in the future...”—and maybe a little spoiler, let's see if we can make it happen—“include audio as a format within KoozArch.” So that if you're a person who doesn't want to read for 15 minutes an article or five minutes an article, you can actually tune into it. So re:arc has really also made us reflect on our relationship to our audience, in terms of betweenness. Are we apart from tackling topics which are out of the mainstream, which, for us, are critical because they look at the built environment in terms of political, social, and economic terms? Are we doing that in an accessible way? Are we providing the content in a way that everyone can actually understand it and have access to it? So also, the format itself made us reflect quite a bit on how we were operating.

AGS:

Shumi and Federica, thanks so much for giving us this behind-the-scenes preview into the making of this season and, through this conversation, really reminding us all that we can hold joy and pleasure in this work.

Audio:

The Architectures of Planetary Well-being Podcast is a media initiative of the re:arc institute. This season was produced by Lauda Virginia Vargas, and edited by Hasan Moore and Andi Kristins. For more information, please visit revisionsmedia.com and koozarch.com.