After eight years and over 100 episodes, the Night White Skies podcast is coming to an end. The program began as a look towards architecture’s future knowing that both earth’s environments and our human bodies are now open for design, and that’s where we’ll end. 

The program sought to engage a diverse range of perspectives for a better picture of the scenarios currently unfolding. Guests included philosophers Timothy Morton, and Emanuelle Coccia, architectural authors such as Catherine Ingraham, Fred Scharmen, Sylvia Lavin, Rachel Armstrong, designers like Neil Denari, Rania Ghosn and El Hadi Jazairy, researchers in ethics like Sheila Jasanoff, curators including MOMO’s Paola Antonelli, scientists Adam Frank, and Henry T. Greely, as well as science fiction authors James Bradley and Sherryl Vint and many, many more. 

A searchable achieve of all episodes is available at www.NightWhiteSkies.com and will remain available for the foreseeable future. 

In this final episode, I bring together some reoccurring topics and thoughts over the last eight years of conversations as a means for outlining a course forward, or at the very least, playing out a hunch on work still to be done. 

You can find all episodes at www.NightWhiteSkies.com 

Thoughts or suggestions, email me at [email protected] 

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Today’s conversation is with Jeffrey Nesbit and Charles Waldheim about their book Technical Lands. 

It was great to have both Jeffrey and Charles back on the program. They’ve both been on here separately but today we’re discussing their new edited book ‘Technical Lands: A Critical Primer’. As they state in the book, designating land as technical is a political act and doing so entails dividing, marginalizing, and rendering portions of the Earth inaccessible. This is land that is often invisible and remote. The range of contributing authors includes architectural historians, landscape architects, anthropologists, sociologists as well as cultural and political geographers. This ‘deep bench’ of disciplinary practices is needed to better understand and draw out how technical lands are defined and maybe even more importantly, demonstrate why it’s necessary to bring them to the foreground of our conversations.  

Hope you enjoy the episode and until next time... take care. 

Technical Lands: A Critical Primer 

Other episodes linked to the topic include Ep 072 Jane Hutton, ‘Reciprocal Landscapes’ , Ep 097 Michael Jakob, ‘Faux Mountains’, Ep 056 Bradley Cantrell, ‘AI and Wildness’ and many others. Try the websites ‘search’ function to find more related episodes. 

You can find all episodes at www.NightWhiteSkies.com 

Thoughts or suggestions, email me at [email protected] 

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Today’s conversation is with Catherine Ingraham and we're discussing her latest book, ‘Architecture’s Theory’.  

We each had our own experience in school when first introduced to architectural theory. Those classes were probably somewhat opaque for all of us. Even today you might read new articles and books related to theory and find yourself trying to hold onto ideas like dry sand in your hands. Over time, I’ve come to recognize that important concepts are often intrinsically unstable. Unlike the rest of your education up to that point which placed value on collecting and memorizing information, theory’s strength really only comes into focus when it can be applied to a circumstance you’re carrying with you. Theory isn’t there to give you answers, but as Catherine Ingraham discusses in our conversation, theory provides us with ‘methodological instruments’ to question our assumptions of the governance and systems we’re working within. Catherine Ingraham’s book helped me to better understand this point and it was great speaking with her for the program. I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did! 

Catherine Ingraham is a Professor of Architecture in the Masters of Architecture Program at Pratt Institute, which she started and chaired for six years. Dr. Ingraham has periodically been a visiting faculty member at the GSD, Harvard University, and GSAPP, Columbia University.  A former editor of Assemblage, she is the author of Architecture’s Theory (2023), Architecture, Animal, Human (2006), and Architecture and the Burdens of Linearity (1998). She has received numerous fellowships and has lectured at conferences and universities worldwide. 

Architecture’s Theory’ MIT Press 

Architecture’s Theory, Amazon 

Other episodes linked to the topic include Ep 043 Graham Harman, OOO  090 Emanuele Coccia, ‘The Life of Plants’ and many others. Try the websites ‘search’ function to find more related episodes. 

You can find all episodes at www.NightWhiteSkies.com 

Thoughts or suggestions, email me at [email protected] 

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Sometimes it’s only through repetition and time that insight into your actions are revealed. This might come about because aspects of those actions aren’t always fully intentional. When it comes to Night White Skies, I firmly believe to be routed in architecture, but I’ve heard it described by others as often drifting beyond this topic.  But what I’ve come to appreciate more and more over time is the importance of a ‘hunch’. The idea that experience over time offers you the ability to see patterns and outcomes enough times that when an opportunity presents itself, you can see value within. A ‘hunch’ that pivoting in an unexpected direction can offer insight and opportunity. And so, when Night White Skies ‘drifts’ beyond architecture explicitly, I like to think it’s because I’m playing a ‘hunch’.  

This extended introduction has now of course put unnecessary attention on my guest today, so I apologize for that. But Christopher Schaberg has been on this program before so I already knew this would be a rewarding conversation.  The title of Chris’s latest book is ‘Adventure, an Argument for Limits’, and it’s this title, ‘Adventure’ that drew my attention and what I wanted to explore more regarding architecture. Do we need more adventure in architecture and what exactly would that entail? 

To go on an adventure requires risks, setbacks, you might even get lost. But in return you end up somewhere physically, ideologically or emotionally elsewhere? You have changed. In this case, architecture has changed.  

So, what was my hunch here today? I’m not sure if it’s due to architecture’s disciplinary training and education or its position in various industries but architecture relies heavily on presenting ideas as the correct one! As inevitable, as the obvious solution. When thinking of the plethora of pressures facing humanity today, the architect continues the showmanship of presenting right answers and declaring which are the rights paths to follow. And I of course understand the economic reasoning for why this is at least partially necessary. No client wants to spend millions of dollars to deliver a project that ‘might’ work.  

With the shear complexity of issues today related to climate, social justice, healthcare, communication technologies, how can we so consistently claim to have right answers and paths to follow? On an adventure, it’s the mishaps, wrong turns, and reflection that help us reorient not only where we thought we wanted to go but our understanding of where we started.  

What I find unique about adventures is how you talk about them. The way in which you retell an adventure to others, sharing experiences and knowledge learned. You include others in your adventure simply by retelling them. Adventures are somehow collective. But it increasingly feels as if architects desire to lay claim to territory as some form of demonstration of disciplinary or personal control has instead splintered the discipline into a thousand fiefdoms with no kingdom to speak of. Laying claim to territory has impinged on the ability to wander. Wandering with purpose would be nice. It always seems like a good idea to go on an adventure, but for architecture now, it seems like it might actually be necessary.  

Christopher Schaberg is Director of Public Scholarship at Washington University in St. Louis, and the author of nine books, including The End of Airports, Pedagogy of the Depressed, Fly-Fishing, and most recently Adventure: An Argument for Limits. Schaberg is also a founding co-editor of Object Lessons, a book series dedicated to the hidden lives of ordinary things.   

'Adventure: An Argument for Limits’ 

Other episodes linked to the topic include Ep 069 Christopher Schaberg ‘Searching for the Anthropocene’ Ep 100 Fred Scharmen ‘Space Forces’ and many others. Try the websites ‘search’ function to find more related episodes. 

You can find all episodes at www.NightWhiteSkies.com 

Thoughts or suggestions, email me at [email protected] 

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Today’s conversation is with Vahid Vahdat and James Kerestes about their book ‘Architecture, Film and the In-Between, Spatio Cinematic Betwixt’. 

Discussions about trying to give shape to an uncertain future have been a recurring topic on this program. This is in part because it seems that even the most informed people are aware of just enough to know how much they don’t know. A changing climate, an evolving human body, and ubiquitous communication networks, AI, and social justice are just a few of the pressures facing us today. Such sustained change makes one wonder if the direction forward for architecture isn’t making master plans or devising grand unifying theories but instead striving to ask better questions about what appears to be a prolonged period of transition. In other words, maybe the discipline should avoid once again claiming its value by retreating into its own autonomy or offering solutions to predefined problems and instead helping to curate and guide this transitional state in which so many unknowns exist before us. To better understand these environmental, technological and social transitions, architects need to be more involved in offering nimble, iterative projections that help give our future shape. But to do this, the architect likely needs to rethink our methods of working.  

As Dona Haraway says ‘It matters what thoughts think thoughts. It matters what knowledges know knowledges. It matters what relations relate relations. It matters what worlds world worlds. It matters what stories tell stories.’ And so, when thinking about architecture going forward, it’s likely less about better technology, or presenting solutions, and more about reorienting our starting points, questioning our assumptions and inhabiting this state of becoming. 

Vahid and James’s book brings together a collection of essays that look at how films imagine and represent in-betweenness. At times this in-betweenness is physical spaces within architectural structures and at other times it is evolving architectural or environmental conditions depicted through film. By looking at film the authors introduce us to terms and techniques often associated with film theory like the betwixt, the liminal and more. 

Vahid Vahdat is assistant professor of architecture and interior design at Washington State University. His primary research is spatial mediation, with an emphasis on virtual reality and film. 

James F. Kerestes is associate professor of architecture at Ball State University’s College of Architecture and Planning.  

Architecture, Film, and the In-between: Spatio-Cinematic Betwixt  

Other episodes linked to the topic include Ep 043 Graham Harman ‘OOO, Ep 090 Emanuele Coccia ‘The Life of Plants’ and many others. Try the websites ‘search’ function to find more related episodes. 

You can find all episodes at www.NightWhiteSkies.com 

Thoughts or suggestions, email me at [email protected] 

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Today’s conversation is with Aleksandra Jaeschke about her book ‘The Greening of America’s Building Codes, Promises and Paradoxes’. 

There are realities we live with that are so ingrained in all aspects of our lives that we rarely think to question their origins. They are either intertwined with base economic standards or current laws and regulations and so to imagine an alternative would require not simple tweaks and updates but a fundamental restructuring of the whole system, and that’s just not something many have time or even the inclination to pursue. 

I often think of that Fredric Jameson or Slavoj Zizek quote that ‘It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of Capitalism.’ Capitalism and climate change are so intertwined that it should come as no surprise that our relationship to nature and the environment has been shaped by an economic model of growth beyond all else. More specifically, the ways in which many in America (and I say America because this is where today's topic will be based) ...the way in which we are presented solutions and options for bettering our relationship to nature are through the purchase of better commodities. We are not incentivized to live with less or change our lifestyles, we’re instructed through building codes, tax right offs and promises of energy cost savings to buy technologies for our homes and garages that will save us energy and money under the guise that this will also make a better planet. Our relationship with the environment is reminiscent of the old approach of purchasing indulgences that free us of guilt and consequences for our actions.  Buy a few solar panels and continue with life as before. We can simply purchase technologies (electrical panels, EV cars etc.) that simply clip onto our existing lifestyles, no other compromises required and most importantly, no need to look further into why our lifestyles and views are shaped as they are in the first place. 

Aleksandra’s book looks at the building codes put in place for domestic homes in California over the last 100 years and how these have shaped our relationship to the environment. When reading this book, it also indirectly draws attention to how such codes and politics have informed our perspectives and roles to climate change. 

Aleksandra Jaeschke is an architect and an Assistant Professor of Architecture and Sustainable Design at The University of Texas at Austin. Born and raised in Poland, she holds a Doctor of Design degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and an AA Diploma from the Architectural Association in London. Her book entitled The Greening of America's Building Codes: Promises and Paradoxes was published by Princeton Architectural Press in December 2022. 

Aleksandra Jaeschke’s The Greening of America’s Building Codes 

Other episodes linked to the topic include Ep 008 Gretchen Bakke ‘The Grid’ , Ep 049 Kiel Moe’s Empire, State and Building and many others. Try the websites ‘search’ function to find more related episodes. 

You can find all episodes at www.NightWhiteSkies.com 

Thoughts or suggestions, email me at [email protected] 

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Today's conversation is about the role of teaching and discussing ethics during the design process. 

This week's conversation is about the role of ethics during the design process. For many people, whether working in an office or academia, ethics is likely just a passing topic discussed once a year in required seminar training or ‘code of conduct’ handouts. But today we are discussing how ethics can play a role during the design process. As Dr Laura Ferrarello states, it is not about claiming solutions when including ethics. Instead, we discuss exploring potential outcomes to better understand where we are now. When architects look to build spaces that integrate today’s technologies, politics, policies, and environmental pressures all wrapped into a place where people are expected to live and work, friction is bound to occur. Being able to see this in advance is a good thing. It tells us a lot about where we are now. Playing out potential outcomes through design helps us reorientate our understanding of where we are now and what changes might need to be made before moving forward. You might be able to say that design ethics is about outcomes over solutions. There's no shortage of opportunities for architects and designers today. 

Dr. Laura Ferrarello is a Senior Researcher at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). Laura's research interests lie in the intersection of society, technology, and the environment. Her research focuses on designing practice and strategies that empower people in generating more ethical, responsible, and diverse innovation through interdisciplinary collaborative settings. 

Other episodes linked to the topic include 094 Shelia Jasanoff and 015 James Hughes  

Try the websites ‘search’ function to find more related episodes. 

You can find all episodes at www.NightWhiteSkies.com 

Thoughts or suggestions, email me at [email protected] 

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Today’s conversation is with Jeffrey Nesbit about his book ‘Nature of Enclosure’. 

So much of our architectural education and practice is reliant on the idea of control. Take representation for example. Without being able to quantify information about a site, materials or even people, how can we be expected to make decisions about what we ultimately build. If you can’t quantify it in a representation of some sort, how can you be expected to design with it. How can you be expected to make creative and informed choices? I'm confident in saying that’s the prevailing opinion. If we play this forward, there’s the assumption that if an architect or landscape architect knows enough to represent it in drawing, diagram or statistics, then we can also reasonably understand the implications of those decisions. But that simply isn't the case. Either because we willfully exclude information (representations are of course by nature a kind of filter) or because our understanding of the information at hand was inherently lacking without our knowing.  

In this edited book by Jeffrey Nesbit called ‘Nature Enclosed’, he and the contributors cover many scales and facets of what enclosure has meant over the past several centuries. What I found the most interesting about the book is often the look back at the original assumptions when decisions were initially made about enclosing nature (either from us or for us). Doing so highlights just how much more influential these decisions were not only on changing the makeup of nature, but our perspectives and expectations of nature. Beyond that, such conversations help to demonstrate how we seem to continually reframe our own bodies through our changing expectations. Reframing is an ongoing practice and not one that will come exclusively through the control we exert on nature but in being reminded just how mailable we as humans are. Demonstrating control seems increasingly less likely to be the answer moving forward. But stretching and exploring our expectations and where we place value might be. 

Jeffrey S. Nesbit is an architect, urbanist, and founding director of the research group Grounding Design. Nesbit’s research focuses on processes of urbanization, infrastructure, and the evolution of "technical lands." Currently, his research examines the 20th-century American spaceport complex at the intersection of architecture, infrastructure, and aerospace history. Nesbit has published several journal articles, book chapters, and is editor of Nature of Enclosure (Actar, 2022), co-editor of Technical Lands: A Critical Primer (Jovis, 2023), New Geographies 11 Extraterrestrial (Actar, 2019), Nesbit is Assistant Professor in History and Theory of Architecture and Urbanism at Temple University. 

Jeffrrey S. Nesbit’s Nature of Enclosure 

Other episodes linked to the topic include Ep 87 Margret Grebowicz and many others. Try the websites ‘search’ function to find more related episodes. 

You can find all episodes at www.NightWhiteSkies.com 

Thoughts or suggestions, email me at [email protected] 

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Today’s conversation is with Fred Sharmen about his book ‘Space Forces’. 

Sometimes what you need is a little distance to get a clearer perspective on your current situation. Doing so lets you see a larger whole which often allows you to ask questions that might otherwise go unasked. This new distance might not give you any new answers to your current situation at first but just having new questions can be enough to keep you moving. When it comes to the topic of outer space, many people question why we would put so many resources into exploring a future in space when we have so many unresolved problems and crises here on Earth. This is obviously a valid argument, and one that Fred covers, but his book also goes to great lengths to demonstrate that it’s through this new perspective, this distance gained from earth that we can better understand our assumptions for how we currently live, how we currently govern and what we place value on here on earth. As Fred says, ‘Living in space is a thought experiment for how we better understand how we live on Earth.’ 

Fred Scharmen teaches architecture and urban design at Morgan State University's School of Architecture and Planning. He is the co-founder of the Working Group on Adaptive Systems, an art and design consultancy based in Baltimore, Maryland. His first book, Space Settlements was published in 2019. His writing has been published in Atlantic CityLab, Slate, Log, Volume, and Domus the Architect's Newspaper, and in the local alt-weekly Baltimore City Paper. 

Fred Scharmen’s Space Forces, A Critical History of Life in Outer Space 

You can find all episodes at www.NightWhiteSkies.com 

Thoughts or suggestions, email me at [email protected] 

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Today’s conversation is about the potential impact of new tools for video games on architecture. 

As architects, we have no shortage of external pressures we need to be aware of and engage. From climate change to new forms of communication technologies and social justice to name only three ...the list is long and at times overwhelming to think about. Many of these issues that we’re looking to better understand are not new, but how we tackle them today and intertwine a few of them together probably should be. So, it would make good sense for architecture to keep an eye out for tools and techniques that might allow us to engage such pressures in novel ways. One of them that interests me in particular is video games. I’ve discussed this with guests in the past including author Aubrey Anable and curator Boris Magrini, but today is with film director Sava Zivkovic. Zivkovic doesn’t use the software to make video games but instead movie films and this is because of the efficiency of the software with its real-time rendering. Tools that offer efficiency to a process often have a negative connotation for creativity. But in the case of the gaming software we’re seeing today, I think it’s opening the doors for something altogether novel for the architect. And that’s social interaction with design. You might call this a storyline, an interface between people and space. I’m not sure. But today is a conversation with how a director is using these tools and it will be up to the architect to see how far we can push these opportunities. 

Sava Zivkovic is a director based in Belgrade, Serbia. His directing work includes critically acclaimed and award-winning short films like IRRADIATION, HUXLEY, FREIGHT, and IFCC. As a director for Axis Studios, he has created game cinematics for Dead Island 2, Diablo Immortal, Outriders, Solium Infernum, Destiny 2 and Gears of War 5. 

Book Title as a link by person's name 

You can find all episodes at www.NightWhiteSkies.com 

Other episodes linked to the topic include Ep 84 Aubrey Anable and Ep 88 Boris Magrini 

Thoughts or suggestions, email me at [email protected] 

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This week’s conversation is with Jessica Charlesworth and Tim Parsons and we are talking about their design work which explores some of the key social, ecological, and technological challenges of our time.

Parsons & Charlesworth is an art and design studio that develops tangible worlds as discursive tools for critically appraising urgent issues. Co-founded by Jessica Charlesworth and Tim Parsons, the studio’s investigative, research-driven, speculative approach uses installation, sculpture, designed objects, writing, photography and digital media to explore key social, ecological and technological challenges of our time, including climate change, the future of work, and the ethics of technology. Their current project, Multispecies Inc. manifests the output of a fictional group of ecologists striving to cohabit with other species with the help of advanced technologies.

https://parsonscharlesworth.com/

www.nightwhiteskies.com

www.seanlally.net