Between 2020 and 2023, the Farrell Centre ran a podcast of interviews with leading architects, urbanists and thinkers. Hosted by Farrell Centre director, Owen Hopkins, the interviews comprised 20 questions over 20 minutes, exploring everything from interviewees’ ideas and interests to the present and future of architecture and cities. Here, you can catch up on all 20 episodes.
1. Sam Jacob
Sam Jacob is director of Sam Jacob Studio. He is Professor of Architecture at UIC and Visiting Professor at Yale School of Architecture. He was co-curator of the British Pavilion in Venice (2014), is columnist and critic for Dezeen and Art Review as well as Contributing Editor for Icon magazine. Previously, Sam was a founding director of FAT Architecture.
2. Narinder Sagoo
Narinder Sagoo is Senior Partner – Art Director at Foster + Partners. Heading the ‘Design Communications’ team, he is responsible for the visual representation of all projects from sketch through to photorealistic representation.
3. Farshid Moussavi
Farshid Moussavi OBE RA is an internationally acclaimed architect and Professor in Practice of Architecture at Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Moussavi’s approach is characterised by an openness to change and a commitment to the intellectual and cultural life of architecture.
4. Joe Noero
Jo Noero formed Noero Architects in Johannesburg in 1984. In 2000, the practice relocated to Cape Town, and now has offices in Cape Town and Port Elizabeth. Noero has designed and built over 200 projects, and has combined a professional career with an academic one, lecturing both locally and internationally.
5. Space Popular
Space Popular is directed by Lara Lesmes and Fredrik Hellberg. It creates spaces, objects, and events in both physical and virtual space, concentrating on how the two realms will blend together in the near future.
6. Sarah Wigglesworth
Sarah director of Sarah Wigglesworth Architects. She is acknowledged as a pioneering influence in green and sustainable design. Her work is characterised by careful theorising of the issues unique to each project and close engagement with clients and users.
7. Adam Nathaniel Furman
Adam Nathaniel Furman is an artist & designer of Argentine & Japanese heritage based in London. He trained in Architecture and Fine Art, and works in those areas as well as products, interiors, writing and teaching.
8. Dr Harriet Harriss
Dr. Harriet Harriss is an architect and former Dean of the Pratt School of Architecture in Brooklyn, New York. Her teaching, research, and writing focus upon pioneering new pedagogic models for design education, and for widening participation in architecture.
9. Kate Macintosh
Kate Macintosh is an architect renowned for her ground-breaking social housing projects and latter-day campaigning and activism. She worked for the Architects Department of the London Borough of Southwark (1965-68) where at the age of 28 she won the internal competition to design what became Dawsons Heights, described by The Observer in 2015 as ‘one of the most remarkable housing developments in the country’.
10. Asif Khan
Asif Khan founded his East London-based, research and development led architecture studio in 2007. Ranging across buildings, landscapes, exhibitions and installations, among other things, Khan’s practice explores how material and social innovations can fundamentally alter the way people experience and shape their environment, realised through rigorously detailed and delivered outputs.
11. Niall McLaughlin
Niall McLaughlin established Niall McLaughlin Architects in 1990. The practice makes high quality modern buildings with a special emphasis on materials and detail and is recognised as one of the UK’s leading practices.
12. Marina Tabassum
Marina Tabassum is a Bangladesh based architect, educator and academic. In 2005, Tabassum established MTA (Marina Tabassum Architects). The practice’s Bait Ur Rouf Mosque in Dhaka won the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2016
13. Fergus Feilden
Fergus Feilden is director of Feilden Fowles – an award-winning, London-based architecture studio, which he founded with Edmund Fowles in 2009. Today, Feilden Fowles deliver a range of buildings across the UK, producing architecture that is rich in character and distinct in identity.
14. Microcities
Microcities is the office of Mariabruna Fabrizi and Fosco Lucarelli, architects, teachers and curators. Their work takes the form of architectural projects, exhibitions curatorship and design, and articles on the platform Socks-Studio and elsewhere.
15. Anne Thorne and Fran Bradshaw
Anne Thorne founded Anne Thorne Architects Partnership in 1991. Prior to that she was a founder member of Matrix Feminist Design Co-operative 1980.
Frances Bradshaw has been a partner at Anne Thorne Architects since 1995. She has focussed on how women’s lives shape and are shaped by buildings and the city, on participatory design, on regeneration and community projects, and on low energy and ecological building design.
16. Jayden Ali
Jayden Ali is founder of JA Projects – a London based practice working at the intersection of architecture, urban strategy, art and performance. The studio’s work strikes a balance between playfulness and precision, and is driven by a design ethos grounded in observation, participation and collaborative design.
17. Pooja Agrawal
Pooja Agrawal is an architect and planner who is currently CEO of Public Practice. She previously worked as a public servant at Homes England and the Greater London Authority, where as part of the Regeneration and Economic Development Team she helped co-found Public Practice in 2017.
18. Mat Barnes
Mat Barnes is director of CAN – an architecture and art studio which designs characterful buildings, places, objects and spaces that subvert and amplify their social and cultural contexts and respond to their physical bounds.
19. Cany Ash
Before setting up Ash Sakula in 1994, Cany Ash worked for the GLC Architect’s Department and Burrell Foley Fischer, as well as in New York and Berlin. She has taught at a number of architectural schools as a critic and studio tutor and is an external examiner at Cambridge University. She is an experienced co-designer, leading design workshops with young people and many community groups. She has served on the RIBA Awards Group, as a CABE Enabler, a Client Design Advisor and a Civic Trust Awards Assessor. She is member of the South East Design Review Panel.
20. Terry Farrell
Sir Terry Farrell is one of the UK’s leading architect-planners. During fifty years in practice he has completed many award-winning buildings and masterplans, including the MI6 Building, Alban Gate, Embankment Place and The Home Office Headquarters in London, The Deep in Hull, and UK masterplans including those for Greenwich Peninsula and Paddington Basin. He is also responsible for major work in East Asia including Incheon airport in Seoul, Beijing Station and Guangzhou Station in China (the largest in the world), and the Peak Tower and Kowloon Station development, both in Hong Kong.