Superurbanism
Superurbanism is a podcast series of conversations with prominent figures in architecture, including architects, curators, authors, and designers. Host Tim Abrahams discusses the specifics of his guests' projects and their broader creative and architectural visions. The show offers insight into contemporary architectural practice and thinking.
Episodes
S3 Ep14 — Fernando Sordo Madaleno
Fernando Sordo Madaleno de Haro is a principal at Sordo Madaleno, the third generation of his family to work in a practice founded by his grandfather Juan Sordo Madaleno. In 2023 he established its London studio. Tim spoke to him about their work in Mexico, Hungary and Saudi Arabia.
S3 EP13 — Hedwig Fijen and Josep Bohigas
Manifesta is an itinerant European Biennale and art-as-catalyst-for-development event that launched in 1996. In its 30th year, it arrived in the Ruhr Valley. Its founding director Hedwig Fijen and its first creative mediator and architect / planner Josep Bohigas spoke to Tim Abrahams.
S3 EP12 — An Fonteyne (part 2)
An Fonteyne is the Brussels-based co-founder of noAarchitecten and a leading light in the design consortium that is designing Kanal Centre Pompidou. In the second part of their interview, she spoke to Tim Abrahams about the origins of retrofit.
S3 Ep11 — Liam Young
Liam Young is an Australian-born architect, film director and artist who co-runs the M.A. in Fiction and Entertainment at Sci-Arc in Los Angeles. He spoke to Tim about his new show at the Barbican and the death of 60s environmentalist utopias.
S3 EP10 — An Fonteyne
Kanal Centre Pompidou in Brussels is one of the most important art museums built in Europe in the last couple of decades and will draw huge attention across the world when it opens later this year. Tim spoke to An Fonteyne, co-founder of noAarchitecten and a leading light in its design team alongside members of noArchitechten, Sergison Bates and EM2N.
S3 EP09 — Tobias Walliser
Tobias Walliser is a director of LAVA Architects: an international network of offices known for their research on the combination of technology and the built world. LAVA’s global work spans architecture, interiors and master planning. Tim spoke to him about their work at the Dubai, Osaka and Riyadh Expos.
S3 EP08 — Niall McLaughlin
Niall McLaughlin is an Irish-born British architect whose work has been shortlisted for the RIBA Stirling Prize four times, winning in 2022 with the New Library at Magdalene College, Cambridge. He is this year's RIBA Gold Medal winner. McLaughlin is also a professor at the Bartlett at University College London.
S3 EP07 — Brendan Cormier
Brendan Cormier is Curator at V&A East, the new extension of the Victoria and Albert Museum in East London. He has curated several major exhibitions for the museum including Cars: Accelerating the Modern World and Values of Design at Design Society in Shenzhen, China.
S3 EP06 — Nordic Office of Architecture
Oslo-based Nordic Office of Architecture led the redesign of Norway’s government district following the 2011 attacks, shaping into what they believe is an open, democratic civic environment. Tim gets a guided tour from the team around the new campus.
S3 EP05 — Reinier de Graaf
To create a coalition of architects as workers, OMA partner Reinier de Graaf has written a manifesto, Architecture Against Architecture. Are you ready to sign up? Tim takes the 14 points made by the Dutch architect – such as unions and construction moratoria – to the test.
S3 EP04 — Mary Duggan
Tim talks to one of London’s most thoughtful practitioner’s Mary Duggan about her last project; a beautiful landscaped housing project amidst parkland in suburban London. Mary also explains the surprising new direction she’s chosen to take her beautifully crafted approach to architecture in.
S3 EP03 — Rolf Fehlbaum
Rolf Fehlbaum is Chairman Emeritus of Vitra; and the client behind the architectural flourishing of the Vitra Campus in Weil am Rhein. Tim asks him about his studies in utopian socialism; how Nick Grimshaw took to be being bumped for Frank Gehry and much more.
S3 EP02 — Shiv Malik
Shiv Malik was formerly an investigative journalist with the Guardian. He’s also co-author with Ed Howker of the book Jilted Generation: How Britain Has Bankrupted Its Youth. He is now working with Joe Reeve on Forest City: a new town for 1 million inhabitants near Cambridge in the UK.
S3 EP01 — Sam Jacob
Sam Jacob, Dean of the Institute of Architecture, University of Applied Arts Vienna, has a great show on at the Hypha gallery in No. 1 Poultry, London. Tim spoke to him about the complex ways architecture and money relate and where ruins feature in this tangle of meaning.
Review of the Year — 2025
In London a stellar cast joined Tim Abrahams and regular News Review contributor Vicky Richardson for some drinks and nibbles to reflect on the architectural highlights of 2025.
S2 EP34 — Peter Murray
Peter Murray is a London institution himself, although he is also the founder of several. He spoke to Tim about his ongoing investigations into how City Architects are defined in successful cities around the world and how they could be reintroduced into the UK. He also shared some personal news.
S2 EP33 — Pete Collard
Pete Collard is exhibitions curator at the RIBA; and the brains behind a new show held at RIBA North in Liverpool called Home Ground, the Architecture of Football. Tim spoke to him about an architectural typology that was developed in the home of football but increasingly found its apogee away in Europe.
S2 EP32 — David Adjaye
With controversy lingering over his personal conduct, three major new museums designed by David Adjaye open this month. Tim Abrahams goes beyond the scandal to explore his commitment to Africa’s cultural and social transformation.
News Review — October 2025
The Superurbanism News Review is back again! Tim sits down with our good friend Vicky Richardson, former Architecture Curator at the Royal Academy to discuss the latest events in the architecture world and reaction to them. Award season is upon us in the United Kingdom and we talk through the early responses to Witherford Watson Mann’s victory in the Stirling Prize and much more.
S2 EP 30 — Olafur Eliasson
In the early 21st century, Olafur Eliasson helped define a new era of public art with works that took on nature for scale. Tim Abrahams met him at the new Oxford North development and asked him what he makes of his metier as a public artist in a new era when who the public might be is less clear and the idea of nature is unstable.
S2 EP 29 — Asif Khan
Tim heads out to Almaty in Kazakhstan to talk to Asif Khan about his work on the Tselinny; an incredibly painstaking transformation of a 1964 Soviet cinema into an arts centre, which he undertook with Kazakh wife the architect Zaure Aitayeva.
S2 EP28 — Andy Groarke (part 2)
This is the second half of a two part discussion with Andy Groarke of the London practice Carmody Groarke in which he and Tim discuss more recent buildings including archives for the Bibliotheque Francaise and for the British Library takes this idea about the relationship between materials and time into a different order.
S2 EP27 — Ab Rogers
Tim spoke to Ab Rogers about the exhibition he has curated, dedicated to his father Richard, at Sir John Soane’s Museum. They also talk about Ab's own career including his ongoing working relationship with the film director Wes Anderson, and their upcoming Design Museum show in London.
S2 EP26 — Andy Groarke
This is the first half of a two part discussion with Andy Groarke of the London practice Carmody Groarke. Talking to Tim, he explores the origins of the practice and the influence of Antony Gormley on their singular appreciation of materials and their relationship to time.
S2 EP25 — Richard J Williams
Richard J Williams’s latest book The Expressway World is about spaces built for cars, which humans live alongside. He and Superurbanism host Tim Abrahams took a drive down the M40 to discuss urban landscapes in Glasgow, New York, Seoul and more.
S2 EP24 — Charles Saumarez Smith
Charles Saumarez Smith is a distinguished British cultural historian and curator known for his leadership in major art institutions including the National Gallery and the Royal Academy. He spoke to Tim about his latest fascination, the life and works of the great British baroque architect John Vanburgh.
S2 EP23 — Pablo Bronstein
Tim talks to Pablo Bronstein, a London‑based artist born in Argentina, known primarily for his beautiful, clever drawings which have been collected by the Pompidou, the Met and the British Museum. His latest project at Waddesdon Manor plays with design history and explores how national identities are constructed.
S2 EP22 — Farshid Moussavi
Farshid Moussavi is the co-ordinator of the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy this year, the first architect to perform the task since Eva Jiřičná in 2013. Tim spoke to Farshid about her key curatorial decisions and to Stephanie MacDonald about her contribution to the annual arts jamboree.
S2 EP21 — Rem Koolhaas
Rem Koolhaas, principal of OMA, won the Pritzker Prize in 2000. His work Delirious New York is one of the best books written about architecture and cities. The Seattle Central Library and Casa da Musica in Porto are two of the great buildings of the early 21st century. Tim spoke to him about two recent exhibitions.
s2 EP20 — Marina Tabassum
Tim talks bricks, nation building and temporary architecture with Marina Tabassum, the architect of this year’s Serpentine Pavilion. Born in Dhaka, Bangladesh in 1969, Tabassum was listed in TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in 2024. Her Bait Ur Rouf Mosque in Dhaka won the Aga Khan Award in 2016.
S2 EP19 — Tiffany Jenkins
Tiffany Jenkins is author of Strangers and Intimates: The Rise and Fall of Private Life, published by Picador. “Always interesting, always well written and always provocative," said David Aaronovitch in The Observer. She has also just been made a trustee of the British Museum. Tim spoke to her about the need for the public and the private.
News Review — May 2025
The Superurbanism News Review is back from the Venice Architecture Biennale. The super soaraway architecture podcast hears from curator Carlo Ratti on his vision for the event and then addresses how things turned out. Tim is joined by Vicky Richardson, former Architecture Curator at the Royal Academy to talk through the early reviews and give their own assessment.
S2 EP17 — Owen Hopkins
Owen Hopkins is a British architectural historian and curator who is now the Director of the Farrell Centre in Newcastle. He is also one of four curators of the British Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale. Tim explored the dual perspective his positions grant him and the state of architectural exhibitions today.
S2 EP16 — Annabelle Selldorf
Annabelle Selldorf is a German-born architect based in New York City known for her refined, modernist aesthetic. She recently completed the renovation of the Frick Collection in New York. Tim spoke to her though about the controversial reordering of the National Gallery’s Sainsbury Wing by Venturi Scott Brown.
S2 EP15 — Tom Emerson
Tom Emerson founded 6a architects with Stephanie Macdonald in 2001, completing the MK Gallery in 2019 and the South London Gallery in 2021. He has just published his first book Dirty Old River, a collection of essays that he discussed with Tim.
S2 EP14 — Samantha Hardingham
Tim talks to Samantha Hardingham about Cedric Price, subject of an exhibition touring UK architectural schools currently. Samantha, former director of the Architectural Association and academic director of the London School of Architecture, not only worked for Price but edited his collected works.
S2 EP13 — Jonathan Glancey
Jonathan Glancey, former architecture editor at The Guardian and, more recently, author and inhabitant of Venice, has just published the book Operation Bowler. It is the story of one of the forgotten episodes of World War II during which the Allies bombed La Serenissima. Tim talks to Jonathan about cities, destruction and Venice’s modernity.
S2 EP12 — Patrik Schumacher
In a recent paper, Patrik Schumacher, principal of Zaha Hadid Architects, declared the End of Architecture, terminated he says by petty politicking. Tim Abrahams spoke to him about the decline of schools, the sustainability agenda and what he would like to spend his time talking about if it wasn’t for woke.
News Review — February 2025
Welcome to the Superurbanism News Review: a compendium and critique of the big stories that are dominating architecture and the associated professions this quarter. Giving her insight this episode is Vicky Richardson, the former editor of Blueprint and Head of Architecture and Drue Heinz Curator at the Royal Academy. We talk Aga Khan, wiggly roads and soft power.
S2 EP10 — Nicolas Fayad
Nicolas Fayad founded East architecture studio with Charles Kettaneh in 2015. Based in Lebanon and now the United Arab Emirates, the practice won the Aga Khan Award for Architecture for their refurbishment of an Oscar Niemeyer pavilion in Tripoli in 2022. Tim spoke to them in Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, at the opening of their temporary prayer space at the Islamic Arts Biennale.
S2 EP09 — Stefano Boeri
Tim talks to the architect and don of the Milan design world Stefano Boeri who is celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Bosco Verticale; a pioneering high-rise planted with 17,000 trees, shrubs and plants, completed in his home city. Boeri also outlines his plans for the 2025 Milan Triennale of which he is president.
S2 EP08 — Sir Peter Cook
Sir Peter Cook is a Royal Academician and RIBA Gold Medal holder. And yet his fame rests on his work with avant garde architecture collective Archigram and he continues to champion formally extravagant architecture that lives today on the margins. Tim talks to him about putting ideas out there and his beef with Kenneth Frampton.
S2 EP07 — Matthias Sauerbruch and Louisa Hutton
Matthias Sauerbruch and Louisa Hutton have built some of the most striking modern buildings in Europe. On the occasion of an exhibition of their work at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin alongside work from an astonishing archive featuring work by Scharoun, the Taut Brothers and many others, Tim spoke to them about their work and the history that forms it.
S2 EP06 — James Capper
Tim talks to James Capper, an artist and speculative engineer who makes boats that walk and robots that paint: machines that ask us what machines are really for. His latest work Monitor is an itinerant, walking workshop for Ukraine which emerged from a residency in Kiev and is currently on exhibit, in the form of prototypes and drawings, at the Royal Academy in London.
S2 EP05 — Hanif Kara
How do you design a roller coaster? What was it like on the North Sea oil rigs in the 1980s? What did you learn in the steel yards? Hanif Kara, recipient of this year’s Soane Medal led the engineering on the Peckham Library by Will Alsop, the Phaeno Science Centre by Zaha Hadid Architects amongst many others, Tim though is interested in where Hanif came from as much as where he got to.
S2 EP04 — Selina Anttinen
Tim talks to Selina Anttinen, founding partner of Anttinen Oiva Architects with her husband Vesa Oiva. So successful have the practice been in their native Helsinki, from designing the main library of the University of Helsinki in 2008 to leading the reimagining of the city’s central harbour with the Katoleina Pier project, finished this year, you may not have heard of them. Until now.
S2 EP03 — Kenneth Frampton
Few architecture critics have had the impact of Kenneth Frampton. His Modern Architecture: a Critical History is a masterpiece; his essay on Critical Regionalism, one of the most influential pieces of writing on architecture of the twentieth century. He talks to Tim about his latest collection of essays Architecture and the Public World, published by Bloomsbury.
S2 EP02 — Paul Robbrecht
Paul Robbrecht founded Robbrecht en Daem with his wife Hilde Daem in 1975. Their son Johannes joined in 2002. This family-led practice is one of the most important in Europe, helping transform Belgium into one of the richest architectural cultures in the world. He talks to Tim about his father, his favourite sculptor and Egypt.
S2 EP01 — Kengo Kuma
Kengo Kuma is a mercurial architect, who works with natural forms and historical structures with an avant-garde sensibility. Tim talks to the usually taciturn Japanese maestro about the horrors of Metabolism, what he calls the philosophy of the detail and the affinities between Portugal and Japan.
S1 EP19 — Edwin Heathcote
To celebrate the London Festival of Architecture’s 20th anniversary Tim met Edwin Heathcote, the Financial Times architecture critic, in a small podcast booth built underneath the Lloyd’s building in London. Designed by Urban Radicals, the booth was the perfect place to talk about public space in London and Eddy’s book, On the Street: In-Between Architecture published by HENI.
S1 EP18 — Job Floris
Job Floris was an editor of the pioneering, always interesting OASE Journal for Architecture from 2008 until 2018. He is also an architect: one half of the Rotterdam-based practice Monadnock which he founded in the naughties with Sandor Naus. For reasons that Tim explores with Job, Monadnock’s work sits uneasily in their home city although it is popular elsewhere in the Netherlands and in Germany.
S1 EP17 — Bijoy Jain
Bijoy Jain lives in Mumbai; the city of his birth. Tim talked to him about his world famous practice Studio Mumbai which sits between the world of art, craft and architecture and is staffed by skilled craftsmen, technicians and draughtsmen, who design and build each project themselves. He reflects on architecture as dance and his time living and working in London.
S1 EP16 — Simon Henley
Simon Henley is one of London architecture’s unsung heroes. His practice Henley Halebrown wrings great buildings from unlikely sites across the city, Hackney New Primary School being a great example but also their latest work Thames Christian School. But Simon is also a great advocate for the culture of architecture as a writer but in a host of other ways. Tim talked to him about buildings, histor
S1 EP15 — Farshid Moussavi
Farshid Moussavi RA OBE is an architect and – pay attention to the exact phrasing – Professor in Practice of Architecture at Harvard GSD. Born in Iran but raised in Britain, she has a terrific range of work, all imbued with a public spirit. Tim talks to her about one of her smallest projects ever as well as the purpose of her work in France and the USA.
S1 EP14 — Judit Carrera
Judit Carrera is a political scientist by education but is now director of the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB). As part of her remit, she is also in charge of the CCCB’s Education programme, head of the CCCB Archive, and director of the European Prize for Urban Public Space which awards the most thoughtful new communal spaces across the continent.
S1 EP13 — William Mann (part 2)
This is the second half of a conversation between host Tim Abrahams and William Mann the first half of which was broadcast earlier in this series. This week the practice William is a partner of Witherford Watson Mann will complete their extension to Clare College in Cambridge. This is a discussion about that building but much more. Moliere, Freud and Imannuel Kant.
S1 EP12 — Rowan Moore
Rowan Moore is one of the UKs most eloquent and respected architecture critics. His third book Property: The Myth That Built The World raises key issues about how we provide housing which has profound relevance for our current predicament. Do we have an unhealthy obsession with ownership? Tim explores the issue with him.
S1 EP11 — Ken Shuttleworth
This week Tim Abrahams meets Ken Shuttleworth. Known as Ken the Pen in his university days, he is a leading architect with an exemplary talent for drawing. He takes us through a life in drawing, explaining how his relationship with the art has evolved and how, now he has founded the Architecture Drawing Prize, the media has changed in an industry undergoing huge technological change.
S1 EP10 — Niall Hobhouse
For the last ten years, collector and curator Niall Hobhouse has run the charity Drawing Matter from a converted farm in Somerset. This year he has taken the decision to bring his amazing collection of architectural drawings to London, Tim takes a look through work by Le Corbusier, Aldo Rossi, Alvaro Siza, plus many more and asks Niall what the plan is for the next decade.
S1 EP09 — Amin Taha
Amin Taha founded his practice, now called Groupwork, in London in 2003. Despite the controversy around his signature project 15 Clerkenwell Close, built with structural stone, he is a much sought-after architect. He takes host Tim Abrahams around his latest project 8 Bleeding Heart Yard in London and talks construction techniques, planning politics and the meaning of history.
S1 EP08 — Laure Mériaud and Cécilia Gross
Laure Mériaud and Cécilia Gross came together when colleagues recommended that their practices Atelier 2/3/4 and VenhoevenCS bid to design the one new building that is being constructed for the Paris 2024 Olympics. They take our host Tim Abrahams around the Aquatic Centre in Saint-Denis, a département outside the city proper that has long suffered.
S1 EP07 — Shane De Blacam
Shane De Blacam has just received the Royal Academy Prize, for his work with the late John Meagher, who he entered into practice in 1976. His greatest works include the Samuel Beckett Theatre in Dublin and Munster Technological University Cork. Before forming his practice with Meagher, de Blacam worked in London for Chamberlain, Powell and Bon and with Louis I. Khan in Philadelphia.
S1 EP06 — William Mann
Together with his colleagues Christopher Watson and Stephen Witherford, William Mann is a partner at one of the most consistently brilliant architecture practices in the country; Witherford Watson Mann. Recently he took Tim on a whistle-stop tour of their latest project; an almshouse in South London, explaining how history acts as a rich source of ideas for the practice to plunder.
S1 EP05 — Will Wiles
Will Wiles is a brilliant author of several novels and a collection of short stories called The Anechoic Chamber that will be published in August 2024. He’s also a contributor to The Machine Book of Weird, recently published by Machine Books. With Tim, he explores the relationship between architecture and literature and between the exterior world and the interior.
S1 EP04 — Eleanor Fawcett
Machine Books recently published Play the Game by Michael Owens and Ralph Ward: a book superbly woven together from interviews of the people who brought the Olympics to East London. To celebrate this event, the authors led a very special tour of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park with several of the key figures, including Eleanor Fawcett, the former Head of Design at the Olympic Delivery Authority.
S1 EP03 — Peter Barber
Man of the moment Peter Barber takes us around his office in Kings Cross, London. Perhaps London's most famous builder of social housing, Barber explains the close details of his craft and his repertoire of design ideas. Less commonly touched on, he also explains the bigger picture; how teaching and utopian thinking moves his practice forward.
S1 EP02 — Dieter Roelstraete
Everybody Talks About the Weather and so do we. Still in Venice we pop into the Prada Foundation and have a tour of their summer exhibition at Ca'Corner. The exhibition curated by Dieter Roelstrate is an overview of the complex ways artists have thought about weather. Dieter takes us round and explains how art and science might work together.
S1 EP01 — Roberto Cicutto, Lesley Lokko, Francis Kéré
In our opening episode, we visit the Venice Architecture Biennale 2023 and consider how a series of crises – Covid, Black Lives Matter and global warming – inform it. We talk to the curator of the biennale, Lesley Lokko but also the president of all the biennales, the film producer Roberto Cicutto and Pritzker Prize laureate Francis Kéré.
