Guest of this appointment is Kirsten Ring Murray, one of the principals and owners of the internationally renowned firm Olson Kundig Architects. Founded in 1966 by Jim Olson, the practice, Seattle-based, with a new office in New York City, during the five decades of its existence has enormously grown, expanding its portfolio beyond residences, which was a distinctive part of their realizations, covering more than fifteen countries on five continents, from amazing natural locations to crowded urban contexts. Their versatile full-service design besides residences, often for art collectors, includes museums, academic and commercial buildings, hospitality, interior design, master planning and landscape. The narrative and the design approach, contemplating the relationship between dwelling and landscape and encouraging the connection between people and surroundings continue, whether in a natural habitat or in an urban metropolis, bringing context to its existence and purpose, creating an experience of place, even along the street. Careful consideration of topographical and climatic conditions, use of materials worked in close collaboration with craftsmen and artists, leaving frequently, on purpose, visible maker’s hand signs are the main ingredients, contributing to tell an authentic story of the place. The firm recognized by the AIA with the National Architecture Firm Award, has been named 4 times one of the Top Ten Most Innovative Companies in Architecture by Fast Company and included on the AD100 list 14 times. The owners have been honoured with some of the nations and world’s highest design awards: Jim Olson, the Seattle AIA Medal of Honor, Tom Kundig a National Design Award in Architecture from the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, an Academy Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, inductions into Interior Design Magazine’s Hall of Fame and the AIA Seattle Medal of Honor, only to mention a few. Their works published worldwide by the most prestigious magazines, on the covers of The New York Times magazine, ARCHITECT, Architectural Record, Architectural Digest, Wall Street Journal are collected in four monographs. Our guest, Kirsten Ring Murray, has realized a range of project types, nationally and internationally published, and awarded. She has received many AIA Honor Awards, in recognition of her contributions, playing a particularly relevant role in the firm’s culture, expanding the boundaries of the corporatist spirit, pioneering programs, and injecting vital energy into core activities. The conversation starts exploring a background that may have led Kirsten to become an architect. Grown up, experiencing various places West of United States, passionate about drawing and reading, with a keen interest in science fiction, was particularly attracted by the environment as landscape, by an organic architecture tendency emerging at that time in Colorado, with the main attraction for Paolo Soleri’s arcology and curiosity in the experimentation of arts and craft of Modernism. Joined the studio in Seattle in the late ‘89, a studio of 11 and now of over 250 people, she was drawn by different reasons as the firm’s legacy grounded on craft, integration of architecture and art and always felt very comfortable in a place, where conversation and dialogue were highly appreciated and the individual expression unusually respected and encouraged. Challenging and active, the practice has over the years maintained this distinctive note, believing in the importance of debate and considering a precious opportunity to work with different personalities, many individual voices in a synergistic effort. Great contribution to strengthen teamwork collaboration and to open a dialogue with the external community goes to Kirsten, who has promoted a series of original and successful initiatives, especially through [storefront], a common space, part of their office building, transformed into an...

Guests of our appointment are two brilliant and leading architects, Shirley Blumberg and Marianne McKenna, co-founders in 1987 with other two partners, in an egalitarian collaboration, of KPMB Architects, a Toronto-based studio. The firm, enormously grown and become one of the most authoritative in Canada, internationally recognized for the important public buildings realized across the country, United States and Europe, has always coherently remained committed to the main shared beliefs in equity, diversity, and inclusion, cohesion and open dialogue, expanding over the years the leadership team, naming new partners alongside the founders.
Their impressive portfolio embraces a wide range of sectors, from education, healthcare, scientific research, arts and culture, corporate, hospitality, recreation, and mixed-use development.
The works, porous and accessible, sensitively responsive to the context and needs of the people, highest standards of quality, efficiency, and sustainability, have for over three decades enriched the social fabric, strengthening communities and receiving over 400 prestigious acknowledgments, including 18 Governor General’s Medals, one of Canada’s highest honours. Collected in three monographs, they are extensively published.
My guests have both enormously contributed to the success and notoriety of the practice with award-winning realizations, recognized for architectural excellence and social impact.
Blumberg, author of projects as the Centre for International Governance Innovation Campus in Waterloo, Ontario, the renovation of Princeton University, New Jersey, the Remai Modern Art Gallery, Saskatoon, Canada, involved in social justice programs, has founded Building Equality in Architecture Toronto, BEAT, an initiative to promote equity for women in architecture, and led Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI), framework of the firm’s practice. McKenna, named among Canada’s most powerful women, and the first to receive last year the Design Futures Council (DFC) Lifetime Achievement Award, has as well realized brilliant and noteworthy works, as the Royal Conservatory TELUS Centre for Performance and the renewal of the Massey Hall in Toronto, The Rotman School of Toronto and The Bradley School in New York. They have been both invested as Officers of the Order of Canada for their involvement in architecture and community.

It’s from their compelling stories, both grown up, experiencing different geographical and cultural ambiances, Marianne the rapidly transforming atmosphere of Montreal and Shirley the inequitable climate of South Africa, during the period of great social and political ferment of the years ’60, that starts our conversation, and we continue by deepening the reasons that have influenced their decision to become architects. Toronto, at the time, was transforming into one of the most socially progressive, pluralistic cities, a livable, walkable, safe place, become the city of Jane Jacobs, escaping the fate of many American cities, deprived, through urban renewal, of their downtown neighbourhoods. It was there, in the studio of an American architect, Barton Myers, that over several years a deep affinity grew and bonded Shirley, Marianne and other two young architects working at the office. ‘Hungry’ to do something different and significant, the two women and two men established their own firm, an unusual hybrid, collaborative model for the time. A kind of ‘ecosystem’, that has perpetrated until these days, based on healthy competition, great respect of each other and a lot of open dialogue.
Taking inspiration from a description by Roland Barthes about a perfect resonance, well adapting to their architecture, we focus on one of the firm’s main ambitions, to create buildings of high resonance with people and communities’ needs and aspirations. We analyze some of their most famous interventions on heritage cultural buildings and their talent to open them,...

Guest of this appointment is a young Korean architect who, endowed with a distinctive personality, has realized interesting works marked by a loud identity. Jo Jinman, graduated from Hanyang University, Seoul, with a later degree from Tsinghua University, Beijing in 2014 and founded his own, eponymous practice, Jo Jinman Architects.

He has participated to national exhibitions and won several competitions, acknowledged with the ‘National Young Architect Award’ by the Ministry of Culture, Korea, 2015, ‘Korea Public Building Prize', 2016 and ‘Korea Progressive Architect Awards’, 2017, by the Ministry of Land and Infrastructure, ‘Seoul Architecture Award’, 2018, by Seoul Metropolitan Government, World Architecture Award, 2019, World Architecture Community, 'Emerging Architect Awards’ and 'Design Vanguard’, 2019, from Architectural Record.
His architecture, against the limitations of a simple function, explores challenges and expectations of society, proposing energetic spaces, open to be adopted and developed over time by the people themselves and mostly seeking a continuity between indoor and outdoor. A complex simplicity characterizes his work, aiming to offer new, alternative possibilities and creative solutions.
He has worked for several years as Public Architect, for Seoul Metropolitan Government, dedicating his efforts to implement connections between people, city, and nature. Adjunct Professor at the Hanyang University of Seoul (2013~2020), and in 2022 at Taylor’s University, Malaysia, he has recently published ‘Notes of a provocative architect, Jo Jinman.’

The conversation starts from the period of his post-graduation, a moment represented in Seoul by a massive building development, mainly represented by economic speculations, and his need to reflect about his future responsibilities as architect towards society. A change of environment has brought him to Beijing, for a Master at Tsinghua University, and a working experience at IROJE Architects & Planners, and after some years to OMA, Rotterdam, as senior architect: two different experiences that have positively impacted his formative growth. Return back to Seoul, in 2014, he established his firm, realizing several public interventions, according to an idea of architecture continuously evolving and transforming, eliminating barriers, especially between nature and people, and encouraging relationships. An architecture able to offer hybrid spaces where unplanned things happen.

Naesoop Library, a public space open to four completely different sides, growing from a hill, spontaneously fragmenting and adapting its shape to the complex topographical situation, emphasizes, attuned to his design’s philosophy, the permeability between inside and outside and the potential to enhance multiple functions, breaking the traditional paradigm of a library as austere environment of silence.
We focus then on a research he led years ago, as public architect for Seoul Metropolitan Government about leftover spaces still available for public interventions in the dense Seoul central area, that has identified a series of empty highway underpasses, offering a possible multifunctional network of reconnections in the urban fabric.

Two other projects, Riverside Apse, a small iconic café, and Changshin Quarry Viewing Gallery, a simple but impressive, cantilevered observation deck, have been conceived as gestures to bridge past and present, with concern about historic parts of the country, in need not to be forgotten.
The special unique identity of K2 office tower, imposing its striking, refined silhouette in a congested part of Seoul, is Jo Jinman’s response to the challenging difficult limitations of a narrow site. A harmonious monolithic presence, balancing complexity and simplicity, an extremely creative, elaborate work of technology and craftsmanship, cloaked by a light mantle of repeated, perforated thin cement louvers.Show more...