EP #465 - 3.11.2022 - The Architecture of COVID

Today I welcome Daniel Barber, Jeannette KWO Kuo, and Paul Lewis to discuss architecture and design in the COVID era.

Daniel A. Barber is Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania Weitzman School of Design, where he is also Chair of the interdisciplinary PhD Program in Architecture. His most recent book is Modern Architecture and Climate: Design before Air Conditioning (Princeton UP, 2020). Daniel edits the accumulation series on e-flux architecture and is co-founder of the Current: Collective on Environment and Architectural History. For 2021-2022 he is a Senior Fellow at the Käte Hamburger Centre for Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Studies at Universität Heidelberg.

Jeannette Kuo is partner at Karamuk Kuo Architects based in Zurich and Professor of Architecture and Construction at TU Munich. Previously she was Assistant Professor in Practice at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design and Visiting Professor at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. Her work and her research focus on integrated design, looking at architectural space, technology and culture to address a more sustainable future. The work of the office ranges from collective housing to institutional projects for public clients and include the International Sports Sciences Institute in Lausanne, a low-tech sustainable office building; the Archaeological Center at Augusta Raurica; and the extension to the Rice University School of Architecture in Houston.

Paul Lewis, FAIA, is a Principal at LTL Architects based in New York City.  He is a Professor at Princeton University School of Architecture, where he has taught since 2000.  Paul is the President of the Architectural League of New York and a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome.  His New York based firm has completed academic, cultural and institutional projects throughout the United States.  LTL are the 2019 NY State AIA firm of the year and have received a National Design Award, have been inducted into the ID Hall of Fame, and have received multiple AIA design awards.  The firm’s recent work includes Poster House, The Helen R. Walton Children’s Enrichment Center, and a new residence hall at Carnegie Mellon University.  LTL Architects are the authors of Manual of PhysicalDistancing (2020), Intensities (2013), Opportunistic Architecture (2008) and Situation Normal....Pamphlet Architecture #21 (1998). Their 2016 book entitled Manual of Section has been translated into six languages, and LTL is currently completing a book about plant-based materials used in the sections of house construction.