Podcast: Architecture Masters

Architecture Masters is a new podcast series about the people shaping our cities – a series of short conversations with some of architecture’s leading lights.

For the pilot episode we speak to RIBA Manser Medal-winning architect Carl Turner about what it’s like to build, then sell your dream home.

We talk about gentrification in Brixton, the threat from Brexit and why architects are always moving offices. From a brutalist carpark in Peckham to temporary buildings in Tokyo, we talk about how long buildings should last and why architects have to take risks to get ahead.

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My guest this week is Carl Turner, founder and Director of Carl Turner Architects.

Carl first shot to public attention in 2013 when he and his young practice won the RIBA’s Manser Medal – the architecture award for Britain’s house of the year. Slip House, the home he designed and built for himself is a steel-framed translucent glass home inserted into a gap in a traditional terraced street in Brixton, and featured on an early episode of Channel 4’s Grand Designs.

Following an architectural competition his practice went on to design and build Pop Brixton, a hugely popular community of independent retailers, restaurants and businesses in Brixton, which opened in 2015. Constructed principally from shipping containers, Pop Brixton went on to position Carl as a leading proponent of high-impact low-cost architecture.

Carl is now working on the Peckham Levels – a project to transform a former multi-storey car park in Peckham – which currently hosts the famous rooftop bar Frank’s Café – into a series of artist spaces.

Architecture Masters is a new podcast about the people behind the buildings: a series of short conversations with some of architecture’s leading lights

These are the people quietly shaping our cities – all hugely respected within the architectural profession, yet somehow their modest profile often belies the impact they have on the world around us.

You might have seen the stunning buildings they create, but what drives the creative genius behind these designers as they balance the difficult and often conflicting demands of running a profitable business with their passion for delivering beautiful, functional and uplifting spaces.

Architecture sits at the boundary between the arts and sciences. As architects they are all natural polymaths – their expertise and interests spans engineering to economics, transport to typography.

And their work touches every area of how we live today. They’re people buzzing with ideas, energy and a desire to change the world around them.

We take architecture as our starting point and let the conversation flow freely from there.

This is a programme for those that are interested in the people who are shaping our world.

Listen to the introduction here or subscribe on iTunes so you never miss an episode.