Open City
Open City is a charity dedicated to making architecture and built heritage more open, accessible and equitable. Providing you with essential listening, inspiring voices and built environment insights – the Open City Podcast covers news and current events as well as in depth studies of landmark buildings, and cities around the UK and world. At the centre of our line-up is our flagship show The Brief – an award-winning review of the big stories in architecture, planning and housing news – hosted by Sahiba Chadha and Fran Williams on a fortnightly basis. Alongside this is Deconstructed – a monthly podcast hosted by Matthew Lloyd Roberts taking apart the architecture of individual buildings and InterCities – a monthly podcast hosted by Owen Hatherley exploring municipal transformation around the world. All three shows profile new, expert and diverse voices from across industry, journalism, academia and beyond. The Open City Podcast is produced by Hunter Charlton and Paige Reynolds. The commissioning editor is Merlin Fulcher. The Open City Podcast is supported by Bloomberg Connects, the free arts and culture platform and produced in association with the Architects’ Journal, London Society, C20 Society and Save Britain's Heritage. The Open City Podcast is recorded and produced at the Open City offices located in Bureau. To help support excellent and accessible, independent journalism about the buildings and the urban environment, please become an Open City Friend. Photo credit: Owen Hatherley portrait © Antonio Olmos Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Show episodes
In this episode of Deconstructed, Matthew Lloyd Roberts is joined by Alfred Yatlong Yeung to discuss British multiculturalism through the lens of The Old Justice in South Bermondsey, a South Korean styled public house that was built by Sidney C Clark in 1933. If you’ve enjoyed this series about the London County Counci
A new House of Commons report on child-centred design, financial strain for UK architectural firms and bold changes to the London Plan
In this episode, technical editor and deputy architecture editor of the Architects’ Journal Fran Williams is joined by Dinah Bornat, an architect and co-founder of ZCD Architects. She’s also the author of All to Play For: How to design child-friendly housing, published by the RIBA in February this year. Together they d
In The Room at Accelerate Debates is a new podcast from Open City, broadcasting the live debates from Accelerate, Open City’s free educational programme. In this episode, you’ll hear our first debate of the year, “Designing A Safer City”, asking: what does safety in the public realm really mean? Moderators Siraaj Mitha
This week on The Brief Sahiba Chadha is joined by the BBC broadcaster, writer and journalist Samira Ahmed to discuss the biggest stories in architecture, conservation planning news: A 21st century almshouse in Southwark wins the Stirling Prize // How Labour ministers are consistently rejecting Historic England’s listin
In this episode, the finale in a trilogy to mark 60 years since the end of the London County Council, Matthew Lloyd Roberts was joined by Dr Rosamund Lily West, Lecturer in Architectural Studies at the University of Manchester. They discussed Plumstead Common, a municipal park in South East London, the site of riots ov
In this episode, host Fran Williams is joined by Jos Boys, a disability design activist who co-founded Matrix Feminist Design Co-operative and is co-director of The DisOrdinary Architecture Project. Together they discuss: The government reveals the sites for its first new towns // A £5 billion pound fund is launched to