In this episode, host Sahiba Chadha is joined by architecture and design writer and features editor at STIR. Anmol Ahuja. Together they discuss:

Can the new housing secretary deliver on the government’s 1.5 million homes pledge? // The shortlist for this year’s RIBA Stirling Prize is revealed // Greenwich and Kent merger to create the UK’s first ‘super-university’ // And a Finnish architect wins the contest for a Helsinki site which has been the focus of thousands of competing designs

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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. Bureau is a co-working space for creatives offering a new approach to membership workspace. Bureau prioritises not just room to think and do, but also shared resources and space to collaborate.

To help support excellent and accessible, independent journalism about the buildings and the urban environment, please become an Open City Friend.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode Matthew Lloyd Roberts was joined by Nigel Smith, who runs ‘Memory Palaces’, a website and programme of walking tours to explore the history of London’s cinemas. They discussed the Carlton Cinema on Essex Road, Islington, which first opened to the public in a grand ceremony in 1930, and represents the changing fashions and fate for cinema-going throughout the 20th-century.

Nigel will be giving walking tours of London cinemas over the coming months, including the Carlton. For more information, check out his website:

https://memorypalaces.co.uk/walks/former-carlton-cinema/

Subscribe to the Open City Podcast on Spotify, Soundcloud or iTunes

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. Bureau is a co-working space for creatives offering a new approach to membership workspace. Bureau prioritises not just room to think and do, but also shared resources and space to collaborate.

To help support excellent and accessible, independent journalism about the buildings and the urban environment, please become an Open City Friend.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, host Fran Williams is joined by Open House Festival Director Celia Mead. Celia is a management consultant who has run major organisations and cultural heritage festivals to discuss:

Less than ten days until Open House Festival 2025 // Environmental concerns over plans to redevelop Liverpool Street Station // An unexpected fall in UK house prices // And Donald Trump’s campaign to ‘Make Federal Architecture Beautiful Again’

Subscribe to the Open City Podcast on Spotify, Soundcloud or iTunes

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. Bureau is a co-working space for creatives offering a new approach to membership workspace. Bureau prioritises not just room to think and do, but also shared resources and space to collaborate.

To help support excellent and accessible, independent journalism about the buildings and the urban environment, please become an Open City Friend.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Buzzwords is a new pilot podcast from Open City, produced in collaboration with the arts and culture podcast EMPIRE LINES. The podcast unpacks words and phrases often overused in the fields of art and architecture. Produced by curator, writer, and researcher Jelena Sofronijevic, each episode invites artists, curators, architects, and academics to consider what we really mean when we use terms like “sustainable” or “decolonised.”

In this episode, Jelena speaks with artist Jasmina Cibic about the idea of “care thinking” and what it means to be both care-ful and care-less in the practice, performance, and preservation of art and cultural artefacts. Their conversation ranges from Cibic’s current exhibition The Gift Ecology at Void Art Centre in Derry, to her representation of Slovenia at the 55th Venice Biennale, exploring how care shapes her work and what we might learn from it.

The theme music is “Devotion” by Jim Hall from the Free Music Archive, licensed under a Attribution 4.0 International License.

Subscribe to the Open City Podcast on Spotify, Soundcloud or iTunes

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. Bureau is a co-working space for creatives offering a new approach to membership workspace. Bureau prioritises not just room to think and do, but also shared resources and space to collaborate.

To help support excellent and accessible, independent journalism about the buildings and the urban environment, please become an Open City Friend.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, host Merlin Fulcher is joined by the Head of Climate Action and Public Health at Love Design Studio and Shade the UK, Polly Turton. Together, they discuss the biggest stories this week in architecture and planning news:

Warnings over dangerously hot UK homes amid a fourth heatwave this year // The search begins for design teams to upgrade Oxford Street // Brick Lane regeneration plans symbolically rejected // And how a North London school hall could become the UK’s first Museum of Brutalist Architecture

Subscribe to the Open City Podcast on Spotify, Soundcloud or iTunes

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. Bureau is a co-working space for creatives offering a new approach to membership workspace. Bureau prioritises not just room to think and do, but also shared resources and space to collaborate.

To help support excellent and accessible, independent journalism about the buildings and the urban environment, please become an Open City Friend.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, the second of a trilogy to mark 60 years since the end of the London County Council, Matthew Lloyd Roberts was joined by Dr Ruth Lang. They discussed London County Hall, the purpose-built home of the London County Council which sits on the south bank of the Thames at Westminster. It was designed by Ralph Knott and built from 1911–1939 and was the home of London’s Municipal government until the abolition of the Greater London Council in 1986.

Subscribe to the Open City Podcast on Spotify, Soundcloud or iTunes

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. Bureau is a co-working space for creatives offering a new approach to membership workspace. Bureau prioritises not just room to think and do, but also shared resources and space to collaborate.

To help support excellent and accessible, independent journalism about the buildings and the urban environment, please become an Open City Friend.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, host Merlin Fulcher is joined by the architecture journalist and co-host of The Brief Fran Williams. Together, they discuss the biggest stories this week in architecture and planning news:

Kew Gardens opens a brand new carbon garden and pavilion // Conservation groups unite to rescue a Brutalist gem in the Scottish borders // Restoration plans for Bexhill’s De La Warr Pavilion revealed // And an opportunity for built environment exhibits inside one of London’s greatest postmodern landmarks

Subscribe to the Open City Podcast on Spotify, Soundcloud or iTunes

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. Bureau is a co-working space for creatives offering a new approach to membership workspace. Bureau prioritises not just room to think and do, but also shared resources and space to collaborate.

To help support excellent and accessible, independent journalism about the buildings and the urban environment, please become an Open City Friend.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

InterCities is a six-part podcast series from Open City. In it, we travel to a number of cities and boroughs around the world that have transformed over time to discover what we can learn from these places’ achievements, struggles, successes and mistakes.

In this episode, our host Owen Hatherley is joined by Brian Hioe, a Taiwanese-American writer and academic based in Taipei, known for co-founding New Bloom Magazine and for his work exploring Taiwan’s youth movements, politics, and culture. His 2025 debut novel, Taipei at Daybreak, blends activism and fiction to explore the emotional motivations and alienation behind the Sunflower Movement from a ground‑level perspective. We use the novel to talk about Taipei’s shifting identity, the colonial ghosts the city is haunted by and how the architectural and urban spaces of Taipei shape the city's social and political movements.

Subscribe to the Open City Podcast on Spotify, Soundcloud or iTunes

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.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.