Superurbanism

Fernando Sordo Madaleno de Haro is a principal at Sordo Madaleno, the third generation of his family to work in a practice founded by his grandfather Juan Sordo Madaleno. In 2023 he established its London studio. Tim spoke to him about their work in Mexico, Hungary and Saudi Arabia.

Manifesta is an itinerant European Biennale and art-as-catalyst-for-development event that launched in 1996. In its 30th year, it arrived in the Ruhr Valley. Its founding director Hedwig Fijen and its first creative mediator and architect / planner Josep Bohigas spoke to Tim Abrahams.

An Fonteyne is the Brussels-based co-founder of noAarchitecten and a leading light in the design consortium that is designing Kanal Centre Pompidou. In the second part of their interview, she spoke to Tim Abrahams about the origins of retrofit.

Liam Young is an Australian-born architect, film director and artist who co-runs the M.A. in Fiction and Entertainment at Sci-Arc in Los Angeles. He spoke to Tim about his new show at the Barbican and the death of 60s environmentalist utopias.

Kanal Centre Pompidou in Brussels is one of the most important art museums built in Europe in the last couple of decades and will draw huge attention across the world when it opens later this year. Tim spoke to An Fonteyne, co-founder of noAarchitecten and a leading light in its design team alongside members of noArchitechten, Sergison Bates and EM2N.

Tobias Walliser is a director of LAVA Architects: an international network of offices known for their research on the combination of technology and the built world. LAVA’s global work spans architecture, interiors and master planning. Tim spoke to him about their work at the Dubai, Osaka and Riyadh Expos.

Niall McLaughlin is an Irish-born British architect whose work has been shortlisted for the RIBA Stirling Prize four times, winning in 2022 with the New Library at Magdalene College, Cambridge. He is this year's RIBA Gold Medal winner. McLaughlin is also a professor at the Bartlett at University College London.

Brendan Cormier is Curator at V&A East, the new extension of the Victoria and Albert Museum in East London. He has curated several major exhibitions for the museum including Cars: Accelerating the Modern World and Values of Design at Design Society in Shenzhen, China.

Oslo-based Nordic Office of Architecture led the redesign of Norway’s government district following the 2011 attacks, shaping into what they believe is an open, democratic civic environment. Tim gets a guided tour from the team around the new campus.

To create a coalition of architects as workers, OMA partner Reinier de Graaf has written a manifesto, Architecture Against Architecture. Are you ready to sign up? Tim takes the 14 points made by the Dutch architect – such as unions and construction moratoria – to the test. 

Tim talks to one of London’s most thoughtful practitioner’s Mary Duggan about her last project; a beautiful landscaped housing project amidst parkland in suburban London. Mary also explains the surprising new direction she’s chosen to take her beautifully crafted approach to architecture in.

Rolf Fehlbaum is Chairman Emeritus of Vitra; and the client behind the architectural flourishing of the Vitra Campus in Weil am Rhein. Tim asks him about his studies in utopian socialism; how Nick Grimshaw took to be being bumped for Frank Gehry and much more.

Shiv Malik was formerly an investigative journalist with the Guardian. He’s also co-author with Ed Howker of the book Jilted Generation: How Britain Has Bankrupted Its Youth. He is now working with Joe Reeve on Forest City: a new town for 1 million inhabitants near Cambridge in the UK.

Sam Jacob, Dean of the Institute of Architecture, University of Applied Arts Vienna, has a great show on at the Hypha gallery in No. 1 Poultry, London. Tim spoke to him about the complex ways architecture and money relate and where ruins feature in this tangle of meaning.

In London a stellar cast joined Tim Abrahams and regular News Review contributor Vicky Richardson for some drinks and nibbles to reflect on the architectural highlights of 2025.

Peter Murray is a London institution himself, although he is also the founder of several. He spoke to Tim about his ongoing investigations into how City Architects are defined in successful cities around the world and how they could be reintroduced into the UK. He also shared some personal news.

Pete Collard is exhibitions curator at the RIBA; and the brains behind a new show held at RIBA North in Liverpool called Home Ground, the Architecture of Football. Tim spoke to him about an architectural typology that was developed in the home of football but increasingly found its apogee away in Europe.

With controversy lingering over his personal conduct, three major new museums designed by David Adjaye open this month. Tim Abrahams goes beyond the scandal to explore his commitment to Africa’s cultural and social transformation.

The Superurbanism News Review is back again! Tim sits down with our good friend Vicky Richardson, former Architecture Curator at the Royal Academy to discuss the latest events in the architecture world and reaction to them. Award season is upon us in the United Kingdom and we talk through the early responses to Witherford Watson Mann’s victory in the Stirling Prize and much more.

In the early 21st century, Olafur Eliasson helped define a new era of public art with works that took on nature for scale. Tim Abrahams met him at the new Oxford North development and asked him what he makes of his metier as a public artist in a new era when who the public might be is less clear and the idea of nature is unstable.

Tim heads out to Almaty in Kazakhstan to talk to Asif Khan about his work on the Tselinny; an incredibly painstaking transformation of a 1964 Soviet cinema into an arts centre, which he undertook with Kazakh wife the architect Zaure Aitayeva.

This is the second half of a two part discussion with Andy Groarke of the London practice Carmody Groarke in which he and Tim discuss more recent buildings including archives for the Bibliotheque Francaise and for the British Library takes this idea about the relationship between materials and time into a different order.

Tim spoke to Ab Rogers about the exhibition he has curated, dedicated to his father Richard, at Sir John Soane’s Museum. They also talk about Ab's own career including his ongoing working relationship with the film director Wes Anderson, and their upcoming Design Museum show in London.

This is the first half of a two part discussion with Andy Groarke of the London practice Carmody Groarke. Talking to Tim, he explores the origins of the practice and the influence of Antony Gormley on their singular appreciation of materials and their relationship to time.

Richard J Williams’s latest book The Expressway World is about spaces built for cars, which humans live alongside. He and Superurbanism host Tim Abrahams took a drive down the M40 to discuss urban landscapes in Glasgow, New York, Seoul and more.

Charles Saumarez Smith is a distinguished British cultural historian and curator known for his leadership in major art institutions including the National Gallery and the Royal Academy. He spoke to Tim about his latest fascination, the life and works of the great British baroque architect John Vanburgh.

Tim talks to Pablo Bronstein, a London‑based artist born in Argentina, known primarily for his beautiful, clever drawings which have been collected by the Pompidou, the Met and the British Museum. His latest project at Waddesdon Manor plays with design history and explores how national identities are constructed.

Farshid Moussavi is the co-ordinator of the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy this year, the first architect to perform the task since Eva Jiřičná in 2013. Tim spoke to Farshid about her key curatorial decisions and to Stephanie MacDonald about her contribution to the annual arts jamboree.

Rem Koolhaas, principal of OMA, won the Pritzker Prize in 2000. His work Delirious New York is one of the best books written about architecture and cities. The Seattle Central Library and Casa da Musica in Porto are two of the great buildings of the early 21st century. Tim spoke to him about two recent exhibitions.

Tim talks bricks, nation building and temporary architecture with Marina Tabassum, the architect of this year’s Serpentine Pavilion. Born in Dhaka, Bangladesh in 1969, Tabassum was listed in TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in 2024. Her Bait Ur Rouf Mosque in Dhaka won the Aga Khan Award in 2016.

Tiffany Jenkins is author of Strangers and Intimates: The Rise and Fall of Private Life, published by Picador. “Always interesting, always well written and always provocative," said David Aaronovitch in The Observer. She has also just been made a trustee of the British Museum. Tim spoke to her about the need for the public and the private.

The Superurbanism News Review is back from the Venice Architecture Biennale. The super soaraway architecture podcast hears from curator Carlo Ratti on his vision for the event and then addresses how things turned out. Tim is joined by Vicky Richardson, former Architecture Curator at the Royal Academy to talk through the early reviews and give their own assessment.

Owen Hopkins is a British architectural historian and curator who is now the Director of the Farrell Centre in Newcastle. He is also one of four curators of the British Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale. Tim explored the dual perspective his positions grant him and the state of architectural exhibitions today.

Annabelle Selldorf is a German-born architect based in New York City known for her refined, modernist aesthetic. She recently completed the renovation of the Frick Collection in New York. Tim spoke to her though about the controversial reordering of the National Gallery’s Sainsbury Wing by Venturi Scott Brown.

Tom Emerson founded 6a architects with Stephanie Macdonald in 2001, completing the MK Gallery in 2019 and the South London Gallery in 2021. He has just published his first book Dirty Old River, a collection of essays that he discussed with Tim.

Tim talks to Samantha Hardingham about Cedric Price, subject of an exhibition touring UK architectural schools currently. Samantha, former director of the Architectural Association and academic director of the London School of Architecture, not only worked for Price but edited his collected works.

Jonathan Glancey, former architecture editor at The Guardian and, more recently, author and inhabitant of Venice, has just published the book Operation Bowler. It is the story of one of the forgotten episodes of World War II during which the Allies bombed La Serenissima. Tim talks to Jonathan about cities, destruction and Venice’s modernity.

In a recent paper, Patrik Schumacher, principal of Zaha Hadid Architects, declared the End of Architecture, terminated he says by petty politicking. Tim Abrahams spoke to him about the decline of schools, the sustainability agenda and what he would like to spend his time talking about if it wasn’t for woke.

Welcome to the Superurbanism News Review: a compendium and critique of the big stories that are dominating architecture and the associated professions this quarter. Giving her insight this episode is Vicky Richardson, the former editor of Blueprint and Head of Architecture and Drue Heinz Curator at the Royal Academy. We talk Aga Khan, wiggly roads and soft power.

Nicolas Fayad founded East architecture studio with Charles Kettaneh in 2015. Based in Lebanon and now the United Arab Emirates, the practice won the Aga Khan Award for Architecture for their refurbishment of an Oscar Niemeyer pavilion in Tripoli in 2022. Tim spoke to them in Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, at the opening of their temporary prayer space at the Islamic Arts Biennale.