Here There Be Dragons

As many of you know, in addition to hosting and producing Here There Be Dragons, I also teach architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design. And for the past year, I’ve been working on A Pause Is Not A Break. An exhibition for the architecture department about the intersection of sound and architectural practice. Learn more at https://www.htbdpodcast.com/apauseisnotabreak. A PAUSE IS NOT A BREAK In architecture, we the practitioners of the built environment, have turned over our mode of communication so entirely to visual mediums, that we have been accused on many occasions of being poor listeners, poor readers, and perhaps, at the base of it, poor perceivers. What does the axonometric, the plan, the section, the elevation, the detail, the model miss? What have we failed to render in our visual pursuits? The medium of audio may seem like a privation, cutting us off from the images we use to make meaning but in sound there is a representation of liveliness that standard architectural drawings cannot always capture, and in many cases, actively avoid or sanitize. Unlike the eye, which has a natural defense against that which it does not wish to absorb, the ear has no such mechanism. It is difficult to close the ear without great effort. It requires instead a type of concentration that creates hierarchies of the sonic information that surrounds us. And so, sound becomes a ubiquitous medium––perhaps the most ubiquitous sense in space––taking on through its mundane repetitions a significant part of how we, the users of the built, make sense of space. How can we train the architect’s ear onto the issue of occupation, and so history, and so life? Perhaps the tools of repetition and invocation can remind us of what we know, what our minds have been storing all our lives. Special thanks to Adriene Lilly, Mohammad Golabi, Amy Kulper, Katy Rogers, Karen Bell, Carlos Medellin, Aine Guiney, Alex Eckman-Lawn, Uthman Olowo, Alia Varawalla, and of course the Design Research Seed Fund.

Don’t be alarmed. We’re working on a few experiments in between seasons. This is an episode swap with the experimental Berlin-based cultural magazine Errant Journal. We’re swapping an interview they did with Brazilian practitioner Felipe Altenfelder about his project Mida Ninja. We start off with an interview with the magazine and podcast editor Irene de Craen. Irene will be reposting the Moving episode from the Stockholm season starting with a brief interview with me. Be sure to check that out along with other Errant Podcast episodes. https://errantjournal.org

My city of New York is known more for it’s skyline than its outdoor offering. But in Stockholm, nature seemed to appear out of nowhere, intertwined within the city fabric. Even neighborhoods constantly labeled “dangerous” have pretty stunning views. How has Stockholm grown, and keeps growing, with natural spaces in mind ? Twitter/Instagram: @dragons_podcast Support us: patreon.com/htbdpodcast Sign up for our newsletter: www.htbdpodcast.com Record a question or comment for us and send to: htdbpodcast@gmail.com Check out Melissa Pons' Swedish Forest Textures: https://melissapons.bandcamp.com/album/swedish-forest-textures

The subway can tell you a lot about the geography of a city. Who gets off where and why? But at the central station all those wires get crossed and people are there for all types of reasons to work, to shop, to hustle, to hand out, to protest, to get out as fast as possible. So T-Centalen ticks a lot of factors on the Stockholm spectrum between fear and security. 1) Crowded and 2) Unpredictable and 3) Controlled. We’ll be navigating all three of these as we do the unimaginable, take our time in T-Centralen. Twitter/Instagram: @dragons_podcast Support us: patreon.com/htbdpodcast Sign up for our newsletter: www.htbdpodcast.com Record a question or comment for us and send to: htdbpodcast@gmail.com

In a country known for both pragmatic protestantism and Absolut Vodka, you can imagine there is some anxiety around alcohol, that swings between enjoyment and control. A spectrum of emotion that simmers in the background of Stockholm’s night life. So episode we’ll be talking about the party, the club, the bar, the night life of the city. Twitter/Instagram: @dragons_podcast Support us: patreon.com/htbdpodcast Sign up for our newsletter: www.htbdpodcast.com Record a question or comment for us and send to: htdbpodcast@gmail.com

Families are a common political battle ground. What’s good or bad for families is a regular explanation for everything from censorship to over-policing to immigration intolerance. So if families are so worth providing for and so worth protecting, what exactly are they afraid of? What do kids and parents feel they need to be safe in the city? This episode we’ll be discussing how parents and kids navigate the city. What’s working for them and what really isn’t. Twitter/Instagram: @dragons_podcast Support us: patreon.com/htbdpodcast Sign up for our newsletter: www.htbdpodcast.com Record a question or comment for us and send to: htdbpodcast@gmail.com

Knowing the rules and being able to navigate them can be a big part of feeling safe in the city. Whether newly arrived or born and bred, we’ll hear from Stockholmers trying to figure out the norms, how to use them, and how to change them. Will they have to bend to Stockholm or will Stockholm bend to them? Twitter/Instagram: @dragons_podcast Support us: patreon.com/htbdpodcast Sign up for our newsletter: www.htbdpodcast.com Record a question or comment for us and send to: htdbpodcast@gmail.com

We are taking a small break from our regularly scheduled programming to give listeners a little taste of the mini episodes that Patreon subscribers receive every other week. That's right, for subscribers Here There Be Dragons is a weekly podcast. Support us at: https://www.patreon.com/htbdpodcast You might remember that in episode 2, The Malms, we interviewed a Swedish-Chilean woman, Paulina Torres. If you haven’t listened to that episode, you might want to go and listen to it. Paulina told us about a traumatizing experience she had when she was about 16 or 17, in 1996. She was in the metro with her mother and grandfather when they got attacked by a mob of neo-nazis. Her story made it all the way to public radio. A well-known Swedish reporter Bosse Lindquist got in touch with Paulina. Together they tried to get answers from the police who just would not follow up on Paulina’s complaint. Today on the mini, we talk with Bosse Lindquist about what happened to Paulina in 1996 and more generally about the rise of neo-nazism in Sweden in the 1990s.

Last episode, we learned about a few key concepts. The design and planning of the Million Program. The increase of working class immigrants in Swedish cities. And the privatization of public housing. These conditions all woven together created a situation where urban immigrant families were stuck living on Stockholm’s periphery, in housing that was aging and coming apart. We’re going to pick up where we left off, exploring how buildings became ideas.

The more we poked around the edges of what Stockholmers meant when they talked about the separation in their cities, we realized people were talking about many different things. Because segregation comes in many forms. Racial segregation is often the most obvious. But there is also class segregation, segregation by citizenship, by social status, by family size, by age. And the way these forms of separation impact you also influences which forms of separation you are able to perceive. This episode we will be exploring Stockholm's separations and where they came from.

Housing is one of the hairiest urban planning questions. You have to get the balance absolutely perfect. If you build too much the cost of upkeep will bankrupt the state. But if you build too little, you’ll have a human crisis on your hands in no time. Sweden is a case study of this teeter totter, constantly chasing that perfect balance. And the right way to get it is always up for debate. Twitter/Instagram: @dragons_podcast Support us: http://patreon.com/htbdpodcast Sign up for our newsletter: www.htbdpodcast.com Record a question or comment for us and send to: htdbpodcast@gmail.com Also check out the music of Kristofer Svensson xkatedral.bandcamp.com/track/ir-himinn-gr-nn and Slackerist movecutclone.bandcamp.com/track/slacke…other-places.

No matter how neighborhoods change, old meanings and power structures remain. This episode, we explore how the power and wealth wielded in the neighborhoods of Södermalm, Östermalm, and Gamla Stan, impact city residents today. Check out Ellen Arkbo's music: https://ellenarkbro.bandcamp.com/album/for-organ-and-brass Twitter/Instagram: @dragons_podcast Sign up for our newsletter: www.htbdpodcast.com Record a question or comment for us and send to: htdbpodcast@gmail.com.

Welcome to Stockholm! For all the city's seeming calm and quiet there were many stories of fear, safety, and identity to be told. We are excited to take you to the big little capital of Sweden, where one in every five Swedish residents call home. Let's find out how Stockholmers feel about their city's bigness and smallness. We are produced with the generous support of the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in Fine Arts and Konstnarsnamden (The Swedish Arts Council. Our senior producer Adélie Pojzman-Pontay returns and we would also like to welcome our team of graduate assistants from the architecture department at the Rhode Island School of Design: Bilal Ismail Ahmed, Daniel Choconta Guerrero, Kimberly Ayala Najera, and Uthman Olowo. Fatou Camara consults for the show. Cory Jacobs does the music for the podcast. And the wonderful Adriene Lilly does our sound design. Support us on Patreon for HTBD stickers and exclusive mini-episodes spotlighting some amazing digressions that we can’t fit in the show. http://patreon.com/htbdpodcast Special thanks to Lev Bratishenko for voicing Ingmar Bergman. Also check out the music of Kristofer Svensson https://xkatedral.bandcamp.com/track/ir-himinn-gr-nn and Slackerist https://movecutclone.bandcamp.com/track/slackerist-skogas-other-places.

This time around Jess Myers returns alongside senior producer Adélie Pojzman-Pontay, to discuss the triumphs and trials of Stockholm, Sweden. Since the Cold War, Sweden has positioned itself as a third way between Soviet collectivism and American capitalism. Through the eyes of Stockholmers we explore how that vision has aged, as politics across the West seek to cast the country as the ideal of a socialist future or the crumbling of a failed experiment.

Paris: Centres (Season Finale) by Jessica Myers

It will come as no surprise to you that Paris, a city that is roughly two thousand years old, has had many plans for urban utopias. Utopias of morality, technology, health, and much more. Plans for the aristocracy, for the poor, for police, for immigrants and on and on. But one person’s utopia can be another person’s nightmare depending on who you talk to.  In this episode we’ll be diving into the utopias scattered throughout Paris in the 20th century. Who were they built for and who were they built to keep out?

This episode will focus not just on the identities of people but of places. We’ll be talking about the way that Paris is divided through years of history, politics and design. Cities have significant physical and psychic borders that create local bias and affinities. Paris is no different.

Last episode we talked about “French hipsters” or bobos and the anxiety about being perceived as one. This episode we’ll be expanding our ideas about how people want to be perceived in public space. The stereotype of Parisians being stylish and glamorous trendsetters is nothing new. But the more you get to know the city the more you see how style can be contentious. It often dances along the fault lines of gender, class, religion, race, and sexuality. How people dress is directly influenced by how they want to be treated in public space.

Bobo means bourgeois-bohème; a left leaning, culture loving elite. Kind of the French version of the hipster. Someone of or joining a more comfortable class who likes to dabble in the cultural spaces of the working class and/or ethnic groups. The bobo like the hipster is the boogieman of gentrification. No one wants to be bobo and yet we see them everywhere. And with their presence goes the neighborhoods we knew. This episode will be dispatches from and on the edge of Boboland.

Paris: Communautarisme (Community) by Jessica Myers