Podcast Summary: LSE — Architecture and Design: Framing the Urban Experience

Podcast: LSE: Public Lectures and Events
Host: LSE Film and Audio Team (Amy Mollett)
Original Air Date: December 3, 2013

Episode Overview

This episode explores how architecture and design frame our experiences of the urban environment. Through in-depth conversations with architect David Kohn, sociologist Fran Tonkis, and geographer Hyun Bang Shin, the episode delves into topics such as the symbolism of design in iconic urban projects, the limits and possibilities of urban planning, the social life of cities, and the complex realities behind urban displacement. The conversations unpack not just the aesthetics of architecture, but how design mediates power, memory, and social interaction in contemporary cities.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Reimagining London’s Urban Experience: "A Room for London"

Speakers: Amy Mollett (Host); David Kohn (Architect, project lead); Cheryl Brumley (Producer); Fiona Banner (Artist, in partnership, referenced)

• Origin of the Project:

  • David Kohn and Fiona Banner designed "A Room for London," a hotel perched above the Thames, modelled on the riverboat from Joseph Conrad’s "Heart of Darkness."
  • The concept was to invite reflection on London, both the city’s physical presence and its historical depths.
  • The project interweaves narrative, architecture, and urban perspective:

    “We wanted it to be something that would be both beautiful and perhaps really encourage you to think more deeply about the city and your place within it...” —David Kohn [03:03]

• Layering of Stories and Experience:

  • The boat’s design alludes to Conrad’s journey and London’s imperial past, offering guests a way to see the city through new, even unsettling, lenses.
  • Quote from Conrad’s novel emphasizes the atmospheric, almost dreamlike vantage of the boat:

    “The sea reach of the Thames stretched before us like the beginning of an interminable waterway...” —Reading from "Heart of Darkness" [03:32]

• Reflection as Architectural Purpose:

  • The design promotes “episodic character,” engaging guests as participants rather than passive viewers:

    “The architecture...is also an invitation to actually dwell there. That is how it is being architecture, and that’s what also liberates you from the tyranny of having to look at it in one way and then leave.” —David Kohn [00:41, 08:59]

• Public/Private Perception:

  • Despite its prominence, guests feel curiously detached from the city below:

    “The city just seems to go about its business, oblivious to your presence...” —David Kohn [06:57]

  • Cheryl Brumley describes the experience as “strangely displaced,” turning familiar city views into something uncanny:

    “I didn’t feel like I was anywhere near where I lived...It was like I was looking at it anew.” —Cheryl Brumley [08:39]

• Integration into City Life:

  • The project spurs conversation on the river’s renewed role as more than a backdrop—a possible “new centre” for arrival, departure, and urban identity:

    “The Thames [is] becoming increasingly central to the identity and life of the city... What happens if at every ferry point there is a new sense of arrival and departure, a new public space?” —David Kohn [09:39]

2. The Social Life of Urban Form

Speaker: Fran Tonkis (Sociologist, LSE Cities Program)

• Ambivalence of Cities:

  • Cities are both solution and problem sites—depending entirely on how they are used, governed, and experienced:

    “Cities...are so often seen as both problems and solutions... It all depends, of course, how cities are used and lived in and governed, and questions of distribution within them.” —Fran Tonkis [12:44]

• Who Designs the City?:

  • Challenges the myth that architects and planners are the main authors of urban life; ordinary people shape cities by “making do,” creating informal markets, and adapting living space:

    “Cities are being built...by ordinary people in their efforts to find shelter, to develop their livelihoods...” —Fran Tonkis [13:18]
    “So often the ways in which cities are made and remade is not about purpose or intention, it’s about unintended consequences of actions...” [13:59]

• Limitations of Urban Policy:

  • Mixed-tenure ‘diversity’ policies often create proximity without true integration; interaction cannot be engineered:

    “People living alongside each other, but not interacting, not necessarily using the same local services and potentially seeing each other as problematic.” [16:30]
    “We need to think about creating non-exclusionary spaces. You don’t have to be friends with your neighbors...this is something that can’t and shouldn’t be engineered.” [16:30]

• Segregation and Inequality:

  • Contrasts apartheid-era South Africa, US cities, and historically more mixed UK cities; identifies both deliberate and market-driven forms of urban inequality:

    “It’s possible to live in very close physical proximity and maintain very great social distances.” [19:16]
    “We are seeing...a resorting of population through the private housing market...” [18:40]

• “The Devil Gets All the Best Designs”:

  • Repressive, exclusionary, and profit-driven architecture is often the most successful — “gated housing,” “security walls” and “speculative investment” shape cities more than utopian design:

    “More repressive designs are often more successful in built terms… Architecture and design that is geared to maximizing returns on investment and maximizing profits makes the most conspicuous and often the most spectacular insertions in the landscape.” [20:09]

• No Miracle Workers:

  • Architects and sociologists must accept their limits; city-making is not a technical problem to be “solved” with design alone:

    “The architect is no more a miracle worker than the sociologist.” [21:12]

3. Urban Displacement and Critical Perspectives

Speaker: Hyun Bang Shin (Assoc. Professor, Geography and Urban Studies, LSE)

• Risks of Radical Thought:

  • Recounts the danger of reading Marxist literature (“red books”) under South Korea’s strict national security laws in the 1990s:

    “Having and studying these red books intensely was coming with great risks...” —Hyun Bang Shin [22:44]

• Understanding Displacement:

  • Describes the phenomenon of mass displacement in Seoul ahead of the 1988 Olympics, and the contradictory acquiescence of the growing middle class:

    “They didn’t mind this displacement. They were to some extent indirectly participating... because they took the opportunity to become homeowners...” [24:32]

• Why Accept Displacement?:

  • Explains, through Marx and Gramsci, how ideological consent—especially around homeownership—enables widespread social change, even among those indirectly harmed:

    “Gramsci talks about... how the ruling class makes an ideological imposition upon the populace so the people reach a consensus to accept the ideologies imposed by the ruling class. So to some extent it’s voluntary and involuntary acceptance of the ideologies, like home ownership, for example.” [27:14]

• Continuing Critical Engagement:

  • These theories continue to influence his research on urban change, displacement, and the uneven effects of capital accumulation.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “The architecture...is also an invitation to actually dwell there. That is how it is being architecture, and that’s what also liberates you from the tyranny of having to look at it in one way and then leave.” —David Kohn [00:41]
• “The city just seems to go about its business, oblivious to your presence, so that...you seem to be completely detached.” —David Kohn [06:57]
• “I didn’t feel like I was anywhere near where I lived...It was like I was looking at it anew.” —Cheryl Brumley [08:39]
• “Cities intensify processes. They intensify benefits, but they also intensify risks and they intensify conflicts.” —Fran Tonkis [13:18]
• “Repressive designs are often more successful in built terms...architecture and design that is geared to maximizing profits makes the most spectacular insertions.” —Fran Tonkis [20:09]
• “Having and studying these red books intensely was coming with great risks...” —Hyun Bang Shin [22:44]
• “Gramsci...talks about how the ruling class makes an ideological imposition upon the populace so people reach a consensus to accept the ideologies imposed by the ruling class.” —Hyun Bang Shin [27:14]

Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:08 — Introduction & episode overview (Amy Mollett)
• 03:03 — David Kohn discusses the conceptual inspiration for "A Room for London"
• 06:57 — Reflections on the project’s relationship to city life and urban anonymity
• 08:39 — Cheryl Brumley on the emotional experience of inhabiting the "Room"
• 09:39 — David Kohn speculates on the future centrality of the Thames in London’s identity
• 12:44 — Fran Tonkis: Cities as both solutions and problems
• 13:18 — On informal urban design and city-building by “ordinary people”
• 16:30 — Mixed-tenure housing and the limits of engineered social interaction
• 17:37 — Discussing segregation and spatial inequality in global cities
• 20:09 — “The devil gets all the best designs”: Spectacle and power in architecture
• 22:44 — Hyun Bang Shin on the risks of radical reading in South Korea and displacement in Seoul
• 27:14 — Gramsci, ideology, and the accommodation of displacement

Summary Tone & Takeaway

The episode maintains a thoughtful and lightly conversational academic tone throughout, combining theoretical reflection with experiential accounts and concrete examples. Listeners are invited to consider how architecture is never neutral—always framing, enabling, or constraining social experience. The perspectives of architects, sociologists, and urban geographers converge to challenge simple ideas of urban "improvement" and urge a deeper understanding of the complex forces—material, social, ideological—that continuously shape our cities.