Ecogradia Season 1
The sustainable architecture and urbanism podcast
Last updated: December 13, 2022
On our podcast, you’ll find inspiring stories from thinkers and makers who are shaping a regenerative future. Nirmal Kishnani
Episodes
Episode 6 - The kinetic city
December 13, 2022
Cities are evolving, living systems, says Rahul Mehrotra, Chair of the Department of Urban Planning & Design at the Harvard GSD and Head of the Holcim Awards jury for Asia Pacific in 2014. Why then do we design them as fixed and permanent? Is it time for a new theory of urbanism, better suited to the developing world, where urban space is often used in transient ways?
Episode 5 - Landscape as “Art of Survival”
December 6, 2022
Kongjian Yu from Turenscape asserts that we all want to live closer to nature. But can urban landscapes be designed to mimic natural systems and processes? And if replicated, what would a nature-based design approach mean to future cities?
Episode 4 - An architecture of almost somewhere
November 29, 2022
Manit Rastogi and Sonali Rastogi of Morphogenesis examine how buildings can address local and global imperatives. Can it be informed by the vernacular and yet be energy efficient? Can it be locally attuned and low carbon? What would this look like, say, in a place like India?
Episode 3 - Low tech and low energy for high comfort
November 22, 2022
Wolfgang Kessling from Transsolar, and Holcim Awards winner for High-Performance Tower in Australia examines low tech and low energy for high comfort. Cooling and heating consume a lot of power in buildings. But what if the answer to the question of comfort was only partly about mechanical solutions? What if we could create comfort indoors with little or even no energy?
Episode 2 - Making sense of sustainable finance
November 22, 2022
Prashant Kapoor Chief Industry Specialist for Green Buildings and Climate-Smart Cities at the International Finance Corporation (IFC), World Bank examines how to make sense of sustainable finance. We are seeing today a newfound interest in sustainable finance. Words like Green bonds and Green mortgages are increasingly common. But what do they actually mean?
Episode 1 - (Re)Imagining the city
November 22, 2022
Holcim Awards winners for Floating University in Bangladesh Wong Mun Summ and Richard Hassell from WOHA in Singapore examine how the problems of cities can be fixed today. Is density at the expense of liveability? Are human-made and natural systems — key to our survival — at odds with each other? Can design offer a solution?