Time Sensitive

• Lina Ghotmeh on Ruin and Regeneration in Architecture

  Through her “archaeology of the future” design approach, the Lebanese-born, Paris-based architect Lina Ghotmeh has firmly established herself as a humanist who brings a profound awareness of past, present, and presence to all that she does. In the two decades since winning her breakthrough commission—the Estonian National Museum in Tartu—her practice has taken off, with Ghotmeh swiftly becoming one today’s fastest-rising architectural stars. Just a week after we recorded this episode of Time Sensitive, she was named the winner of a competition to design the British Museum’s Western Range and, shortly after that, she was announced as the architect of the new Qatar Pavilion in the historic Giardini of Venice; she is also the designer of the Bahrain Pavilion at the just-opened 2025 Osaka Expo. Across her high-touch, high-craft projects, whether a brick-clad Hermès leather-goods workshop in Normandy, France, completed in 2023; the timber-framed 2023 Serpentine Pavilion in London; or the concrete-walled Stone Garden apartment tower (2020) in Beirut, Ghotmeh celebrates the hand.On the episode, Ghotmeh reflects on the long-view, across-time qualities of her work and outlines what she believes is architecture’s role in shaping a better world ahead.Special thanks to our Season 11 presenting sponsor, L’École, School of Jewelry Arts.Show notes:Lina Ghotmeh[5:01] “The Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of Things”[5:01] George Kubler[5:01] Trevor Paglen[8:41] “The Long View: Why We Need to Transform How the World Sees Time”[8:41] Tim Ingold[11:15] “Windows of Light”[11:15] “Lecture: Lina Ghotmeh”[12:06] Beatriz Colomina[12:06] “Are We Human?”[19:58] Gaston Bachelard[24:04] Olga de Amaral[24:04] Cartier Foundation[24:04] Juhani Pallasmaa[24:04] “The Eyes of the Skin”[26:39] Luis Barragán[31:09] Stone Garden (2020)[31:09] Hermès Workshops (2023)[36:36] Peter Zumthor[36:36] “Atmospheres”[41:53] Khalil Khouri[44:51] Jean Nouvel[44:51] Norman Foster[44:51] Estonian National Museum (2016)[46:41] Renzo Piano[46:41] Richard Rogers[46:41] Maya Lin[46:41] Dan Dorell[46:41] Tsuyoshi Tane[50:45] “The Poetic, Humanistic Architecture of Lina Ghotmeh”[51:40] Rimbaud Museum[54:48] “Light in Water” (2015)[54:48] The Okura Tokyo[59:22] Les Grands Verres, Palais de Tokyo (2017)[59:44] Zero-Carbon Hotel Concept (2019)[59:42] Serpentine Pavilion (2023)[1:04:11] Osaka Expo Bahrain Pavilion (2025) 

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  1:07:56
• Leonard Koren on Life as an Aesthetic Experience

  For as long as he can remember, Leonard Koren has been searching for beauty and pleasure. Throughout his career, the author and artist—he prefers the term “creator”—has spent considerable time putting to paper expressions and conceptual views that architects, artists, designers, and others have long struggled to find the proper framing of or words for. In 1976, when he launched the counterculture publication WET: The Magazine of Gourmet Bathing, he ushered in the idea of “gourmet bathing,” which has maintained a potent cultural niche in the nearly 50 years since. With Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers, published in 1994, Koren introduced the Japanese expression for “beautiful, imperfect, and impermanent” to the West, where it quickly took on a life of its own. Perhaps one of Koren’s greatest talents is his rare ability to translate philosophical meditations on seemingly esoteric subjects into accessible, approachable texts about ways of being, seeing, thinking, making, and feeling. On the episode, Koren details his best—and worst—baths, and explains why he views his life as one long aesthetic experience.Special thanks to our Season 11 presenting sponsor, L’École, School of Jewelry Arts.Show notes:Leonard Koren[4:01] “Undesigning the Bath”[7:30] Century Tower[7:30] 7132 Hotel (Therme Vals)[9:26] “WET: The Magazine of Gourmet Bathing”[9:26] Max Palevsky[9:26] Craig Elwood[13:32] “From ‘WET’ to ‘Wabi-Sabi’: Leonard Koren’s Adventurous Aesthetic Journey”[13:32] Mick Jagger[13:32] Richard Gere[13:32] Debbie Harry[17:09] Charlie Haas[18:25] “The Slow Lane”[18:25] Pilar Viladas[21:49] “How to Take a Japanese Bath”[21:49] “Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers”[21:49] “Wabi-Sabi: Further Thoughts”[28:23] Okakura Kakuzō’s “The Book of Tea”[31:38] Glenn Adamson[31:38] Sen no Rikyū[39:29] “Noise Reduction: A 10-Minute Meditation for Quieting the Mind”[42:32] “The Haggler’s Handbook”[44:22] “283 Useful Ideas from Japan”[46:56] “The Flower Shop”[46:56] Blumenkraft[46:56] “On Creating Things Aesthetic”[46:56] “Which “Aesthetics” Do You Mean?”

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  1:00:47
• Pico Iyer on the Pleasure and Profundity of Silence

  Since publishing his debut essay collection—Video Night in Kathmandu, featuring far-flung reportage from 10 Asian countries—in 1988, the prolific travel writer Pico Iyer has gone on to write more than a dozen books exploring themes ranging from displacement and identity to globalization and technology, as well as contribute to publications such as The New York Times, Time, and Condé Nast Traveler. Over the years, Iyer’s travels have taken him to some of the world’s most remote destinations—North Korea, Bhutan, and Iceland, to name a few—but it’s his hundred-plus visits to a Benedictine hermitage in Big Sur, California, that form the heart of his latest book, Aflame: Learning From Silence. Connecting with his inner stillness during these various sojourns in solitude has left him wholly transformed, opening him up to discover the thrumming, ineffable joy of being truly awake to the world and wonderfully alive. On this episode of Time Sensitive, Iyer explores the purpose and joy of travel, and shares deeply moving reflections about what he finds most essential in life.Special thanks to our Season 11 presenting sponsor, L’École, School of Jewelry Arts.Show notes:Pico Iyer[4:25] “Aflame”[4:25] “Autumn Light”[4:25] Philip Larkin[4:25] “The Art of Poetry No. 30”[7:18] Bashō[7:18] Leonard Cohen[10:21] New Camaldoli Hermitage[10:21] Post Ranch Inn [16:25] “Postmodern Tourism: A Conversation with Pico Iyer”[17:08] “The Eloquent Sounds of Silence”[21:48] “The Joy of Quiet”[31:42] “What Ping-Pong Taught Me About Life”[33:14] “Walden”[37:28] “The Open Road”[41:37] “Video Night in Kathmandu”[41:37] “The Lady and the Monk”[41:37] “Lonely Places”[41:37] The Global Soul[44:40] “In the Realm of Jet Lag”[52:35] “Culture: The Leading Hotels of the World”[55:17] Potala Palace[55:17] Naoshima, Japan[55:17] Teshima, Japan[55:17] Narita, Japan[01:00:43] “The Half Known Life”[01:10:10] “No Time”

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  1:14:13
• Faye Toogood on Creation as a Form of Connection

  Faye Toogood is perhaps best known for her Roly-Poly chair, among the more famous pieces of furniture to come out of the 2010s and take over the zeitgeist, but the London-based designer’s artistry and craft runs much deeper and spans much wider. She began finding, collecting, cataloging, producing, and editing her “assemblages” long before she ever had a name for them, and her design career has been marked by exactly that, beginning with the debut of Assemblage 1 (2010) and through to her latest, Assemblage 8: Palette (2024). On the whole, Toogood’s creations serve as material investigations and discipline-defying attempts to better understand herself. Without formal training in design, Toogood—who was the Designer of the Year at the Maison&Objet design fair in Paris this past January and the Stockholm Furniture Fair’s Guest of Honor in February—uses what she describes as the feeling of being “a fraud in the room” to her advantage. Through her work, she is an enigma; with projects across furniture, interiors, fashion, and homewares, she’s unwilling to be defined by a single output and has instead built a multilayered practice and belief system that allows her to be “all heart and hands.” On this week’s Time Sensitive—our debut of Season 11—Toogood talks about the acts of creation and connection, and how each underscores the enduring play that’s ever-present in her work.Special thanks to our Season 11 presenting sponsor, L’École, School of Jewelry Arts.Show notes:Faye ToogoodToogood[3:49] Assemblage 1[7:43] Assemblage 7[13:28] Seamus Heaney[14:50] Isamu Noguchi[14:50] Kan Yasuda[17:23] Roly-Poly chair[18:06] Rachel Whiteread[20:07] Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden[22:45] Matisse Chapel[25:40] “Ways of Seeing”[29:57] “Womanifesto!”[36:55] Assemblage 8[52:17] “The World of Interiors”

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  1:07:58
• Malcolm Gladwell on Finding Freedom in Abandoning Expectations

  Malcolm Gladwell may be one of the most widely read—and, with his Revisionist History podcast, listened to—journalists of our time. A New Yorker magazine staff writer and the author of seven New York Times bestsellers, including The Tipping Point (2000), Blink (2005), and Outliers (2008), he has myriad awards and honors to his name. But this impressive trajectory has never been some planned-out or preordained journey; in fact, as Gladwell says on this episode of Time Sensitive, he has never been one to try to overly plan for or divine the future—of his career, of his life, or of anything, really. “Expectations are a burden and wherever possible should be abandoned,” he says. Gladwell’s radical receptiveness is perhaps what has led him to become one of today’s most prolific and eclectic writers, reporting on topics ranging from office design and french fries, to dog fighting and Steve Jobs, to automobile engineers and marijuana. Across all of his writing, Gladwell exhibits a rare sleight-of-hand ability to take certain intellectual or academic subjects and leap-frog them into popular culture, and, in doing so, make seemingly esoteric phenomena entertaining and widely accessible.On the episode—recorded in the Pushkin Industries outpost in Hudson, New York—Gladwell talks about the disappearance of what he calls “the critical enterprise in America”; and how A.I. is complicating his famous “10,000-Hour Rule.”Special thanks to our Season 10 presenting sponsor, L’École, School of Jewelry Arts.Show notes:Malcolm Gladwell[4:36] Revenge of the Tipping Point[5:06] The Tipping Point[13:43] Unsafe at Any Speed[22:52] Anand Giridharadas[24:00] Revisionist History[25:39] Blink[31:07] The Holocaust in American Life[43:16] “10,000-Hour Rule”[43:16] Outliers[56:06] The Bomber Mafia (Podcast Mini Series)[56:06] Pushkin Industries[59:56] John Grisham[1:06:56] The Bomber Mafia  (Book)

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