Ep. 134: Parks of the 21st Century and Architectural History with Victoria Newhouse

Talking Beats with Daniel Lelchuk

"A park is a green space that has many purposes. But beyond that, recent parks pay a lot of attention to environmental issues that are now extremely important in view of climate change."

Renowned architectural historian Victoria Newhouse joins the podcast. After her previous books that deal with some of the most important figures and buildings in 20th century architecture, she (and photographer Alex Pisha) is out with a book on the great urban parks of the 21st century. From Shanghai to Detroit, Brooklyn to Frankfurt, and everywhere in between, great new urban parks are being designed. Often reclaiming territory where factories, industrial waterfront, and wasteland had been, these new parks are redefining what “green space” can be in the modern world. Also in the conversation is a discussion about the future of affordable housing, and how 3D printing may be the technological solution to this great and growing societal problem.

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Victoria Newhouse is an American architectural historian. She founded the Architectural History Foundation, a nonprofit scholarly book publisher, and is a frequent author on architecture-related subjects. She has written for major architecture journals and newspapers.

Newhouse established the Architectural History Foundation, a nonprofit scholarly book publisher, in 1977. The foundation aimed to support books that would otherwise be unpublished, and to raise the quality of works about architecture. Victoria Newhouse's works have a variety of subjects over time periods and regions, though she analyzes architecture in each of her works by referencing buildings' structural, social, and political aspects. Newhouse was a judge for the Pritzker Prize, "architecture's highest honor", for three years from 2006 to 2008. She writes and lectures about museums, writing articles for The New York Times, Architectural Record, Architectural Digest, and ArtNews. Her books include Wallace K. Harrison, Architect, Art and the Power of Placement, and Chaos and Culture: Renzo Piano Building Workshop and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center in Athens.