David Godshall and Kasey Toomey are partners at Terremoto, a landscape architecture design studio based in Los Angeles and the Bay Area. Founded by Godshall and Alain Peauroi, Terremoto creates gardens that blend material exploration and conceptual ideas that seek to do right by the land while also acknowledging the laborer, the wildlife, and Indigenous communities on whose land they now live and work. In this conversation, Jarrett talks with David and Kasey about the philosophy of garden design, garden as a verb, their work in labor activism, and why garden design might be a model for the future of design practice. Links from this episode are available at www.scratchingthesurface.fm/275-david-godshall-kasey-toomey.
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274. Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby
Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby use design as a medium to interrogate our relationship to reality. They are the authors of multiple books, including 2013’s Speculative Everything and 2025’s Not Here, Not Now. Until recently, they were professors of Design and Social Inquiry at The New School where they ran the Design Realities Lab. In this conversation, Jarrett talks with Dunne and Raby about how their new book expands upon and responds to their previous work, how their practice has evolved over the last ten years, and why they don’t like calling themselves speculative designers. Links from this episode are available at www.scratchingthesurface.fm/274-anthony-dunne-fiona-raby
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273. Nick Foster
Nick Foster is a futures designer and author of the new book Could Should Might Don’t: How We Think About The Future. Trained as an industrial designer, he has spent his career exploring the future for a range of companies, most recently as the Head of Design at Google X, where he led a team of designers, researchers, and prototypers in the company’s “moonshot factory.” In this conversation, Jarrett and Nick talk about where our images of the future come from, design’s role in thinking about the future, and why we need to find new ways to talk about the futures we want. Links from this episode can be found at scratchingthesurface.fm/273-nick-foster
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272. Joel Towers
Joel Towers is the president of The New School in New York City. Trained as an architect, President Towers joined the school in 2004, first as a faculty member and director of Sustainable Design and Urban Ecology and most recently as executive dean of Parsons School of Design from 2009 to 2019. In this conversation, Jarrett and President Towers talk about the state of higher education, the shifting nature of design education, and how studying architecture in the late eighties shaped the work he does today. Links from this episode can be found at scratchingthesurface.fm/272-joel-towers
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211. Lydia Kallipoliti (Originally aired 3/30/22)
Lydia Kallipoliti is an architect, engineer, and scholar. She is an assistant professor at the Cooper Union School of Architecture, the author of the book The Architecture of Closed Worlds and is the co-curator of the 2022 Tallinn Architecture Biennale. In this conversation, Jarrett and Lydia talk about being an architect who doesn’t build, Lydia’s concept of ‘immersive scholarship’, and alternative forms of disseminating research. This episode originally aired 3/30/22.
Scratching the Surface is a podcast about design, theory, and creative practice. Hosted by Jarrett Fuller, each episode features wide-ranging conversations with designers, architects, writers, academics, artists, and theorists about how design shapes culture. Previous guests include architecture critic Paul Goldberger, MoMA design curator Paola Antonelli, architect and OMA partner Reinier de Graaf, Pentagram partner Michael Bierut, RISD President Rosanne Somerson, writer Kurt Andersen, and designer Jessica Helfand. Featured in Architectural Digest, Dezeen, Curbed, and Eye. New episodes every other Wednesday.
Colombia