February 2026: CCA Closes, The importance of making, the relationship between music and design
Plus conversations about short books on architecture and ten years of NY-based PAU.
In January, we spoke with Ghostly founder Sam Valenti IV about music and design and designer and educator Otto von Busch about the false promises of design education.
EDITOR’S NOTE
The announced closure of CCA (California College of the Arts) in San Francisco was a shock to me. I lived in SF for a few years in the early 2010s and have interviewed many, many faculty, both former and current on the show over the years — Eric Heiman, Rachel Berger, Mary Banas, Martin Venezsky, James Voorheis, Tim Belonax — and the school was always important in my own design research (more on that in the postscript below). Following on the heels of the closure of University of the Arts in Philadelphia and the turmoil at The New School in New York, higher education and especially higher education in art and design has never felt more precarious. I don’t know what to make of it and I don’t have solutions but I know we all feel it. I’ll continue to highlight and promote design education on this show, however insignificant my voice feels. It’s the core of what we do here.
Otto von Busch, who I talked to on the show this month, has some strong thoughts on design education and I urge you to listen to our conversation where he calls out the hypocrisy of what we teach and what we want from design. On a lighter note, but equally important, it was a treat to have Sam Valenti, founder of one of my favorite record labels, on the show as they celebrate their 25th anniversary with a monograph of the label’s design output. It’s a conversation about how art, design, music are the most important ways to help create culture.
Despite my preference being the one asking questions, I was delighted to answer some questions from Julia Gamolina for the Madame Architect Expanding the Conversation series. We talk about interviewing, the origins of the podcast, and my other work teaching and writing. It was fun! Go read it here (and re-listen to when I interviewed Julia here!).
If you like what we do here and want to support this work, you can upgrade your subscription for just $5/month or $50/year. Paid members get bonus interviews each month — like this month’s conversation with PAU founder Vishaan Chakrabarti — and help keep the show free for everyone, all the time. Thanks for listening.
See you next month,
Jarrett
SCRATCH
Recent essays, interviews, and stories published on our Scratch platform.
Vishaan Chakrabarti on 10 years of PAU
For our members-only newsletter, we caught up with Vishaan Chakrabarti (episode 133) to talk about the first decade of his firm that blends architecture and urbanism.
Sightlines, a new book series, features essays on architecture from a particular point of view
MACK, the famed photo book publishers, are launching a new series of short books on architecture.
PAST GUESTS
Recent work, writing, and news from former guests of Scratching the Surface.
🔮 We’re obsessed with thinking about what’s to come but we’re not very good at it. Nick Foster identifies four ways to help change that. (RSA Journal)
✊ Power of the Source: Nikil Saval on Zohran Mamdani’s NY victory. (The New York Review of Books)
🗄️ Would you kill for a job? Jenny Odell writes about Park Chan-Wook’s new film, “No Other Choice.” (NYT)
💰 Jack Cheng on what becomes valuable when AI makes creative work easy. (Every)
🧨 Ian Bourland asks if Washington DC’s cultural institutions can survive Trump. (Frieze)
🛌 Modernism for Monks: Vishaan Chakrabarti visits spends the night at Le Corbusier’s French monastery, La Tourette. (AirMail)
🤔 Sam Valenti on aesthetic morality and neo-luddism. (Herb Sundays)
📖 MAS Context is publishing a new book, Sam and Ruth Van Sickle Ford House, the first in a new series of books focused on individual homes edited by Iker Gil. (MAS Context)
👏 If you’re in New Mexico, be sure to see Janet Abram’s new solo sculpture show, up until May. (Zane Bennett Gallery)
☄️Nicolay Boyadjiev on scenario fiction, a new genre of institutional futurism. (Anyikythera)
☀️ Design in the age of permacrisis? Carl DiSalvo on possibility or cruel optimism. (Medium)
😱 Juliette Cezzar on her eighteen month-hiatus from teaching where she worked for McKinsey. (Bungalow)
READ/WATCHED/HEARD
Articles, books, videos, and other ephemera that caught our eye this month.
👏 Lanza Atelier, founded by Isabel Abascal and Alessandro Arienzo, selected for the Serpentine Pavilion 2026. (Serpentine)
🏠 The Hip Priest, the Ex-Hedge Funder, and the $10 Million Townhouse. (NYT)
🙅♂️ From Airbnb to the White House: Damning profile of how Joe Gebbia is reshaping the government in Trump’s image. (Fast Company)
📸 Lucia Moholy: The Woman Who Immortalized the Bauhaus (Aperture)
🎇 After a multi-year process, Brussels-based museum CIVA is now Kanal Architecture. (e-flux)
JOB WATCH
People getting new jobs in and around the design world.
Allison Arieff joins S.F. Chronicle as a columnist and editorial writer. (SF Chronicle)
Brooklyn Museum Names Robert Wiesenberger Senior Curator of Contemporary Art. (ArtNews)
Clark Art Institute announces Esther Bell is its new director and CEO. (NYT)
POSTSCRIPT
I was shocked to see the news that California College of the Arts in San Francisco was closing next year, its campus to be sold to Nashville’s Vanderbilt University. On the heels of the sudden closing of University of the Arts in Philadelphia (where I taught part-time for four years from 2017-2021), these institutions were both integral to the art and design scenes of their cities but also seminal venues for design history. UArts, for example, was the American institution through which Dutch design reached America, counting a faculty roster of Steff Geissbuhler, Inge Druckrey, Hans Allemann, and April Greiman.
CCA, too, is an important institution for graphic design history. Founded in 1907 by artist and designer Frederick Meyer. It’s in the 1917 course catalog (above) that list Meyer as teaching a course called “Graphic Design and Letter”, which historian Paul Shaw claims is the first use (and modern definition of that term “graphic design”. I still show this catalog and definition to my students each year.
