July 2025: Summer Break, Favorite Episodes, Designed Forests
plus, remembering Michael Bierut’s Yale School of Architecture posters.
We’re taking the summer off from new episodes but in June we shared two old favorites: our 2023 episode with Harvard GSD Dean Sarah Whiting and our 2018 conversation with creative director, novelist, and artist Peter Mendelsund.
EDITOR’S NOTE
Happy summer! We’re taking the summer off from new episodes but that doesn’t mean we’re going quiet. On the podcast feed, we're resharing some old favorite episodes. This month, we were pleased to share two personal favorites: Sarah Whiting and Peter Mendelsund. And on Scratch, we have a book roundup curated by author and curator Dan Handel, based on his fascinating new book, Designed Forests.
Over on Fast Company, I was pleased to interview friend-of-the-show David Reinfurt (episode 7!!) about his great new book, A *Co-* Program of Graphic Design. Much like the book itself, it’s a wandering conversation both about teaching design but also defining and situating what it means to be a graphic designer today. It’s behind a paywall on the FC site, but with the design coverage they are producing, it’s worth a subscription.
All this work is made possible because of paid subscriptions. If you like what we do here and want to support us, you can upgrade your subscription for just $5/month or $50/year. Paid members get bonus interviews each month 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.
Dan Handel Recommends Books That Connect Forests and Spatial Design
Dan’s new book, Designed Forests, is a cultural history of the influence of forests on architecture and design.
PAST GUESTS
Recent work, writing, and news from former guests of Scratching the Surface.
🔨 Glenn Adamson on the return of ‘adhocism.’ (ArtForum)
😋 Luxury fashion brands, A-list performers, and rarefied furniture companies all want a piece of WIllo Perron. (NYT)
😎 Alison Arieff describes the new book “Calm Down” as a genre-defying journey through heartbreak towards liberation. (SF Chronicle)
💪 Jack Murphy thinks Carlo Ratti’s architecture exhibition at La Biennale di Venezia attempts totality. (The Architect’s Newspaper)
👊 Christopher Hawthorne launches Punch List, a weekly dispatch on architecture, design, and cities (and his first piece is a review of Peter Zumthor’s LACMA wing). (Punch List)
🏡 Kate Wagner thinks there is one solution to the housing crisis hiding in plain sight. (The Nation)
🏙️ Karrie Jacobs on Norman Foster’s 270 Park and the Rise of the New Office Building. (The Nation)
🪴 The Elizabeth Street Garden Battle should never have happened, writes Justin Davidson. (Curbed)
💎 Oliver Wainwright thinks the Norman Foster-designed bridge to honor Queen Elizabeth is “excessively wasteful and giving off Swarovski vibes”. (The Guardian)
🎤 Florencia Rodriguez announces participants for the sixth Chicago Architecture Biennial. (Architectural Record)
📸 The Anthropocene Illusion: Allison Arieff on how Zed Nelson’s photographs capture how nature has become a curated experience. (MIT Technology Review)
🎥 Beka & Limone have a new short film, Vija, on the artist Vija Celmins. (YouTube)
✉️ Eric Heiman interviews Rob Saunders of the Letterform Archive. (Eye)
📕 Rick Poynor reviews Fantasy, the newly translated book from Bruno Munari. (Eye)
❤️ No more Mr. Nice Guy: the incomparable Michael Bierut steps down. (Fast Company)
BOOK ROUNDUP
Recent books that have arrived in the studio. All links are Bookshop.org affiliate links. If you order through Bookshop, we get some money to help support the show!
Arab Design Now: 2024
Arab Design Now presents a survey of local and regional design talent across disciplines, from architectural and material innovations to contemporary crafts, furniture, fashion, and graphic and object design. Working across themes of material and visual culture and expression, environmental and innovative use of materials, and considerations of technique, detail, pattern and aesthetics, this volume, a catalog for Design Doha 2024, highlights design excellence from across the region of the Levant, the Gulf and North Africa.
Medium Hot: Images in the Age of Heat by Hito Steyerl
In this new collection of essays from artist and writer Hito Steyerl, she explores how AI, the use of large language models and the algorithmic creation of imagery transform our understanding of the world. She argues that such practices cannot be divorced from the economic and political conditions of the times.
Monumental by Cat Dawson
Art historian Cat Dawson examines the evolution of monuments over the last fifty years that blends national identity, cultural myths, and culture. Since 2014, a new generation of artists has established a groundbreaking role for monuments, calling into question the very notion of what a monument is through novel investigations of how symbolic structures can be made and what stories they can tell.
READ/WATCHED/HEARD
Articles, books, videos, and other ephemera that caught our eye this month.
🎧 Fast Company launched By Design, a new podcast about design and business. (Fast Company)
👎 Whitney Museum suspends Independent Study Program after dispute over Gaza event. (NYT)
🤔 Something’s Missing in This Updated Book of Not-So-Simple Designs. (Untapped Journal)
🥰 How did design thinking become the solution to society’s most deeply entrenched problems? (The Atlantic)
JOB WATCH
People getting new jobs in and around the design world.
Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at The Cooper Union appoints Benjamin Aranda acting dean. (The Architect’s Newspaper)
POSTSCRIPT
In honor of Michael Bierut’s semi-retirement (see above), I wanted to share what might be one of the first of his designs that I saw (or at least, the one that made an early impression). While today he’s known for his work on big brands, when I was getting into design in the early 2000s, I got fascinated with his smaller work, notably the posters he designed for the Yale School of Architecture, which were collected into a small book in 2007. The guiding principle was that each poster would be set and black and white and he’d never use the same typeface twice. The poster above, designed in 2005 with Brenda Irlbeck, was an early fascination: I was drawn to the unusual letterforms and the overly-heavy underlining. I ripped this off multiple times when I was in design school. I still love it.