May 2025: Virtual Architecture, Graffiti in the City, a fashion designer's home garden
Plus, imagining a Scratching the Surface Eras tour!
In April, we spoke with Space Popular’s Lara Lesmes and Fredrik Hellberg about the intersection of the built environment and virtual spaces and designer and creative director Matt Owens about his new book on the business of design.
EDITOR’S NOTE
I’m writing this note as I’ve just finished final reviews for my graduate students and submitted grades for my undergrads. Just like that, another semester is over. So to are we nearing the end of another season of Scratching the Surface. This month, we’ll wrap up our spring season and head into a summer break, returning with new episodes again in the Fall.
As our Spring slate of episodes begins to close, trends emerge and reveal themselves. I’ve long said this podcast, in its most selfish, is a place for me to ask people smarter than me about the questions I’m thinking through. Indeed, if one were to listen to every episode and pay attention to the questions I’m asking, you can see where my head is in any given season. Like Taylor Swift, there have been many eras of Scratching the Surface: design criticism, education, curation, administration, non-profits, publishing. This year, we’ve entered (returned) to our design practice era. The focus has shifted to practicing designers, across the design spheres, about how they merge all these other interests into a coherent practice. If I were to summarize this season, it’s a move from theory to practice, of embodying the research, the criticism, the writing into design spaces. There’s more to come, certainly, in this space but I also see it opening up new avenues of inquiry as we look towards the future.
We have a few more new episodes coming and, as always, will continue to publish bonus interviews and this newsletter. As a reminder, Scratching the Surface is made possible because of those 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.
Kenneth FitzGerald recommends 8 books that rethink what design writing can be
Set Margins is releasing an expanded edition of FitzGerald's experimental collection of essays.
Marginal Modes of Writing by James Dyer
James Dyer reviews a new book on the role of grafitti in the city, out now from MIT Press.
PAST GUESTS
Recent work, writing, and news from former guests of Scratching the Surface.
🔍 Nicholas Korody responds to Thyago Sainte’s short film The Muse. (PIN-UP)
📖 Jack Murphy talks to Elizabeth Diller about DS+R’s monograph Architecture, Not Architecture. (The Architect’s Newspaper)
💪 **Nikal Saval** writes about James C. Scott’s art of resistance. (The New Yorker)
☁️ Kyle Chayka on Bluesky’s quest to build a nontoxic social media. (The New Yorker)
👍 A Harlem Youth Center still thrives in an uncertain moment, writes Michael Kimmelman. (NYT)
🏨 Spencer Bailey thinks you should put this palazzo on your Milan itinerary. (Town & Country)
⌨️ On his Substack, Paul Soulellis writes about early queer publishing and the right to variability. (Survival By Sharing)
🚗 Justin Davidson asks, “where is our post-car city?” (Curbed)
😳 Communications firm The Independents has acquired 2x4, the design studio co-founded by Michael Rock, Susan Sellers, and Georgianna Stout. (Business of Fashion)
🏡 Kate Wagner on why real estate is key to Trump’s worldview. (The Nation)
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!
How Can We Gather Now by Asad Raza and Prem Krishnamurthy
The printed documentation of an experimental symposium that took place in Washington D.C. in 2023, this book, edited by Asad Raza and friend-of-the-show Prem Krishnamurthy presents community sourced solutions on intentional gathering from artists, designers, writers, and activists.
Making Home: Belonging, Memory, and Utopia in the 21st Century
Edited by Alexandra Cunningham Cameron, Christina De León, and Michelle Joan Wilkinson, Making Home explores the diverse perspectives on home across the United States, US Territories, and Tribal Nations to reveal how design impacts this country, its value systems, and the people who inhabit its landscapes. (Be sure to read our interview with Alexandra about the making of this exhibition!)
Screenprints: A History by Gill Saunders
Screenprints: A History, the first title in the V&A's new series on the history and practice of printmaking, is a celebration of the fine-art applications of this versatile medium, from the commercial origins of the screenprinting process in 1920s America, its pivotal role in 1960s pop and op art among artists such as Andy Warhol and Bridget Riley, through to its adoption by the YBAs in the 1990s, and its enduring presence today.
Info We Trust by RJ Andrews
Info We Trust takes readers on a revealing journey through the world of data storytelling. Each chapter unveils a rich tapestry of insights, tracing the evolution of charts from mere shadows of civilization to potent instruments of persuasion. From the echoes of mythic heroes to modern data pioneers, it illuminates the intersection of narrative artistry and scientific inquiry.
Ruth Asawa and the Artist-Mother at Midcentury by Jordan Troeller
Delving into the archive, where the traces of motherhood have not yet been erased from official history, Jordan Troeller reveals Ruth Asawa’s personal and professional dialogue with several other artist-mothers, including Merry Renk, Imogen Cunningham, and Sally Woodbridge. For these women, motherhood was not an essentialized identity, but rather a means to reimagine the terms of artmaking outside of the patriarchal policing of reproduction.
Collected Specimens of Lucian Bernard, Aldo Novarese, and Roger Excoffon
Small masterpieces from the age of metal type, foundry specimen booklets introduced new typefaces to the world with exquisitely arranged showings and a variety of original in-use examples. Distributed as ephemeral marketing, many are in fact bold visual essays, statements of typographic craft, and prized keepsakes containing essential information about type as it was meant to be seen. These volumes from the Letterform Archive reproduce specimens of typefaces by celebrated German-American designer Lucian Bernhard, France’s midcentury maestro Roger Excoffon, and quintessential Italian type designer Aldo Novarese.
READ/WATCHED/HEARD
Articles, books, videos, and other ephemera that caught our eye this month.
😤 Critics are fuming about Glenn Lowry’s successor. (Vulture)
🪑 At the Architecture Biennale, the US says ‘Come, Sit By Me’. (NYT)
🎨 The challenges of opening gleaming new museums in a fraught art landscape. (NYT)
JOB WATCH
People on the move in and around the design worlds.
Leon Ransmeier Named Head of Industrial Design at Cranbrook Academy of Art. (cranbrookart.edu)
The Institute of Architecture at the University of Vienna welcomes Sam Jacob as its new dean. (IOA)
The Nasher Sculpture Museum in Dallas names Carlos Basualdo as its new director. (NYT)
Aric Chen is departing Nieuwe Instituut to become the director of the Zaha Hadid Foundation. (Nieuwe Instituut)
Winka Dubbeldam is SCI-Arc’s next director/CEO (SCI-ARC).
After 8 years, Joseph Grima is stepping down as Design Academy Eindhoven’s creative director. The institution is beginning a search for his replacement. (DAE)
POSTSCRIPT
For me, when the semester winds down, that means it is time for the garden to wind up. I’ve spent the last few years focusing on my vegetables but this year, I’m turning my attention to flowers — and landscapes, more generally. I’m in love with the range of colors and textures in fashion designer Dries Van Noten’s home garden, seen above, and featured in this Vogue profile from last spring. Could gardens be Scratching the Surface’s next era?