Category Archives: Design Disruption

This webcast and podcast series Design Disruption will explore these shifts and address other disruptive issues like climate change, inequality and the housing crisis — through chats with visionaries like architects, designers, planners and thinkers; and by putting forward creative solutions; reimagining the future of living and built environment.
The series is co-hosted by New York-based architectural writer Sam Lubell, who has written ten books about architecture, and contributes regularly to the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and Architectural Digest; and Bangalore-based Social Entrepreneur Prathima Manohar, founder of think do tank The Urban Vision. Our goal is to provide an international perspective, mixing guests from different continents.

Design Disruption, Video & Webcasts

Design Disruption: The Future of Workspaces

The COVID-19 Pandemic is a disruptive moment for our world, and it’s poised to spur transformative shifts in design, from how we experience our homes and offices to the plans of our cities. The webcast series Design Disruption explores these shifts—and address issues like climate change, inequality, and the housing crisis— through chats with visionaries like architects, designers, planners and thinkers; putting forward creative solutions and reimagining the future of the built environment.

EPISODE 2 will focus on the future of the office. Our guests will be Eliot Postma, partner at London-based Heatherwick Studio, and Verda Alexander, co-founder of San Francisco-based O+A. Postma is leading Heatherwick’s design for Google’s HQ campus in Mountainview, California; a flexible, permeable complex that is reimagining what offices can be. He has worked on projects for Heatherwick ranging from the transformation of the 14-acre Olympia London site, the Bund Finance Center in Shanghai, and Bateau, a futuristic riverboat on the Loire River in France. Alexander, winner of a 2016 Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award, has helped spearhead her firm’s creations for companies like Nike, Facebook, Microsoft, Uber, Slack, and dozens more. Her artistic initiatives have challenged the status quo in office design, and in 2018 she launched a small studio within O+A to work exclusively on experimental projects and unconventional interventions. She recently completed The Food for Thought Truck, a mobile design studio that took a team of designers on the road to work with local communities throughout California.

The series is co-hosted by New York-based architectural writer Sam Lubell, who has written ten books about architecture, and contributes regularly to the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Wallpaper, Dwell, and Architectural Digest; and Bangalore-based Social Entrepreneur Prathima Manohar, a contributor to The Times of India and founder of think do tank The Urban Vision. Our goal is to provide an international perspective, mixing guests from different continents. ArchDaily is the main media partner for this series.

Design Disruption, Spotlight, Video & Webcasts

Design Disruptions: The Future of High-Density Housing


Episode-1 will focus on rethinking high density housing. Our guests will be Moshe Safdie, founder of Cambridge, USA based Safdie Architects, and Ma Yansong , founder of Beijing and Los Angeles-based MAD architects. Safdie changed how the world thinks about high density housing with Habitat, a pavilion for Montreal’s Expo 67 that incorporated prefabricated construction and public and private outdoor spaces into a highly intricate multifamily residence. He’s recently built new Habitat projects in Singapore, China, and Sri Lanka. Yansong is inspired by the ideals of “Shanshui City,” which entails harmonizing nature , the urban landscape, and society in novel ways through architecture. He a has explored typological alternatives for urban housing, like hybrid urban courtyard concepts and high density vertical villages.

The series is co-hosted by New York-based architectural writer Sam Lubell, who has written ten books about architecture, and contributes regularly to the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and Architectural Digest; and Bangalore-based Social Entrepreneur Prathima Manohar, founder of think do tank The Urban Vision. Our goal is to provide an international perspective, mixing guests from different continents.

ArchDaily is the main media partner on this series.