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The Second Studio Podcast: Interview with Mitchell Joachim
The Second Studio (formerly The Midnight Charette) is a podcast dedicated to design, architecture and everyday life. Organized by architects David Lee and Marina Bourderone, it features diverse creative professionals in unscripted conversations that allow for thoughtful approaches and personal discussions.
A variety of topics are covered with honesty and humor: some episodes are interviews, while others are advice for fellow designers, reviews of buildings and other projects, or casual explorations of everyday life and design. Second Studio is also available on iTunes, Spotify and YouTube.
This week, David and Marina are joined by Mitchell Joachim, Ph.D., Associate Professor, NYU and co-founder of Terreform ONE to discuss the complexities of urban design; the role of the urban designer; the real-life applications of his research; project financing; cricket farms; and more.
Highlights and timestamps
Growing Up in New York (03:00)
Gentrification in cities (10:49)
The complexity of urban design (14:55)
You get so many different actors and agents to think about how these relationships come about, where they happen and in what scope or time frame they happen and who they affect and why, and then you speculate through visions or images, projects that extend far beyond only one border… so it’s an all-encompassing field. That’s pretty fantastic! Alex Krieger, who is head of department at GSD and was my thesis advisor, would often tell you that you can’t really define urban design…partly because the design aspect is something we know, but the city seems limitless and our control over it is minimal. (15:44)
Why Mitchell turned to architecture (29:36)
Urban design and its relationship with the general public (39:07)
There is no language and no public understanding and awareness to describe what we do. There was another professor who said that urban design is like painting a watercolor in a stream. I love that as a definition because you make marks and then the flow kind of takes it away. But you have to get enough of a mark like maybe a rock to put it in that flow colored blue so you can kind of tease or adjust or nudge the flow around that rock. (40:56)
Terreform ONE and their projects (52:08)
If we think like Homer (Simpson) from time to time in a project and wonder if it will seep into his mind and his stubbornness or influence his idiosyncratic behavior to enter his general way of life, then we’ve made it. It’s a huge goal to get to the forefront of someone like that and get them to the place where not only is it something that’s of interest, but they can step forward and embrace it. (01:05:48)
Financing and project financing (01:28:59)
How cities can transform and develop for a better future (01:40:01)
One version is that we actually need a real crisis because there are libraries… huge amounts of information and engineering projects and designs of possible futures that fill all kinds of books… So this is not even new. The only question is what is the incentive, what is the catalyst, to make these things happen. The crisis is the only theory that is something so big and terrifying that people simply have no choice but to stop doing bad and turn to good. (01:41:36)
Check out previous editions of The Second Studio Podcast.
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