I like to think of us as children that are saying “why” all the time. A client says they want to do that: “Well, why?”

You can’t do that: “Well, why? Why?… Why?”

And I think “why” gets you to a lot of “how”. ~ Alexander Josephson

In an alternate universe, I like to think I might have been an architect.

 A teen-aged glancing relationship with two icons in the field left me intrigued by what architects do, how they do it, and what their work means for the rest of us.

I wonder about how curiosity informs an architect’s work, whether and how their designs elicit curiosity, and what stories they leave behind for the future to unpack.

So I was delighted when Toronto-based architect Alexander Josephson came on my radar. He describes his work as grounded in “research-driven experimentation” that gives birth to the most inventive and attainable built forms. 

Sounds like a curiosity enterprise to me!

  I’m interested in how architecture responds to its context. There’s a dialogue between how you’re designing and the buildings around it, and the culture and the place and the history of the place that you’re in. 

We talked about our hunger to know something of our heroes, architects as team leaders not solo players, new technology’s not-so-surprising impact on design and building, prototyping and the cost of experimentation, form/function and what we think of as ornamentation, architecture as a reflection of economics and values, the relationship between building and death, whether the built environment will last — and what to appreciate about Egypt’s pyramids, Notre Dame & (my personal favorite) Sagrada Família.

Listen to Ep. #333: Curiosity, Architecture & Legacy, with Alexander Josephson

Alexander Josephson is founder of the Toronto-based architecture firm Partisans. Beautiful buildings, aren’t they?

Curious about architecture icons Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown? Learn more here.

If you enjoyed the conversation about the built environment, you might enjoy these C2BC Classics: There Are Clues Everywhere, with Amber Wiley; In a Good Place, with Leidy Klotz; Urbanism & Seeing with Fresh Eyes, with Luca Gattoni-Celli; and Oral History, with Valeria Gelman.

Theme music by Sean Balick; “We Build with Rubber Bands” by Lemuel, via Blue Dot Sessions.

You can subscribe to Choose to Be Curious on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.