Edited by Scott Woods

What We Talk About When We Talk About Architecture documents a series of conversations with some of contemporary architecture’s most accomplished thinkers and practitioners.

The conversations took place in 2018 and 2019 at the Melbourne School of Design (MSD), The University of Melbourne, with visiting lecturers Beatriz Colomina, Peter Wilson and Rural Urban Framework’s John Lin and Joshua Bolchover. Where their lectures gave insight into their buildings, these conversations dive deeper into the ideas and processes behind them—the players, places, forces, cultural imperatives and ideologies that buttress every work of architecture, but that are often obscured by the glamour of the finished output.

A set of essays on the themes uncovered by writers including Diane Yvonne Francis Ghirardo, Justin Clemens and Sven-Olov Wallenstein offer fresh insights from inside and outside the discipline of architecture, rounding out this thought-provoking book.