Future Cities · Sustainability, Energy, Innovation, Climate Change, Transport, Housing, Work, Circular Economy, Education & Environmental Solutions

“Architecture should bring a true sensation of wellbeing. We were really lucky to experience that as children, and now as architects, we try to bring all that we learned into our practice.”
Salwa and Selma Mikou are the founders of Paris-based Mikou Architecture. Born in Fez, Morocco and educated in Paris, they have spent the last two decades reimagining the relationship between the built environment and the cultural landscape.
After honing their craft under two of the world’s most iconic architects, Jean Nouvel and Renzo Piano, they founded their own studio. For them, architecture is a living interaction with landscape and what they call the Atlas of Resonance, interpreting the hidden layers of a territory, geology, memory, and craft. It is a philosophy that rejects the generic, seeking instead to weave together technological innovation with local materials. Whether it is a mosque in the north of England or a hybrid innovation hub in a former royal manufactory, their work asks a fundamental question: How does space shape the way we think, learn and remember?
They were selected by Rem Koolhaas to represent Morocco at the Venice Biennale. Most recently, they were commissioned by Hermès to create a 17,000-square-meter facility that bridges industrial performance with poetic expression. At the heart of their practice is a belief that architecture is not just about building—it’s about shaping relationships: between people, between past and future, between technology and craft.
(0:04) The Intuitive Knowledge of Living Art
(4:24) The Medina and the Geometry of Childhood
(8:18) The Social Spaces of Rooftops
(13:46) The Intuitive Knowledge of Living Art
(15:31) Contextual Echoes & Traces of the Site
(19:18) The Twin Dynamic and Confrontation with 'l'autre'
(26:42) The Temples of Water
(33:24) The Mosque as Pure Spatiality
(38:01) The Crisis Period and Structural Systems
(48:24) Building Culture with Yves Saint Laurent & Pierre Bergé
(51:38) The Wast ed-dar (وسط الدار) and the Heart of a Building
(57:02) Preserving the Human Core of Expression
(1:04:29) Urban Acupuncture in the Modern City
(1:08:46) The Smells and Sounds of Home
(1:10:02) Balance, Nature, and Sisterhood
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

Today, we examine how we will adapt to a changing climate and learn to listen to the Earth.(0:00) Abrahm Lustgarten(Reporter, ProPublica) (3:00) Jon Gertner (Author, The Ice at the End of the World) (5:32) Bill Hare (CEO, Climate Analytics) (6:35) Rob Nixon (Prof. Environmental Humanities, Princeton) (8:12) Louis de Jaeger (Co-founder, Food Forest Institute) (10:06) Kathleen Rogers (Pres., EarthDay.org) (11:31) Rebecca Tickell (Filmmaker, Groundswell) (13:42) Ben Goldfarb (Author, Crossings) (14:56) Jane Madgwick (CEO, Plantlife International) (19:23) Jason deCaires Taylor (Sculptor, Underwater Museums) (21:02) William McDonough (Architect, Cradle to Cradle) (23:19) Euan Nisbet(Scientist, Royal Holloway) (26:06) Roland Geyer (Author, The Business of Less) (28:15) Ron Gonen (CEO, Closed Loop Partners) (29:34) Paul Shrivastava (Co-President, Club of Rome) (30:14) Carlo Ratti (Architect, Dir., MIT Senseable City Lab) (31:24) Osprey Orielle Lake (Founder, WECAN) (32:38) Liza Featherstone (Journalist) (33:41) Yolanda Kakabadse (Fmr. President, WWF)
For more, listen to their full interviews
Episode Site: https://www.creativeprocess.info/interviews-featured/anth-regen

Why does our economy treat environmental destruction as an inevitable side effect rather than a massive design flaw? How can shifting our focus from polarizing "talkers" to practical "builders" literally save the planet? We are repeatedly told that the climate crisis is too vast and volatile to solve, but what if the true obstacle is simply bad design?
Tom Chi is a physicist, designer, inventor, and investor whose work has shaped everything from Google Glass and rapid prototyping at Google X to some of the most ambitious climate technologies being built today. He’s now the founding partner of At One Ventures, where he invests in deep-tech companies focused on a bold goal: a world where humanity is a net positive to nature.
Tom’s new book, Climate Capital: Investing in the Tools for a Regenerative Future, reframes economics itself—not as a fixed law, but as a design discipline that can be reimagined to align with the physical realities of our planet. Drawing on science, systems thinking, and lessons from nature, the book offers a grounded, practical framework for moving beyond both climate doom and empty optimism—and toward real, regenerative solutions. Today’s conversation is about what Tom calls the 4Cs: Capital, Compassion, Climate, and Community—but also about agency, responsibility, and what becomes possible when we stop treating the future as something that happens to us and start designing it deliberately.
0:00) Build Integrity: Choosing Builders Over Talkers
Why prioritizing those who physically create solutions over those who merely debate them is essential for systemic change
(1:21) Overcoming Powerlessness Through Creativity, Critical Thinking, Community Compassion
Utilizing a specific framework of portable skills to move from climate anxiety into meaningful, iterative action
(2:22) Capital Misallocation: Taxing What We Want to See
A critique of current tax structures that burden labor while under-taxing capital and failing to serve societal needs
(3:47) The Volatility Gap: Why Average Temperatures Mislead
Understanding why increasing climate volatility—rather than just average temperature rise—is the true driver of human distress
(6:19) Economics As Design: Redesigning The Global Engine
Moving beyond "physics envy" in economics to treat the global market as a discipline that can be redesigned for better outcomes
(9:11) Depth Over Breadth: Reforming Education Through Experience
(13:30) Local Resilience: How Cities Can Lead The Transformation
Practical, block-by-block strategies for urban adaptation, from expanding tree canopies to improving household efficiency
(16:33) AI and Robotics in Agriculture
(19:12) Human-Centric AI: Flipping The Priority Of Automation
(20:18) Thinking In Pictures: A Language Beyond Words
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

“In the book I spend a bunch of time basically teaching skills and teaching frameworks of thinking. Not to indoctrinate, it's not a framework like an ideology where you need to believe exactly these things. This is a lot more about how does one use their minds effectively to solve problems that have been solved before. Of course, I work on things that have to do with investment and climate and the future of the economy and automation. The main things I'm trying to teach in the book are skills around creativity, critical thinking, community compassion and frameworks around how to go and use that on problems that should be relatively portable to a bunch of problems that are meaningful to you. The way that education needs to change is that people need to actively be working on things that truly matter to them so that over time they end up being able to go make that difference.”
Tom Chi is a physicist, designer, inventor, and investor whose work has shaped everything from Google Glass and rapid prototyping at Google X to some of the most ambitious climate technologies being built today. He’s now the founding partner of At One Ventures, where he invests in deep-tech companies focused on a bold goal: a world where humanity is a net positive to nature.
Tom’s new book, Climate Capital: Investing in the Tools for a Regenerative Future, reframes economics itself—not as a fixed law, but as a design discipline that can be reimagined to align with the physical realities of our planet. Drawing on science, systems thinking, and lessons from nature, the book offers a grounded, practical framework for moving beyond both climate doom and empty optimism—and toward real, regenerative solutions. Today’s conversation is about what Tom calls the 4Cs: Capital, Compassion, Climate, and Community—but also about agency, responsibility, and what becomes possible when we stop treating the future as something that happens to us and start designing it deliberately.
(0:00) Overcoming Powerlessness through Creativity, Critical Thinking, Community Compassion
Why broad hopelessness about the future is a purposeful tactic to maintain the status quo.
(7:16) How average temperature metrics fail to communicate the true danger of extreme climate volatility.
(11:54) Economics as Design
(17:11) Multi-disciplinary Learning Centered on Real-World Impact
(26:12) Local Resilience
(31:15) Tax & Capital Misallocation
(36:52) Build Integrity
(45:32) AI and Robotics in Agriculture
(51:08) The First Honeybee Vaccine
(56:11) The Entropy Curve of Pollution
(1:15:31) Human-Centric AI
Flipping the priority of automation to serve the collective good rather than enriching a select few
(1:20:59) Thinking in Pictures
How learning to communicate and problem-solve without language fueled a career in deep tech invention
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

“I'm really interested in the relation between performance and ritual. Where do those two separate?”
Richard Sennett grew up in the Cabrini Green housing project in Chicago, attended the Juilliard School in New York, and then studied social relations at Harvard. Over the last five decades, he has written about social life in cities, changes in labour, and social theory. His books include The Performer: Art, Life, Politics, The Hidden Injuries of Class, The Fall of Public Man, The Corrosion of Character, The Culture of the New Capitalism, The Craftsman, and Building and Dwelling. Sennett has advised the United Nations on urban issues for the past thirty years and currently serves as member of the UN Committee on Urban Initiatives. He is the Centennial Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics and former University Professor of the Humanities at New York University.
“I want to show what is kind of the basic DNA that people use for good or for ill. What are the tools they use, if you like, of expression that they use in the creative process?”
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast