MXD Podcast

OpenAI is bankrolling architecture's biggest competition — $120,000+ in prizes behind the CartesianForms brief, designed to be inherited in 2030, altered in 2055, and passed on in 2080. Plus the bubble tea: Matt Seybold's case that university endowments are tangled up in private equity's AI bet. Then, at Pratt, Caleb talks with Alex Tahinos — co-curator of "The Unbearable Heaviness of the Light Frame" — about why architecture's lightest construction system is carrying its heaviest questions. Plus a new book that redraws 12 iconic game worlds as architectural drawings, and Nihar's Corner: Star Wars in Revit, OSHA violations, and a 5-axis printer that was itself 3D printed.MXD News is your weekly download on architecture, design, and visual culture — with Caleb White and Christianna Bennett.Hosts: Caleb White and Christianna Bennett · Student producer: Nihar Menon Interview: Alex Tahinos

AI isn’t making designers faster — it’s making everyone else a designer. A new AI-in-design industry report says product managers and engineers are doing design work now, and a randomized Figma Make trial put numbers on it. Then: Apple Music’s new logo was made by sound, Apple finally puts a touchscreen on the MacBook Pro, Teenage Engineering opens its first store in SoHo, Princeton names historian Sylvia Lavin dean of its School of Architecture, SOM draws a dome for the Bears in Bridgeport, and Cynthia Davidson hands Log — the theory journal she ran for 23 years — to Julie Cirelli.MXD News is your weekly download on architecture, design, and visual culture. This week with Caleb White and Matt Lopez. Make sure to follow us on our socials!https://linktr.ee/mxdsignalInstagram - https://www.instagram.com/mxd_signalTiktok - https://www.tiktok.com/@mxd_signal

This week: a quiet masterpiece at The Met by Young and Ayata, a hit documentary about concrete (plus the indie-film wave around it), Tesla's Roadster and the great car-person debate, a licensure rant over Lebbeus Woods, and Kyle Miller's living map of the discipline.

Milan-based designer Hazem Talaat — known as Hazem the Architect — trained as an architect in Egypt and Italy, then walked away from the discipline to build a multidisciplinary art-direction career spanning album covers for Griselda's Conway the Machine, creative consulting for Rick Owens, set design, and the Venice Biennale. In this first Season 3 MXD Signal interview special, he talks with Walaid, Caleb, and Christianna about failing into architecture, finding his tribe between experimental drawing culture and underground hip-hop, and how his unique and plural methodology has enabled him to bridge different worlds with his work. Guest bioHazem Talaat is a Milan-based multidisciplinary designer working across architecture, fashion, music visuals, and set design under the name Hazem the Architect. His clients and collaborators include Griselda (Conway the Machine), Rick Owens (as creative consultant), and musicians and fashion labels across Europe and the US; his work was shown at the Venice Biennale in 2021. Portfolio: https://www.behance.net/HazemtalaatMake sure to follow us on our socials!Instagram @mxd_signalTiktok - @mxd_signal

The EU wants you to label your AI renders — and Caleb is not having it. "Get your hands off my images." This week: why a rule aimed at consumer fraud lands hardest on the small studios and students who finally got professional-grade imagery, whether the Neom era is really over (the money didn't disappear — it moved to data centers), and the hot take that Gehry's houses beat his museums. Plus NYC's 4,000-home bet at 100 Gold Street, MVRDV's street furniture, Google Japan's conveyor-belt keyboard, and Louis Vuitton's flying-car runway.MXD Signal — weekly news on architecture, design, and visual culture.YouTube: @MXDSignal · Instagram/TikTok: @mxd_signal · Podcast: MXD Podcast on Spotify

We open with a striking construction stat: data centers are drawing around $725 billion in capital while home building and factory construction decline. We talk about what that means for architects and students entering the job market, whether “I won’t build data centers” is a meaningful ethical line, and why so much capital is now flowing into buildings almost nobody will experience.Then we get into the weirdness of the modern internet: Higgsfield AI’s push to mass-produce AI influencers, dead internet theory, OpenAI’s Dots campaign for 24/7 agents, and Meta’s Muse wearable, which people are calling the 2026 Tamagotchi. Plus a break from the screens with BuildFest at Bethel Woods, where architecture students designed and built timber projects around the theme “Acts of Construction.”We also look at Gen Z’s cyberdeck trend (genuine counterculture or just aesthetics?), a $60,000 castle for sale in Hokkaido and what it reveals about Japan’s attitude toward old buildings, a viral “meeting titles as YouTube titles” bit, and why subcultures are multiplying while going viral gets harder than ever.Instagram - @mxd_signalTiktok - @mxd_signalYoutube - @MXDSignal

This week we start with a heavier topic: newly updated Google Earth satellite imagery exposing the scale of destruction in Gaza, paired with on-the-ground photos of a makeshift football pitch built where the main stadium once stood. We talk about the role images play in making distant devastation real, the practice of forensic architecture, and how communities rebuild function and daily life amid ruins.Then we lighten up with Amazon's new delivery drones — loud, clumsy, camera-equipped, and in desperate need of a personality upgrade — before diving into SpaceX's Starship reaching orbit and what that means for the economics of space travel, satellite deployment, and design in spacecraft interiors. We also cover the "Stools" furniture exhibition in NYC featuring architect-designed stools from firms like Norman Kelly and OMA, Costco's plan to build mixed-use housing on a former hospital site in LA, and the ongoing fight over Trump's threat to shut down or demolish the Kennedy Center. Make sure to follow us on our socials! Instagram - @mxd_signalTiktok - @mxd_signal

This week we start with the viral Lexus x MSCHF collaboration — two "twisted" concept cars that spark a bigger conversation about car-deformation art history, brand collaborations, and whether corporate partnerships can still produce legitimate fine art.Then we dig into the escalating saga of Trump's DC Arch, which has evolved from a monument concept into a proposed military complex with drone launch capabilities and sniper positions — and what that says about the optics of power in public space. We also cover the leaked "I am the code" sketches from the ongoing ballroom architect dispute, the Supreme Court's ruling on the East Wing demolition, and the very online debate over whether the minimalist "bro home" aesthetic is actually the future of design.The back half of the episode features an extended conversation with Casey Rehm, Director of the Architectural Intelligence program at SCI-Arc, unpacking the Hugging Face rogue agent story, OpenAI's Astra model, predictions about AGI timelines, Jensen Huang's "it's just software" framing, and what AI actually means for the architecture labor market.Compiled Show Notes:Segment 1:  Lexus MSCHF CollabMschf Art Collectivemschf.comChris Labrooychrislabrooy.comLars Fisklarsfisk.comSegment 3: Trump Archttps://www.instagram.com/p/DdmAZIIlzPJ/Segment 4: Trump Ballroom SketchesSupreme Court Allows Construction of Ballroom to Continue:.scotusblog.com/2026/08/supreme-court-allows-construction-on-white-house-ballroom-to-continue/Segment 5: “Bro Home” AestheticAegment 6: Casey Rehm on AI ThreatsThe Diary of a CEO: ChatGPT Whistleblower Daniel Kokotajlohttps://youtu.be/_g4l7YkDQwA?si=kRNAI0bPtynirxIbJensen Huang Susiness.com/technology/nvidias-jensen-huang-rejects-ai-doomsday-fears-2030-not-going-end-worldSciArc _ Masters of Science in Architectural Intellegencesciarc.edu/academics/postgraduate/architectural-intelligenceMake sure to follow us on our socials!Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/mxd_signalTiktok - https://www.tiktok.com/@mxd_signalYouTube - @mxdSignal

This week we open with the University of Chicago pulling laptops and phones from its core social science classrooms — and New York City banning AI in elementary and middle schools. Is going analog the right call, or are blanket tech bans just fear of an unknown future? We get into how we handle it in our own studios and seminars.Then: the US Space Force unveiled new uniforms, and the sci-fi references are doing a lot of work. We unpack the Starship Troopers connection, the uncomfortable fashion history underneath it, and why military design references are never really neutral.Also on the docket — MOS Architects' new pavilion opening at Art OMI, Nike getting booted from the S&P 100 after a brutal run, IKEA's free Skyrim mod that turns the Kallax shelf into your companion, a suspicious "most climate resilient cities" ranking, Ye's unsettling new stage look, Boys Firm's dead-on "six types of architecture thesis" post, and a return to the 9/11 light memorial with a much darker reference point.

This week we get our first real look inside MAD Architects' long-awaited Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, opening September 22nd in LA after a wild history that started in Chicago. We compare the polished press photos to the more candid, "banal" behind-the-scenes shots making the rounds — and talk about what actually happens when hype meets reality on a capital-A architecture project.We also mark 9/11 with a look at a moving drone memorial over the NYC skyline, the debate over how younger generations relate to the day, and the bombshell records released by Mayor Mamdani confirming officials — including Giuliani — knew about toxic ground zero air and worked to cover it up.From there: Brad Pitt is producing a film about Peter Zumthor directed by Wim Wenders (plus the real story on Brad's architecture background), the Empire State Building's surprisingly massive TikTok following, Archtober events to watch, Archisource's Drawing of the Year winners and what even counts as a "drawing" anymore, and why the architecture subreddit is full of people asking if the profession is dying.