Archive Gossip – the saai Podcast
Archive Gossip takes you on an exploration of one of the largest architecture archives in Germany, the saai in Karlsruhe. As an audio platform, we work in two directions: In the podcast, Archive Gossip brings out the stories that can be discovered in things and told through them as voices from the archive. In oral histories and interviews, we search for and collect the voices that the archive needs for a more inclusive and diverse future but does not yet have in order to supplement our holdings.
The Archive Gossip team meets with staff, researchers and archive experts to delve deep into the boxes and cupboards, rolls and drawers, sketches, photos, index cards and notes at saai. Together, we want to dedicate ourselves to known and forgotten stories and objects and also question the archive as a place of knowledge and an institution.
Idea and realization: Sina Brückner-Amin
Production and assistance: Simon Rieß and Isabel Winter
The Fellow series continues: In the second episode of the four-part series, Sina Brückner-Amin talks to Nuno Grancho, who researched the architect Myra Warhaftig during his Fellowship. Warhaftig was a German-Israeli architect who was a prominent political advocate for women's rights and also implemented these demands in her architectural and research activities. One example of this activist-motivated work is her dissertation entitled "The Obstruction of Women's Emancipation by Housing and the Possibility of Overcoming It" and the implementation of these concepts in an apartment building in Berlin, which she designed as part of the IBA 1987.
The episode is available on SoundCloud.
The third episode is the first in a four-part series featuring the visiting researchers who were fellows at the saai in summer 2025. This year, the saai announced the saai iaas residencies for the first time in cooperation with the Wüstenrot Foundation. In the first episode, I talk to Frederike Lausch about her research on Eda Schauer. Eda Schauer was an architect and worked for a long time at the Institute for Lightweight Structures, also known as IL, at the University of Stuttgart under Frei Otto. In the 1970s, she made several trips to Ahmedabad, India, to teach at the School of Architecture there and to develop cooperative projects.
The episode is available on SoundCloud.
In the second episode, Mechthild Ebert, research associate at the saai, is our guest. Together with Sina, she talks about her work in and with the estates of the archive in Karlsruhe and the special finds she makes 'in the margins' of these archive materials. This is about forgotten and overlooked stories and protagonists in the archive and, subsequently, the question of the extent to which metadata is actually material - and what can be discovered in it.
The episode is available on SoundCloud.
In the first episode, Sina Brückner-Amin talks to Manuela Gantner, researcher in architectural theory from Karlsruhe. Manuela is currently working on a cooperation project between the Wüstenrot Foundation and the saai archive on the architect Conrad Roland, whose estate is located at saai. Topics include: What architectural visions did Conrad Roland actually have, who is famous today for very different work than he ever intended? What are the special features of his estate? And how does one approach such a comprehensive project productively?
The episode is available on SoundCloud.