Archive Gossip – the saai Archive Podcast

At the saai Archive, I conceptualized the audio platform Archive Gossip, where I produce podcasts and oral histories with student assistants Simon Ries (2024) and Isabel Winter (2024-2025). As part of my initiatives for science communication at both the archive and the chair of Architecture Theory, I intent to open the sphere of the archive–in terms of its contents, but also as an institution and workplace–for a wider audience.

Project Description

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.