Deep Green
Episodes
The Ripple Effect of Thoughtful Products
04 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We talk to a lot of folks from product manufacturing here at Deep Green—and there’s a reason for that. The supply chains of materials and pro...
Making the Case for Slate
04 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Here at Deep Green, we often shine a spotlight on traditional building materials that have fallen out of favor for a variety of reasons—but tha...
Rediscovering Tile for Sustainable Design
09 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Tiles are among the most enduring building materials. Glazed brick tiles have been discovered in archaeological sites and in ancient and medieval buil...
Fractals: Nature's Healing Patterns in Design
04 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the 1960s, mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot began exploring a concept he initially called self-similarity—geometric forms whose parts resemble th...
Furnishing a Better Future
07 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When we think of all the ways we could be designing better buildings—especially commercial buildings like office towers or education spaces—there’...
Industry Insights and Updates in Manufacturing Certification | Metropolis & BIFMA at NeoCon 2025
10 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Francisco Brown, senior editor and engagement manager at Metropolis Magazine, interviews Steve Kooy, Technical Director of Health and Sustainability a...
PVC Perspectives: The Path Forward
26 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Polyvinyl chloride—better known as PVC or vinyl—is one of the most ubiquitous plastics in our lives. You’ll find it everywhere: pipes, siding, w...
Designing Buildings to Heal, Not Harm
05 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Buildings account for 40 percent of global carbon emissions. The construction industry generates nearly a third of all waste in our cities and built e...
architecture 5 10 20 – Sustainability Milestones LIVE: Circularity in the Built Environment
08 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We're sharing a special episode of architecture 5 10 20, a podcast from FXCollaborative. In this episode, you'll hear Avi Rajagopal with Guy Geier dis...
Measuring What Matters in Product Design
24 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What makes one product more sustainable than another? It’s a question that anyone concerned with their impact on the planet must confront. How do we...
Timber: Why Architects Are All in on Wood
27 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
If there’s one defining trend in American architecture over the last decade, it’s the rediscovery of wood as a construction material. Mass timber ...
AI and the Future of Low-Carbon Buildings
20 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Buildings account for 40 percent of the world’s carbon emissions. If you’re an architect, or a frequent listener to this podcast, you already know...
Biophilia: Design Powered by Nature
16 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Biophilic design might be trending on social media, but it’s far more than an aesthetic—it’s a transformative approach to creating spaces that m...
Avi’s Sneak Peek into Deep Green: Deep Cut Edition
09 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this bonus episode of Deep Green, host Avi Rajagopal reflects on the thought-provoking questions that have defined the show (Can bio-based pla...
Sense of Space now on The Surround Network
21 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Enjoy Sense of Space by Turf now available on all podcast platforms.An architect and designer are on a journey to help their community understand the ...
In Good Company: Partnering to Make an Impact with Textiles
22 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Join us live from NeoCon 2024 as we dive into the transformative world of sustainable textiles with our special guests, Dean Lindsley, VP of Pallas Te...
Office Furniture’s Climate Impact
10 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What is Office Furniture’s Role When it Comes to Climate Impact? In 2018, Americans threw out 12.1 million tons of furniture—and nearly 80 percent...
Becoming a B Corp in a Fast Furniture World
18 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The furniture industry has seen something of a transformation over the last decade with the rise of fast furniture: cheap, disposable pieces, often pr...
Is circularity worth pursuing?
05 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Discover industry tools and resources for circular design, as Avi Rajagopal and Samantha Sager discuss actionable steps we can take toward tackling th...
How can we move materials toward circularity? | A bonus conversation with Andrew Dent
05 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this special bonus episode, Avi Rajagopal sits down with materials expert Dr. Andrew Dent. As executive vice president of research at Material Conn...
Can biobased materials save us?
21 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Learn how we can deepen the connection between the built environment and the natural world, as Avi Rajagopal and Samantha Sager discuss the third prin...
Can we recycle and reuse our way out of our materials problem?
14 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Explore the intricacies of material recycling, as Avi Rajagopal and Samantha Sager pick up where they left off last week, focusing on the second princ...
Can architecture be circular?
07 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
What obstacles does our industry present to the dream of a circular economy? Join METROPOLIS’s Editor in Chief, Avi Rajagopal, and producer Samantha...
The problem with design trends
31 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Unpack the environmental impact of the building industry and the hurdles we face in reducing our carbon footprint with METROPOLIS’s' Editor in Chief...
Season 3 Trailer
24 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A new season of Deep Green is on its way! On this season of Deep Green, we’re doing things a little bit differently: METROPOLIS Editor in Chief Avi ...
Moshe Safdie: The Future of Urban Density
22 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Have you heard of the term biophilia or perhaps biophilic design? If you're an interior designer or you have a lot of interior design videos on your T...
Daphany Rose-Sanchez: Solar Energy for the People
15 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On average, it costs about $2.95 per watt for a home solar system. So, a 6-kilowatt system, about the size you'd need for an American home, would set ...
Katie Ackerly: Sustainability in Affordable Housing
08 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
An estimated 100 million people globally don’t have a home. Experts say we need to be building 96,000 homes for them every day, or 3 billion people ...
Carol Ross Barney: Design for the Public Good
01 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Renowned architect and Chicagoan Carol Ross Barney joins host Avi Rajagopal for our Summer Season premier. Ross Barney is a visionary about how people...
Avi’s sneak peek into our Summer Season
18 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this bonus episode of Deep Green, host Avi Rajagopal expresses his heartfelt thanks to our dedicated listeners for their support throughout the rec...
Sustainability Visionaries: Paola Antonelli on the Power of Design to Shape the World
06 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this inspiring episode, host Avi Rajagopal is joined by Paola Antonelli, the senior curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art ...
Sustainability Visionaries: Sharon Prince on Building a Forced Labor–Free Future
20 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this eye-opening episode, host Avi Rajagopal welcomes Sharon Prince, CEO and founder of Grace Farms, who discusses the pressing issue of modern-day...
Sustainability Visionaries: John Woelfling on Making Sustainability More Accessible
06 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this thought-provoking episode, the first of three conversations in our Sustainability Visionaries series, host Avi Rajagopal is joined by John Woe...
The Carbon Footprint of Wood Buildings
08 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
When layers of wood are put together in a specific way—usually glued together—they make for a material that has the structural strength of steel. ...
Affordable and Sustainable Housing
22 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
If we want to fight climate change, improving or retrofitting an existing building often makes more sense than tearing it down and building a new one....
Future100: The Next Generation of Sustainability
07 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Should one of the United States's most iconic bridges, the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, be turned into a cicada farm to raise insects for food? Y...
Water as a Battery
26 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 2020, a FIFTH of all the energy generated in the United States came from renewable sources. That means wind, hydroelectric, solar, biomass, and geo...
Regenerative Interior Design
12 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Interior designers work with stuff, day in and day out—chairs, tables, lights, countertops, tiles, wallpaper. The research company ThinkLab estimate...
Making Offices Carbon Neutral
29 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
When we think about the carbon emissions of buildings so far we’ve focused largely on two things: the emissions involved in operating the buildings...
Can Buildings Be Like Trees?
15 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 2002, the architect William McDonough and the chemist Michael Braungart came up with a rather revolutionary idea. The duo had recently published t...
The Carbon Footprint of the Metaverse
01 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Even if you don't care about technology, it's likely you've heard something about the metaverse. It's a sort of 3-dimensional, immersive internet that...
Can We Redesign Waste?
14 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Waste is a complex issue. How we generate waste, what kinds of chemicals and materials are in our garbage, where we choose to dispose of it, and who i...
What is the Problem with Recycling Plastics?
09 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This episode is brought to you in partnership with Aquafil, synthetic materials producer of Econyl. A couple of weeks ago, British prime minister Bori...
How Can We All Fight the Climate Crisis?
12 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, produced in partnership with global flooring manufacturer Interface, Metropolis Editor in Chief Avi Rajagopal sits down with Dr. Kath...
Can We Make the Suburbs Sustainable?
28 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The COVID-19 pandemic has produced so many shifts and undercurrents in our world, and many are so subtle that historians will probably spend decades t...
How Can We Create Green Affordable Housing?, Part 2
14 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In this sequel to our last episode ("How Can We Create Green Affordable Housing?"), we continue the conversation with Shelley Halstead, executive dire...
How Can We Create Green Affordable Housing?
31 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Most low-wage workers in the United States don't currently make enough to rent a one-bedroom apartment. Millennials aren't able to buy homes because t...
What Should We Do for Clean Air?
11 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
It’s August 2021 and there's no clear end in sight for the COVID-19 pandemic, thanks, of course, to the Delta variant. The Centers for Disease Contr...
Can the Olympics Be Sustainable?
27 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Tokyo Olympics are underway—in the middle of a pandemic, with the Delta Variant of SARS COV-2 doing the rounds. But some analysts and activists ...