Highlights from the SOM/AIA Conference

Judging from the buzz at the Center for Architecture Friday, Michael Weinstock's lecture (the only lecture addressing design, and then by default,) was the highlight of the day. Instead of detailing the intricacies of his design and teaching philosophy, here's a short list of the buildings he used to illustrate his talk. Each one somehow embodies the idea that a building's constituent parts combine to create a larger fluid system, and that the better buildings have larger fluid systems that combine to even larger fluid systems. This is how cells in the human body combine to create organs, which combine to create people. If you get that, you'll get..

Cecil Balmond with Philip Johnson
Chavasse Park . Liverpool, England (Unrealized)

Cecil Balmond with Toyo Ito
2002 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion

Herzog & de Meuron
Chinese National Stadium, Beijing 2008

Cecil Balmond with PTW Architects
National Swimming Center ("The Water Cube"), Beijing 2008