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"Everything Always Sounds Better in Latin"

2006-11-10T16:27:00.000-05:00

No matter one's age or background, when one hears Yale University's Sterling Professor Emeritus, Vincent Scully, lecture one cannot help but feel they are returning to an audience with their grandfather. Still with us to share in the follies of life, Scully is a man who walked among our legends. With first person accounts of Wright, Johnson, and Meis, his stories, however embellished, are the last authoritative human connection we have to those that struggled before. His passionate words echo from a deep corner of history, to remind us that our forefathers were ruled by the same petty fates, the same twists of coincidence, and same improbably dreams that guide our actions.

With Scully, our inheritance, our history, becomes human.

It is with this sentiment in mind that DYWSC directs readers to this link, where one can listen to Mr. Scully in a recent eulogy to Philip Johnson. The speaker spends his time at a fundraising event, to defend Johnson from unsympathetic biographers and unfocused obituaries. The treat lies with the fact that Scully does his job with a vocabulary, wit, and analysis that can only be the fruit of a full and enriched life.

Below is a snippet of Scully contrasting the Meis van der Rohe Farnsworth House, and the Philip Johnson Glass house: buildings which at first glance might appear almost identical.

[16:59]...Now the inhabitant is open to nature on all four sides, but he's still alone. And he has to own enough of the natural world to insure his privacy. He has to be alone. No community group of buildings can be built on this model, unless one retreats to the closed courtyard.

Of course Meis had already done almost the same thing - at least designed it earlier - with the Farnsworth House. But how different the two buildings are! As many have pointed out, Meis lifts his building up as an object, emphasizes the frame, and subordinates the glass. Johnson is just the opposite. He paints out the frame - paints it black - he sets the building down on the ground, and he emphasizes the glass with the datum of plate rail of iron in metal. The Meis [Glass House] can be read like a traditional building; like a little temple in the landscape, but Johnson's is only a volume, inhabited by a human being. Meis's for example, with it's detailing, recalls grand stairways, great loggias, great porches; Johnson's has none of these.

That's why Johnson's house is, I think, further along than Meis's, because one of the most
persistant and objective myths in modern art has been the liberation of the individual. The liberation of the individual from comunity, which is always depicted as disasterous for the individual in the mythology of Modern art; from family; from memory; from everything. There he [Johnson] is, alone, plugged into the glowing sources of power, therefore only with glass between him and Nature.

Alas, what a poor sound-bite to give about this podcast.

There is an important quality about this recording that has little to do with Architecture and much more to do with architects coming together to listen. The speech is about larger traditions in the struggle to be creative. DYWSC offers that this recording is so powerful because it’s one of the few examples where an architectural lecture need be received with the competitive analysis of a skeptical audience. We, as younger listeners, can rest from the inevitable post-lecture statements like, “It was good work, and an interesting proposition, but I would have…” That has no place here. In this eulogy, Scully is not about the construction of an architectural argument. The magic rests in the transportation, he was there, then. He can tell us what these men before us were like. It’s a dangerous position to listen uncritically, but Scully released us from that burden, temporarily. And offer us a comradery with men who share the same love for beauty in Architecture.

People Talking about Architecture - 07.26.2006

2006-07-23T21:41:00.000-04:00

Vermont:
Duo Dickinson - What's a Nice Person Like You Doing in a House Like That?
7:30 PM - 189 VT Route 100
A lecture detailing how architects, builders, real estate agents and bankers prevent homeowners from controlling their homes.

A missed conversation

2006-07-18T21:02:00.000-04:00

It's frustrating to miss a good comment until a week later. Definitely the editor's fault for not being on the ball.

Architecture and the Establishment: Why Architecture cannot perform like the Fine Arts.

2006-07-17T01:03:00.000-04:00

A definition of "Art" is tough to come up with competently, and the task is probably well outside the scope of this forum. However, recent discussions at Contamination: Architecture and in London have compared Architecture with its sister mediums in Sculpture, Dance, Film, and Painting without exploring how Architecture cannot ever perform like these other ‘pure' arts.

Many argue the main difference is Architecture's primary need to satisfy a function: shelter. This post takes a different track though. Instead, the argument shall be that Architecture's position in society severely restricts it from questioninging or uprooting shared conceptions, as advances in sculpture and painting have been successfully doing for generations.

These other arts subvert by questioning established concepts, but there is a problem with expecting subversion through architecture. By its very nature of participating with the built environment, Architecture inevitably becomes part of it. The built environment is inherited and all participants, by that nature, it becomes the establishment. Literally. Architecture shelters all the functions that are required for a society of operate, (the following statement is extreme,) but only by abandoning a culture’s buildings can you truly shed its values. Corb, Loos, and even Wittkower all found words to say this.

A big part of this predicament stems from how Architecture is realized. Of all forms of art, Architecture is the hardest with which to achieve subversion because it is commissioned, not patronized. Those with the most power, those with the most money, dictate intimately how functions are arranged in a building. This is true of capitalists, corporations, or whole cities. Of course it is in the best interests of those with power to maintain or insure their power, thus the built environment, being controlled by the powerful, is most likely to reinforce the status quo.

This last observation is not new. Manfredo Tafuri abandoned his participation in Architecture because of similar frustrations decades ago. The challenge is still just to engage at level where one can effect this situation. Here is Peter Eisenman, from the 1992 interview in Cities of Artificial Excavation. It’s a shame he’s talking about something completely different…

“Any architecture is subject to this total loss of control any time you
begin to realize a building whether it is because of cost, or because the client
is not interested in ideology or conceptualization, or because of zoning.
Every time you challenge the condition of authority, of what is realizable in
whatever kind of project you do, it becomes an enormous problem. And
certainly my architecture pushes the limit of what is realizable.”

People Talking about Architecture - 07.20.2006

2006-07-17T00:27:00.000-04:00

Washington DC:
Stefan Behnisch - "Spotlight on Design" Lecture
6:30 PM - National Building Museum (401 F Street NW)
Earlier this year, Harvard University announced the selection of the German architecture firm Behnisch Architects as the designer for the Harvard Stem Cell Institute on the University’s Allston campus. The co-founding principal and lead designer for the project, will discuss the studio’s “green” building designs, including the Allston project. Expect slides about the Genzyme Center, just down the street.

People Talking about Architecture - 07.19.2006

2006-07-17T00:21:00.000-04:00

Vermont:
Bill Reed - Regenerative Design: Thinking and Practicing Beyond Sustainability
7:30 PM - 189 VT Route 100
Mr. Reed will speak about using ecological systems as a basis for design that regenerates the health of the environment .

Catholic University:
Stephen Roe – "Material Means…"
5:30 - Crough Center (620 Michigan Ave NE)
The principal or ROEWU architecture, in London, will discuss materiality in his young firm's work.

People Talking about Architecture - 07.17.2006

2006-07-17T00:16:00.000-04:00

Washington DC:
James Campbell - The Amazing Brick
6:30 PM - National Building Museum (401 F Street NW)
The fellow in architecture and the history of art at Queens College University of Cambridge, England, and the author of Brick: A World History, will discuss the evolution of this simple material in architecture and engineering.

People Talking about Architecture - 07.13.2006

2006-07-08T21:38:00.000-04:00

New York:
Mark Rosenhaus - Dynamic Symmetry: The Cure for the Common Design
6:00 PM - Hafele America Co. NYC Showroom (25 E. 26th St.)
"What do a pineapple, space shuttle and your finger have in common?" and marvels that they are all designed using identical proportions. His presentation, as if ripped from the 16 Century, will focus on how the Golden Rectangle, Fibonacci numbers and geometry in nature influence art and design, creating Dynamic Symmetry in many designs.

People Talking about Architecture - 07.12.2006

2006-07-08T21:37:00.000-04:00

Catholic University:
Mark Tsurumaki - (Untitled Lecture)
5:30 PM - Crough Center (620 Michigan Ave NE)

People Talking about Architecture - 07.11.2006

2006-07-08T21:35:00.000-04:00

New York:
Toshiko Mori - The Dilemma of our Time: Technology and Culture
6:00 PM - Center for Architecture (536 LaGuardia Place)
The Principal of Toshiko Mori Architect and Chair of the Department of Architecture at Harvard will address the relationship between history and innovation, material and its effects, and preservation and renewal. She will discuss several recent projects that deal with sensitive climate, ecology, and environment; and she will address the intersection between preservation, conservation, and sustainability - in technological as well as cultural and historical terms.

People Talking about Architecture - 07.03.2006

2006-07-02T14:28:00.000-04:00

London:
Peter Zumthor - Summerworks
6.30 - Main Galleries, Royal Academy of Arts
From the lector, ‘The core of my work is staying at home, forgetting the world around me and submerging myself in the tasks I have to do, the atmospheres I want to create. Research, the joy of working, of finding a form for an everyday ritual, for a special moment in the future life of a building not yet known; the pleasure of working together with my collaborators in a concentrated way, in a specific environment with the light of the sun entering from the garden and every once in a while my grandson visiting me from across the street. Summerworks. Splendid concentration. My lecture will report on the outcome of that.’

A Conversation About BIM

2006-06-25T21:40:00.000-04:00

Earlier this month the Technology Committee of the New York AIA held the event “Changing Practices - A Panel Discussion on Technology, Practice and Professional Identity”. The discussion focused on Building Information Modeling (BIM). The four professionals from the design and construction communities gave case studies illustrating how their firms used the modeling system to created deliverables that realized savings in time, material, and money. Theatrically, the evening probably was supposed to culminate with the Chairman of the Technology Committee's question "Is the traditional method of practicing architecture dead?" It uncomfortably didn’t. For reasons each participant brushed against with their responses, the answer was an unmistakable "no."

This post focuses on one of the reasons, a current failing for most BIM, and a wonderful capacity of human intelligence that will not be replaced soon: the ability to operate at multiple scales.

Briefly, BIM is a method of describing an architectural design with a large database. Vaguely, buildings are a collection of slabs, walls, and roofs, and each of these elements themselves may have components attached to them, like windows, doors, and openings. In BIM, each component is modeled spatially, (i.e. a door is 1’-0” south on this wall from the intersection with this wall.) but this relational information is in some ways secondary to the way the building’s information is stored: a BIM is just a complicated database of individually customized components and the “models” we see are odd windows into that database.

It may seem like a non- sequitur, but it is helpful to talk first about how others value models before diving into a critique of BIM. In A Brief History of Time, Steven Hawking defends some of his most important work he did (in the 70’s), making cosmological theories by studying the idealized behavior of sub-atomic particles…

“I would like to emphasize that this idea that time and space should be finite without boundary is just a proposal: it cannot be deduced from some other principal. Like any other scientific theory, it may be initially be put forward for aesthetic or metaphysical reasons, but the real test is weather it makes predictions that agree with observation. This, however, is difficult to determine in the case of quantum gravity, for two reasons. First, as will be explained in the next chapter, we are not yet sure exactly which theory successfully combines general relativity and quantum mechanics, though we know quite a bit about the form such a theory must have. Second, any model that described the whole universe in detail would be much too complicated mathematically for us to calculate exact predictions. One therefore has to make simplifying assumptions and approximations – and even then, the problem of extracting predictions remains a formidable one.”

… Here Hawking, one of the most brilliant theoretical physicists since Einstein, explains the most common problems with modeling in every profession. A model is only valuable because it makes predictions about the relationships one tries to capture. However, the accuracy of those predictions is usually restricted to the amount of detailed information one can encapsulate. Thus, like most other professions, a model is only as valuable as the amount of pertinent information it holds, and how detailed a calculation one is able to perform with that data.

To ground this back with architecture’s struggle with BIM, it appears that our bottleneck, like Hawking’s before us, is at the scale change. While Hawking considered the enormously large and the exceedingly small, many introductory design studios force the analysis of a building operating at three primary scales: the Civic, the Human, and the Material Scales. The Civic Scale (roughly 1/64” = 1’-0”) describes how a building relates to the city. By describing the building as a specialized unit in a much larger whole, the Civic scale makes the viewer consider the building as an element in a larger organism, environmental, social, and in the confluence of flows. At the smaller Human Scale (roughly 1/4” = 1’-0”) the building is seen as an environment for its inhabitants. By describing the way the composition shelters, divides, and controls its inhabitants, the Human Scale forces the viewer to consider how the building mediates flows, social situations, and ecological situations. Finally the smallest Material Scale (roughly 3”=1’-0”) describes how individual components of a building are pieced together to assemble the composition. At this scale the physical properties of the materials used overwhelms other consideration, and reflection is spent on gravity, mass, strength, bonding, overlap, and thickness. Any architectural modeling system billed as “all inclusive” should be judged not only on how well it operates at one of these scales, but at all of these scales, and how well it allows the designer to change between them.

With this knowledge it is time to finally return to the measured responses at this month’s New York AIA Technology Committee event. Each presenter made clear that their model was a deliverable – but that the scope and purpose of that model was made explicit well before the BIM was made. In this way, the model was a design project that echoed the larger job of delivering a high-quality, customized project. Importantly though, the BIM was not responsible for encapsulating all the design decisions, as it is frequently billed. Instead these databases were the site of calculation of only a few design variables, not all the considerations for the project, in the same way that different scale plans are the site of calculation for far different issues.

Thankfully, the design community doesn’t know the scope of all that it will need to design in the future, and these wise panelists avoided making statements that one tool or even one approach to design will be adequate. "Is the traditional method of practicing architecture dead?" was recast by the end of the evening to include all the systems of collage, bricolage, and extra-resourceful guerilla-design that will necessarily keep things new and changing for generations to come.

People Talking about Architecture - 06.29.2006

2006-06-25T20:52:00.000-04:00

London:
Multiple Speakers - Building Futures Summer Debate: The Future of Beauty
6:30 PM - Building Design Partnership, (16 Brewhouse Yard)
Sean Griffths (of FAT), Robert Adam (of Robert Adam Architects), Will Alsop (of SMC Alsop), Patrick Keiller (of RCA), and Sarah Wigglesworth (of Sarah Wigglesworth Architects) will talk about the many ways critics have justified and given meaning to the design of buildings and environments. Then they plan to question if this is the way it should be. From the description, "Shouldn’t making buildings and environments beautiful be a key task for the architects and the other design professionals and parties involved in creating the built environment? Isn’t “what buildings look like” a key communicational interface between a building and, not only its users, but also the public at large, for whom it creates a piece of the environment they inhabit, even if they never actually enter the building in question?"

People Talking about Architecture - 06.28.2006

2006-06-25T20:50:00.000-04:00

London:
Derek Gregory & Eyal Weizman - Violent Architectures: New Wars and Arab Cities
7:30 AM - Brandon Room, Institute of Contemporary Arts
The geographer and the architect will explore the emergent relationship between armed conflicts and the built environment. Examining the military’s own language, they will focus on the ways in which the military operates in Arab cities from the West Bank and Gaza to Afghanistan and Iraq. This presentation appears to have the same "Bernard Tschumi inspires Israeli generals' attack stratagies" thesis as Eyal Weizman's recent contribution to AnyCorp's Log 7 -- a quick 10 page read for those who cannot make it to the show.

San Francisco:
Miltiple Speakers - The Art of Placemaking: Transit-Oriented Development
5:30 - AIA East Bay (1405 Clay Street)
This panel discussion will focus on both the challenges and potential of making Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) successful, and how important the quality and level of design of the architecture of TOD is to the success of TOD. Speakers include John Ellis (of the AIA), James Corless (of the Metropolitan Transit Commission, Tom Radulovich (Executive Director of Livable City), and Mark Farrar (Principal of Millennium Partners)

People Talking about Architecture - 06.27.2006

2006-06-25T20:48:00.000-04:00

Chicago:
Martha Thorne - The Pritzker Architecture Prize: Past and Present
2:30 PM - Fullerton Hall
The former associate curator in the Art Institute's Department of Architecture and now executive director of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, will present a illustrated program tracing the history of the prize and examining the work of past laureates.

People Talking about Architecture - 06.23.2006

2006-06-17T18:30:00.000-04:00

London:
Discussion - Big Debate: What Skyline Does London Want?
7:30 - Barbican Lecture Theatre (Silk Street)
The event promises to host Rem Koolhaas, Adam Caruso, and Lee Polisano in debate. Kahn would get a chuck out of the title and company.

People Talking about Architecture - 06.22.2006

2006-06-17T18:11:00.000-04:00

New York:
Discussion - 3X3 A PERSPECTIVE ON CHINA - Part Three: CHIN[A]RT
6:30 pm - Location Center for Architecture (536 LaGuardia Place)
Part of the monthly Lecture Series, CHIN[A]RT aims to study the "image of contemporary Chinese city as given shape and sense through the hands, eyes and minds of two Chinese installation artists," Song Dong, and Yin Xiuzhen.

New York:
Hugh Hardy - How People Relate to Public Spaces
6:00 PM - King Juan Carlos of Spain Center (53 Washington Square South)
The New York Architect and Principal of H3 will speak about projects across greater New York City.

People Talking about Architecture - 06.20.2006

2006-06-17T18:09:00.000-04:00

Washington DC:
Philip Jacks - Bernini: Genius of the Baroque
6:30 PM - The Smithsonian Institute
The Associate Professor of Art History at George Washington University will explore works including the Baldacchino & Cathedral for St. Peter’s; the staging of Theresa of Avila in the Cornaro Chapel; the urban design & planning of the church of Sant’Andrea al Quirinale; the design of Piazza Navona & the Fountain of the Four Rivers; and designs for the east facade of the Louvre.

People Talking about Architecture - 06.19.2006

2006-06-17T18:07:00.000-04:00

Washington DC:
Anthony Alofsin - Pinwheel on the Prairie: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Price Tower
6:30 PM - National Building Museum
Anthony Alofsin, the professor of art and art history at the University of Texas at Austin and guest-curator of the exhibition Prairie Skyscraper: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Price Tower will discuss why this 19-story, 57,000-square-foot high rise is the only skyscraper the FLW ever got to construct, despite designing several others.

People (not) Talking About Architecture

2006-06-15T10:28:00.000-04:00

The summer months are overturning our pages and driving architects everywhere out of doors. With school out, and the World Cup on, there are just fewer events on calendars everywhere. When a day is skipped in this forum, it will be because we don't have an event to post, so all are invited to comment events that get missed. Meanwhile the next few days look rather quiet.

People Talking about Architecture - 06.13.2006

2006-06-12T12:06:00.000-04:00

New York:
Discussion - ‘Changing Practices...'
6:00 OPM - Center for Architecture (536 LaGuardia Place)
The evening's full title, ‘Changing Practices - A Panel discussion on technology, practice and professional identity' sums it up pretty well. The topics discussed will revolce around how Building Information Modeling (BIM) is "improving the quality and efficacy of professional communications".

Washington DC:
Symposium - Prefabricated Houses–Good and Green Design
6:30 PM - National Building Museum
The discussions will focus on efforts aimed to improve the reputation of prefabricated, or modular, housing. A growing number of architectural firms now combine the economic and construction efficiencies of factory-built homes with the benefits of customized, green designs. The result is sophisticated architecture and interior design that can be offered at reasonable prices and that incorporates many environmentally-friendly features. Michelle Kaufmann, principal of Michelle Kaufmann Designs in California and creator of the GlidehouseTM featured in the Museum’s exhibition The Green House: New Directions in Sustainable Architecture and Design; Joseph Tanney, AIA, co-founding principal of New York-based Resolution: 4 Architecture, which designed the 2003 winning entry for the Dwell Home Design Invitational; and Michael Sylvester, editor of fabprefab.com, a virtual resource and newsletter for modernist prefab dwellings, will discuss this growing housing trend.

People Talking about Architecture - 06.12.2006

2006-06-12T11:18:00.000-04:00

New York:
Panel Discussion - Small Spaces + Big Imagination = Life in the Modern City
6:30 pm - Japan Society (333 East 47th St.)
Using the premise that both the physical and historical forces that shape a city also shape the way its inhabitants live, the panelists will discuss Japanses urban developement. The panelists include Toshiharu Tsukamoto (Japanese architect at Atelier Bow-Wow, and Assistant Professor at Tokyo Institute of Technology); Limbon (Professor of Urban Planning at Ritsumeikan University); and moderator Clifford Pearson (Deputy Editor-in-Chief, Architectural Record)

The Aggressive Use of “Urban Art”

2006-06-07T08:20:00.000-04:00

After recently attending the public presentation of “Balloon Flower (Red)” at 7 World Trade Center, and listening to the developer’s vague description of the purpose of public art, it becomes clear that FAR-based zoning or building code had the effect of opened a gap in the psychological and build environments.

This code changed the primary size limitation for buildings from height and setback lengths to Floor Area Ratio (FAR) calculations. As a bonus to developers, buildings which volunteered to accept large setbacks in downtown areas (giving private real estate back to the city in the form of paved plazas) were rewarded the ability to build more square footage in a market that set rent based on leaseable area. This meant that developers could suddenly earn more money from the same amount of land. The kind of organization that could organize the large amounts of initial capitol and land to benefit from these bonuses, and kind of tenant that preferred the large, modern, stark skyscrapers that formed from the zoning was the corporation.

The hidden cost to these corporations was some loss of control; they had to turn over the use of their front yards, the new urban plaza, to the general public. The spirit of the law provided these spaces as public amenities, but private interests strove to narrowly define their use. For example, by city law, little restriction can be placed on meeting or gathering in these spaces, but there is modest incentive for it. Their noticeable lack of usable fixtures declares that these spaces are not intended for shelter, sitting, or reclining. Very little furniture is typically provided, and what little is offered is usually designed to discourage prolonged use. The welcome mat is taken in.

The accusation here is that these spaces are ironically, and intentionally, design for transience.

The tie-wearing crowd isn't keen on "the public" getting comfortable in privately owned public space. Skateboarders, rollerbladers, street musicians, street performers, pan-handlers, and the homeless are all members of that public sphere. Marginalized, they sometimes use public space in unpredictable and impromptu uses that stand in high contrast to the image of highly controlled, institutionally rooted, and hermetically sealed cleanliness. The purchasers of corporate modernism subscribed and exuded the kind of control to which democratically used public space was an anachronism. That separation played out in the space between the sidewalk and the front door of these skyscrapers.

In this context, it is easy to see "Urban Art" in an aggressive use, as a scuttling of public spaces. These trophies who are most expressive when set in large, flat, featureless spaces insistently consumed the space that was gifted to cities, aggravating most consumptions like sport, organized rallies, improvised markets, and the like.

People Talking about Architecture - 06.08.2006

2006-06-04T17:14:00.000-04:00

NewYork:
Witold Rybczynski - (Untitled Lecture)
6:00 PM - Harperley Hall (1 West 64th Street)
The author of the prize-winning biography, A Clearing in the Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the Nineteenth Century, will discuss Olmsted as a journalist, civic leader, and town planner. Professor Rybczynski also reviews two Olmsted landscapes in greater detail: his second great public park, rospect Park in Brooklyn, and his last project, the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina.

New York:
Various Speakers - New York Designs
6:30 PM - Urban Center (457 Madison Avenue)
The night will feature small projects that use the challenge of environmental sustainability as a catalyst for architectural invention. It will feature presentations by Samuel Anderson of Samuel Anderson Architects (to speak about the Thaw Conservation Center, and The Morgan Library & Museum); Davidson Norris of Carpenter Norris Consulting (to speak about the Sunlight in Teardrop Park); and Claire Weisz and Mark Yoes of weisz + yoes architecture (to speak about The Battery Bench & Kowsky Plaza).

People Talking about Architecture - 06.07.2006

2006-06-04T17:12:00.000-04:00

New York:
Calvin Tsao - (Untitled Lecture)
6:30 PM - Center for Architecture (536 LaGuardia)
The guest of the Architectural Dialogue Committee will discuss "his firm’s work as an inexact language shaped by culture and humanities."

Chicago:
Lyman Shepard - Frank Lloyd Wright--NOW--the Challenges of Modernism
12:15 PM - Buck Lecture Hall Gallery (224 S. Michigan Ave.)
As part of a Lunchtime Lectures series, the architectural historian will discuss Frank Lloyd Wright and the challenges of modernism.

People Talking about Architecture - 06.06.2006

2006-06-04T17:11:00.000-04:00

London:
Keith Williams - (Untitled Lecture)
6:30 PM - Jarvis Hall (66 Portland Place)
The architect of London’s Unicorn Theatre, and Athlone Civic Centre in Ireland will explore the ideas and motivations behind his firm’s work. He is expected to present current projects including the new Wexford Opera House, a library near Monaghan, Ireland, and a large private house in London.

People Talking about Architecture - 06.05.2006

2006-06-04T17:08:00.000-04:00

New York:
John Mutter - Is Sustainable Development Feasible?
6:30 PM - Urban Center (457 Madison Avenue)
The deputy director of the Earth Institute and chair of the organizing committee for the March 2006 state of the planet conference will report on responses to the conference theme “Is Sustainable Development Feasible?”

Seattle:
Walter Hood - Topology/Typology: Different Urban Landscapes
5:30 PM - Seattle Central Library Auditorium (1000 Fourth Ave.)
The internationally acclaimed landscape architect who serves as professor in the Landscape Architecture Department at UC Berkeley and is principal of Hood Design in Oakland, CA will speak about how his work spanns a variety of settings, including architecture, urban design, community planning, environmental art, and research. His firm designed the gardens and landscape for the New De Young Museum, San Francisco with Swiss architects Herzog and de Meuron. And his work was recently featured in the “Open” New Designs For Public Spaces, Van Allen Institute, NY.

People Talking about Architecture - 06.03.2006

2006-05-31T08:39:00.000-04:00

New York:
Symposium - Contamination: Architecture
10:00 AM - Guggenheim Museum
The day's speakers will include Greg Lynn, Kunlé Adeyemi, Alex McDowell, Zaha Hadid, Bernard Tschumi, Farshid Moussavi, Patrik Schumacher, Elizabeth Diller, Sanford Kwinter, and Gabriele Mastrigli, and the even marks the opening of Zaha Hadid’s exhibition at Guggenheim. Talks will focus on what Anthony Appiah calls “that endless process of imitation and revision” – that has eroded the reality and idea of authentic culture and unique architecture.

People Talking About Architecture – 06.02.2006

2006-05-31T08:37:00.000-04:00

New York:
B. V. Doshi - Architecture for India
6:00 PM - Center for Architecture (536 LaGuardia Place)
The Indian architect, educator, and planner who worked with Le Corbusier in Paris from 1951 to 1954 as senior designer, and then in India to supervise Corbusier’s projects in Ahmedabad and Chandigarh, will speak. Today he maintains an office, Vastu-Shilpa Consultants, in Ahmedabad. His lecture will "explore spatial concepts and architectural themes in his work while examining contradictions and challenges posed by India's unique cultural milieu, rapid urbanization and growth."

Columbia University:
In Dialogue: Peter Eisenman and Mark Wigley
4:00 PM - Wood Auditorium, Avery Hall
This marks the third session of an on-going dialogue.

People Talking About Architecture – 05.30.2006

2006-05-30T08:57:00.000-04:00

New York:
Jaroslav Andel & Kenneth Frampton: The New Vision For The New Architecture
6:30 pm - The Urban Center (457 Madison Avenue)
As a way of promoting the new book, The New Vision For The New Architecture; Czechoslovakia 1918-1938, the author, Jaroslav Andel and theorist, Kenneth Frampton will converse about this era when both architects and photographers pursued beliefs in social and technological utopias and saw themselves as creating a new world.

People Talking About Architecture – 05.25.2006

2006-05-21T16:09:00.000-04:00

Montréal
Norman Pressman- Cities Designed for Winter
7:00 PM - Paul Desmarais Theatre (Canadian Centre for Architecture 1920, rue Baile)
The Professor Emeritus of Planning and Urban Design at the School of Urban and Regional Planning, University of Waterloo, will speak about urban design in the colder climates.

People Talking About Architecture – 05.24.2006

2006-05-21T16:08:00.000-04:00

Julius Shulman - (Untitled Lecture)
7:00 PM - San Francisco Art Institute Lecture Hall (800 Chestnut Street )
This "long-anticipated program" is Mr. Shulman's only scheduled public appearance in San Francisco this year. It involves the photographer giving a personal tour through the galleries of his Architectural photographs.

Delft University:
Terry Knight – (Untitled Lecture)
Faculty of Architecture – (time not posted)
The MIT Professor of Computation and Architecture, will discuss creativity in design, and other areas. He contends that creativity is sometimes located in the designer (a creative person), sometimes in the process used to create designs (a creative process), and sometimes in the designs themselves (creative products). With his informal talk he aims to ask, "Where and what is creativity when design is done computationally, in particular, with generative or rule-based systems?

People Talking About Architecture – 05.22.2006

2006-05-21T16:05:00.000-04:00

New York:
Dan Gottlieb & Penny Herscovitch - Materialized Light: PadLab Exhibition & Lecture
6:30 PM - Center for Architecture (536 LaGuardia Place)
These two designers formed PadLab, a young, Los Angeles based design studio, that creates new materials, architectural glass, lighting, and fine art. The exhibit and lecture will explore the interaction of light with their new materials: Flexicomb and Bubble Glass If you miss the lecture you can still see the materials all weeak at New York's International Contemporary Furniture Fair, booth #1073.

UCLA Department of Architecture and Urban Design:
David Rockwell – (Untitled Lecture)
6:30 PM - 1302 Perloff Hall
David Rockwell is CEO of the Rockwell Group based in New York City. Founded in 1984, it has 200 built projects to its credit. Rockwell has been honored with a lifetime achievement award from Interiors magazine, is included in Interior Design magazine's Hall of Fame and was awarded the Presidential Design Award for the Grand Central Terminal renovation.

Washington D.C.:
Zachary M. Schrag - Metro's Many Creators
6:30 PM – National Bulding Museum
The author of The Great Society Subway: A History of the Washington Metro, and assistant professor of history at George Mason University will discuss how rapid transit systems are not the creation of a single individual, agency, or profession, but a collaboration among planners, engineers, architects, and citizens. He will present some of the interactions and debates that resulted in the Washinton Metro system as it exists today.

People Talking About Architecture – 05.19.2006

2006-05-14T22:38:00.000-04:00

University of California, Los Angeles
Elizabeth Diller – (Untitled Lecture)
6:30 PM – Perloff Hall
The professor and partner at New York–based Diller Scofidio + Renfro, is expected to present both the Highline project and Boston Institute Of Contemporary Art.

York (Pennsylvania):
Marlon Blackwell – (Untitled Lecture)
7:00 PM - Penn State York Pullo Family Performing Arts Center
Mr. Blackwell was featured in record’s February 2001 article, “Out There—Practicing Architecture Outside the Centers of Fashion” and his work was recently published in the monograph An Architecture of the Ozarks: The Works of Marlon Blackwell.

People Talking About Architecture – 05.18.2006

2006-05-14T22:36:00.000-04:00

Santa Fe:
Conference - Making Cities Livable - True Urbanism and Healthy Communities
May 18-22, La Fonda Hotel on the Plaza
The four day conference will cover topics listed here.

New York:
Herbert Muschamp - Blinking at the Abyss
6:00 PM - Downtown Association (60 Pine St.)
The former New York Times architectural critic will speak in a lecture series aimed to highlight the architecture in Lower Manhattan.

People Talking About Architecture – 05.17.2006

2006-05-14T22:34:00.000-04:00

Stanford University:
James Timberlake – (Untitled Lecture)
6:30 PM - Cubberley Auditorium
The architect, partner of Kieran Timberlake Associates, and adjunct professor at University of Pennsylvania will lecture about recent work.

University of Oregon:
Lars Bleher – (Untitled Lecture)
12:00 PM - 722 SW 2nd Avenue

Boston:
Matthew Frederick - Copernicus Goes to Suburbia
6:00 PM - Boston Public Library
The architect, urban designer, writer and teacher will demonstrate with the skills commonly taught to beginning architecture students, how long-standing perceptual/cognitive biases in our culture have caused suburban sprawl, urban blight, and other dysfunctions in American culture.

People Talking About Architecture – 05.16.2006

2006-05-14T22:32:00.000-04:00

New York:
Yushi Uehara & Randall Crane - FORMAL | INFORMAL
6:30 PM - Center for Architecture (536 LaGuardia Place)
Bert De Muynck, the Co-Founder People's Architecture, will moderate this second of nine-part series that offers an understanding of current Chinese architectural and urban practice. Much more information here.

People Talking About Architecture – 05.15.2006

2006-05-14T22:28:00.000-04:00

Massachusetts Institute of Technology:
Can Bilsel - Authenticity in Architecture: A Postcolonial Critique
5:30 PM Room 3-133

Washngton, D.C.:
Nicholas Adams - SOM’s Seventy Years of Iconic Designs
6:30 PM - The National Building Museum
The author of “Skidmore Owings & Merrill: The Experiment Since 1936” and Architecturectural History Professor at Vassar College, was granted unfettered access to SOM’s archives to research his book. He will discuss the firm’s history, the ideas that drove its founders, and how it remains “a vital force in architecture today.”

University of California, Los Angeles
Dana Cuff – (Untitled Lecture)
6:30 PM – Perloff Hall
The Professor will present a home-turf lecture, expecting to cover her research of emergent pervasive computing technologies and their implications for design in the public sphere.

Miss Brooklyn?

2006-05-12T12:43:00.000-04:00

The provacative "Miss Brooklyn" nickname was in the headlines of several New York newspapers this morning reporting on yesterday's media event with Frank Gehry, Laurie Olin, and James Stuckey of Forest City Ratner. Provoked, DYWSC sought to comment on the day's events, and happened across Norman Oder's blog posting from April 18, 2006, entitled "From "Miss Brooklyn" to "Ms. Brooklyn": belated feminism or defensive tactic?" which makes the following points about the nickname "Miss Brooklyn" and its change (in the little-noticed 3/31/06 Forest City Ratner press pelease) to "Ms. Brooklyn"

...
Why the change?
Given that FCR officials and p.r. people don't answer my questions, I'll have to speculate on the reasons.

1) Perhaps this is a belated recognition that, in the 21st century, calling a building "Miss" just doesn't cut it, even if the architect designing it was reared in an earlier era of gallantry. The problem with that explanation is that the developer, Gehry, and the p.r. team had a lot of time to consider their message before unveiling "Miss Brooklyn" last July.

2) More plausible is that the renaming prevents critics from using the term "Miss" as a verb. As Aaron Naparstek wrote in the New York Press last July, in a column headlined Grumbles About Gehry:The designs are so bad they’re almost funny. Gehry calls the 70-story skyscraper at the corner of Atlantic and Flatbush “Miss Brooklyn,” as in, “We’ll sure miss Brooklyn if this crap gets built.”

We can't ms. Brooklyn, can we? But maybe there's another explanation--the question is worth asking
....

In the era of "got milk?" and other variants, one might expect to see a couple "Miss Brooklyn?" shirts at tomorrow's

Garden, Don't Destroy Brooklyn
Rain or Shine
Saturday, May 13, 9am—6pm
205 Berkeley Place (Between 7th and 8th Avenue, Park Slope)

People Talking About Architecture – 05.12.2006

2006-05-08T00:57:00.000-04:00

Standford University:
Matt Kahn - Antoni Gaudi
8:00 PM - Hewlett Teaching Center, Room 201
The Stanford Professor, Artist, and Designer, will speak on the Spanish architect Antoni Gaudi.

University of Oregon:
Lars Bleher - Ptld.
12:00 PM - 722 SW 2nd Avenue

New York:
Antonio Muntadas & Juan Herreros - Collaboration - A Speculation
6:00 PM - Center for Architecture (536 LaGuardia Place)
The pair will present a conversation exploring the dynamic relationship between the practice of art and architecture between two of the disciplines’ contemporary visionaries.

People Talking About Architecture – 05.11.2006

2006-05-08T00:56:00.000-04:00

University of Oregon:
Lars Bleher - Ptld.
12:00 PM - 722 SW 2nd Avenue

People Talking About Architecture – 05.09.2006

2006-05-08T00:54:00.000-04:00

Art Institute of Technology:
Bernard Tschumi - Event-form
6:00 PM - Rubloff Auditorium (111 South Michigan Ave.)

University of Massachusetts - Amherst:
Daniel Libeskind - Breaking Ground
4:30 PM - Bowker Auditorium
In case you missed the lecture in New Jersey last month, here is a opportunity to hear the man who won the World Trade Center design competition in 2003 lecture. Since the competition he was appointed as master plan architect for the site in New York City, and may find time that night to comment on the experience.

The Cooper Union:
Janine Benyus - Biomimicry
6:00 PM - The Great Hall (pm 7 East 7th Street)
Janine Benyus will present Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature, her work on an emerging science that seeks sustainable solutions by mimicking nature's designs and processes. Widely known and respected in the world of sustainable design, Janine Benyus has named the field that analyzes nature's best ideas—spider silk and prairie grass, seashells and brain cells—and adapts them for human use. She is expected to present nature-based innovations that will change the way we grow food, make materials, harness energy, heal ourselves, store information, and conduct business.

Madison WI:
Robert Fishman - Beyond Sprawl
7:00 PM – (Unconfirmed Location)
The Professor of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan, and author of Urban Utopias in the Twentieth Century: Ebenezer Howard, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Le Corbusier (1977), will present a lecture who’s full title is Beyond Sprawl: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Utopian Vision for America.

University of Oregon:
Esther Hagenlocher - Ptld.
12:00 PM - 722 SW 2nd Avenue

New York:
Mojgan Hariri – (Untitled Lecture)
6:30 PM - The Urban Center (457 Madison Avenue)
Half of the Iranian-born, American-educated sisters Gisue and Mojgan Hariri will speak about “Their up-to-the-minute recasting of classical modernist principles ha[ving] made them a source of continuing inspiration to design students and professionals alike.”

People Talking About Architecture – 05.04.2006

2006-04-30T18:42:00.001-04:00

Washington DC:
Conference - The Architecture of Sustainability
2:00 PM (May 4 - May 7, 2006) - AIA National Headquarters
The conference will consider the impact of sustainability on architectural design.

New York:
Discussion - Allan Temko Honorary Critics Panel
6:00 PM - Newman Institute For Real Estate Studies (137 East 22nd Street)
In memory of Allan Temko, former architecture critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, this conversation focuses on the question of activism in architectural criticism. Panelists will include Robert Campbell of the Boston Globe; Paul Goldberger of the New Yorker; and John King of the San Francisco Chronicle.

New York:
Craig Borum & Karl Daubmann, and Julio Salcedo – Young Architects Series
6:30 PM - The Urban Center (457 Madison Avenue)

Los Angeles:
ForumFest IV Honors Thom Mayne
7:00 PM - Petersen Automotive Museum
The Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design presents an evening of toasts, roasts and libations to honor Thom Mayne, recipient of the 2005 Pritzker Prize.

Simon Frasier University:
Claire Bennie - Innovations in Smart Growth Housing
7:00 pm - Segal Building, (500 Granville Street)
The Research Manager from Peabody will speak about the award-winning brownfield redevelopment site known as BedZed. Beddington Zero Energy Development, is an environmentally-friendly, energy-efficient mix of housing and work space in Beddington, UK. Her lecture will discuss how to successfully integrate the characteristics of smart growth housing such as walkability, energy efficiency, affordability, and proximity to jobs and shopping.

People Talking About Architecture – 05.05.2006

2006-04-30T18:42:00.000-04:00

Pittsburgh:
Tod Williams & Billie Tsien - Wake 2006 Commencement Lecture
7:00 PM - Riverwalk Corporate Center (333 E. Carson Street)

Harvard University:
Dolores Hayden - The Power of Place, Urban Landscape as Public History
6:00 PM - Gund Hall, Piper Auditorium
The Professor of Architecture, Urbanism, and American Studies at Yale University and the author of "The Power of Place", “Building Suburbia : Green Fields and Urban Growth”, “A Field Guide to Sprawl”, and “Redesigning the American Dream: Gender, Housing, and Family Life” will lecture.

University of Westminster:
SuperCrit #5 - Rem Koolhaas presents Delirious New York
10.00 AM - Room M421 (35, Marylebone Road, London
Written in 1978, Delirious New York has been called the end of architectural utopias, celebrating congestion, fantasy, ambivalence and the confrontation of high and low cultures. The Panel of critics include Mark Wigley (Dean of Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Columbia University), Alejandro Zaera-Polo (principal of Foreign Office Architects, and former student of Koolhaas), and David Greene, (Archigram). The panel will be chaired by Paul Finch, editor of The Architectural Review

People Talking About Architecture – 05.03.2006

2006-04-30T18:38:00.000-04:00

Harvard University:
Bjarke Ingels - Architecture and Evolution
6:00 PM - Gund Hall, Piper Auditorium

New York:
PERSPECTA 38: Architecture After All (Launch Party)
6:30 PM - USM Modular Furniture (28-30 Greene Street)
“Perspecta 38: Architecture After All probes various issues of contemporary research and practice—globalization, urbanism, ideology, image and technology, as well as form, pedagogy, theory and meaning. The essays are cross-sections of a larger topic at hand, as the field calibrates itself through investigation of network practices and interdisciplinary exchange, the changing role or relevance of theory, and technique enabled by technology.”

Stanford University:
Joseph Tanney - The Modern Modular by Resolution: 4 Architecture
6:30 PM.- Cubberley Auditorium
The firm's most current efforts have been focused on leveraging existing methods of prefabrication and the potential for mass-customization to produce a viable modern option in the housing market. Mr. Tanney will likely speak about recently earning the 2006 American Institute of Architects housing award for innovation in housing design.

Catholic University:
Joseph Brown - Recent Work
6:00 PM – Crough Center

People Talking About Architecture – 05.02.2006

2006-04-30T18:36:00.000-04:00

New York:
Lebbeus Woods: SYSTEM WIEN
6:30 PM - The Urban Center (457 Madison Avenue)

New York:
Zheng Shilling - Comtemporary Shanghai Architecture and Growth
6:30 PM – The Asia Society Museum (725 Park Avenue)

Harvard University:
Katrin Scholz-Barth - Inevitable City-Scapes Merging Landscape, Architecture and Engineering
6:00 PM - Gund Hall, Piper Auditorium
The Principal of Katrin Scholz-Barth Consulting amd author of Green Roof Systems : A Guide to the Planning, Design and Construction of Building Over Structure, will speak.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology:
Wiel Arets - Curtain
6:30 PM - Room 10-250

People Talking About Architecture – 04.28.2006

2006-04-25T18:41:00.000-04:00

Washington DC:
Rem Koolhaas - Spotlight on Design Lecture
7:00 PM – National Building Museum
In his first lecture in Washington since 1996, he will discuss his recent and current projects—including store designs for Prada, the Seattle Public Library, the McCormick Tribune Campus Center at the Illinois Institute of Technology, and the CCTV Television Station and Headquarters in Beijing—and share his views on the current state of architecture Following his lecture, he will sign copies of his many books.

People Talking About Architecture – 04.27.2006

2006-04-25T18:39:00.000-04:00

Rice University:
David Pmpierre - The Great Beyond
6:30 PM - Farish Gallery, Anderson Hall
The architect and Associate Professor at the Ecole d'Archietcture will deliver a the concluding lecture for Rice’s Current Trends In French Architecture And Urbanism Lecture Series.

Harvard University:
Jorge Silvetti - Recent Work
6:00 PM - Gund Hall, Piper Auditorium (42 Quincy Street)

Dallas:
Luis Mansilla - Lecture
7:00 PM - Dallas Museum of Art, Horchow Auditorium (1717 N. Harwood)

New York:
Yansong Ma & Yosuke Hayano - Young Architects Lecture
6:30 PM. – The Architecture League (457 Madison Avenue)
Yansong Ma & Yosuke Hayano, MAD Office, Ann Arbor and Betsy & Shane Williamson, WilliamsonWilliamson, Toronto will present their work as part of the Young Architects Forum – the annual competition and series of lectures and exhibitions.

People Talking About Architecture – 04.26.2006

2006-04-25T18:36:00.000-04:00

University of California, Berkley:
Thom Mayne - Continuities of the Incomplete Print
7:00 PM - 112 Wurster Hall

Cornell University:
Emily Thompson - The Soundscapes of Modernity
6:30 PM - Lecture Hall D (Goldwin Smith Hall)

Princeton University:
Farshid Moussavi - Work in Progress
6:00 PM - Betts Auditorium

New York:
Robert Costanza - Integrating Ecology, Economics and Design …
6:30 PM - Donnell Library Center, 20 West 53rd Street
Mr. Costanza is director of the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics at UVM, a "transdisciplinary research and teaching institute that integrates natural and social science tools to address environmental research, policy and management issues at multiple scales, from small watersheds to global systems.” The full title of his lecture stretches Integrating Ecology, Economics and Design to Create a Sustainable and Desirable Future

New York:
Victoria Meyers - Designing With Light
6:30 PM - Urban Center
Using examples of the work of Rem Koolhaas, Herzog & de Meuron and others, the author illustrates light's relationship with architectural elements like color, glass, and shadow.

Illinois Institute of Technology:
David Chipperfield - Recent Work
6:00 PM - Crown Hall

People Talking About Architecture – 04.25.2006

2006-04-24T09:09:00.000-04:00

London:
Alain de Botton - ‘The Question of Beauty in Architecture’
6:30 PM - Jarvis Hall, RIBA (66 Portland Place)
De Botton will ask and explore, “What is a beautiful building? To be modern is to experience this as an awkward and possibly unanswerable question, the very notion of beauty having come to seem like a concept doomed to ignite unfruitful and childish argument.”

Harvard University:
Julie Snow – Recent Work
6:00 PM - Gund Hall, Piper Auditorium (42 Quincy Street)

People Talking About Architecture – 04.24.2006

2006-04-24T09:06:00.000-04:00

Harvard University:
Discussion - "Ornament?"
6:00 PM - Gund Hall, Piper Auditorium (42 Quincy Street)
A discussion that will track the concept of “ornament” and how it has swayed back and forth from appeal to revulsion. Panelist will explore the almost complete saturation of digital media into our design culture, and ask “What role does, can, or will the notion of ornament play? What is critical about ornament in the digital age?” Participants include Mark Jarzombek, Antoine Picon, Joe MacDonald, and Mark Goulthorpe.

People Talking About Architecture – 04.21.2006

2006-04-17T20:05:00.000-04:00

Princeton University:
Symposium -- New Downtowns: A Conference on the Future of Urban Centers
9:30 AM - 4:00 PM -- Robertson Hall. Princeton University
Scholars, policymakers, economists, architects and planners will discuss downtowns' shift from commercial centers to 24-hour mixed-use communities and will consider the social, political, and economic driving forces behind this change and the planning and design standards new downtowns should reflect, with a particular focus on urban centers in NY, NJ, and PA. Speakers include Andrew Alper; Anthony Shorris; Richard Voith; Elizabeth Strom; Eugenie Birch; Vishaan Chakrabarti; Larry Goldman; Carl Weisbrod; Mitchell Moss; Richard Monteilh; Paul Levy; Barbara Faga; Susan Bass Levin; Susan Wachter.

New York:
Jonathan Schwinge and Ian Abley - Manmade Modular Megastructures
6:30 PM - The Urban Center, 457 Madison Avenue
These editors of the book with the same name posit the idea that "the opportunity to create a world of expansive megacities will advance the art, science and processes of manufacturing, particularly if we can shrug off the dogma of sustainability that insists only small can be beautiful." They suggest that designers can learn from materials scientists working at the smallest of scales, and from systems manufacturers with ambitions at the largest- while development must aim for the integration of global systems of transport, utilities and IT in gigantic structures, constantly upgraded, scraping both the sky and the ground, outward into the sea.

Cornell University:
Robert Somol - Possibilities of Fact
6:30 PM - Lecture Hall D (Goldwin Smith Hall)

People Talking About Architecture – 04.20.2006

2006-04-17T20:00:00.000-04:00

Columbia University:
Symposium - The Critical Legacies of Manfredo Tafuri
9:30am–6:00pm -- Avery Hall, Wood Auditorium
From the Columbia Website, “A decade after his death, Manfredo Tafuri continues to occupy a pivotal position within contemporary architectural discourse both as a protagonist of the critical debates of the 1970s and as a historian who elucidated every period of architectural history from the fifteenth century to the twentieth. In addition to marking the publication of the English translation of his last work, Interpreting the Renaissance: Princes, Cities, Architects, the conference will take this event as an occasion for a new assessment of his critical legacies.” Speakers will include Mark Wigley; Daniel Sherer; Diana Agrest; Marco de Michelis; Andrew Leach; Peter Eisenman; Kenneth Frampton; Preston Scott Cohen; Anthony Vidler; Reinhold Martin; Joan Ockman; Mark Rakatansky; Carla Keyvanian; and (of course), Guido Zuliani.

New York:
The Metropolis View: A Discussion on Photographing Architecture
6:30PM - Art Directors Club, 106 West 29th Street at 6th Avenue
Criswell Lappin will discuss the issues surrounding the photography of architecture with Metropolis Magazine photographers Kristine Larsen, Michael Moran and Sean Hemmerle.

Harvard University:
Jan Gehl - The Human Dimension in Architecture and City Planning
6:00 PM - Gund Hall, Piper Auditorium

People Talking About Architecture – 04.19.2006

2006-04-17T08:29:00.000-04:00

Kansas State University:
Eric Hanson - Digital Fiction: New Worlds in Film Environments
3:30 PM -- Little Theatre, K-State Student Union
The Visual Effects Designer for Visura Imaging, in Los Angeles was trained originally as an architect. This lecture will round out Kansas’s lecture series for the school year.

Cornell University:
Moshen Mostafavi - Nurturing Urbanism
6:30 PM - 157 East Sibley Hall

Princeton University:
Farshid Moussavi - Work in Progress Lecture
6:00 PM - Betts Auditorium
A chance to catch up on the recent work of Forgien Office Architects.

Harvard University:
Kazuyo Sejima – (Untitled Lecture)
6:00 PM - Gund Hall, Piper Auditorium

Stanford University:
Jennifer Luce – Informed by Art
6:30 PM - Hewlett 201

Boston:
Scott Tilden - Museum Design in America
6:00 PM - Boston Public Library
The author of Architecture for Art: American Art Museums, 1938-2008 explores the current ‘golden age’ of art museum design through the work of Santiago Calatrava, I.M. Pei, Frank Lloyd Wright, Renzo Piano, Louis Kahn, Zaha Hadid, and Tod Williams and Billie Tsien.

University of Texas at Austin:
Hoidn Wang Partner and David Heymann - 2x2: Gallery Talk
5:00 PM - Mebane Gallery

People Talking About Architecture – 04.18.2006

2006-04-17T08:27:00.000-04:00

New York Institute of Technology:
Discussion - Peter Eisenman and Michael Graves
6:30 PM – 4 Columbus Circle
This could be good. It marks the second public lecture/discussion by Mr. Graves since his illness.

University of California, Berkley:
Takaharu & Yui Tezuka -Roof-less Architecture Print
7:00 PM - 112 Wurster Hall
The Friedman Visiting Professors will deliver something that resembles a home-turf lecture.

New York City:
Discussion - Green Teams
6:30 - Donnell Library Center, 20 West 53rd Street
Randolph Croxton, the author of the Sustainable Design Guidelines Reference Manual for WTC Redevelopment Projects, will assemble colleagues to discuss extending a green metropolitan model. The full title of this discussion is Green Teams: How Sustainablity Succeeds in Business - Green Ground Zero: Guidelines for Downtown and Beyond.

Princeton University:
Rodrigo de Arce - Santiago Arid Zone: Elementary Urbanism.
6:00 PM - Betts Auditorium

Pratt:
Francois Roche - Once Upon a Time.
12:00 PM -- Higgins Hall Auditorium

Harvard University:
Holly Getch Clarke - Dioramic Modes
6:00 PM - Gund Hall, Piper Auditorium

People Talking About Architecture – 04.17.2006

2006-04-17T08:23:00.000-04:00

Washington University:
Robert Mccarter – Louis I Kahn
7:00 PM - Steinberg Auditorium
The practicing architect, and professor of architecture, and author will talk about his new book, but which one? His name is on three published in the last three years: Louis I. Kahn (Phaidon Press, London, 2005); On and By Frank Lloyd Wright: A Primer of Architectural Principles (Phaidon Press, London, 2005); Frank Lloyd Wright: Critical Lives (Reaktion Books, London, 2006).

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign:
Tod Williams and Billie Tsien - What Do We Know?
6:00 P.M. - Lawrence J. Plym Auditorium, Temple Hoyne Buell Hall

Kansas State University:
Mikko Heikkinen - Old Ditch—New Water
2:00 PM -- Forum Hall, K-State Student Union

New York:
Bill McKibben -- Deep Sustainability: Building Communities that Actually Work
6:30 pm -- Tishman Auditorium, 66 West 12th Street
The first in a two-part lecture series organized by the Architecture League, Mr. McKibben will discuss how climate change and peak oil may shift our idea of what constitutes a desirable and workable city. Focusing on possibilities generated by emerging local economies, McKibben will discuss examples from around the world, including Havana, Cuba and Curitiba, Brazil, as well as the United States. This lecture is coincidentally timed a day after a New York Times piece about on green building and LEED certification in New York.

University of Texas at Austin:
Mario Schjetnan – (Untitled Lecture)
5:00 PM - GOL 3.120

People Talking About Architecture – 04.14.2006

2006-04-09T22:10:00.000-04:00

University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee:
Winy Maas - Research
7:00 PM - Englemann Hall Auditorium

Cornell University:
Martin Wattenberg - Revelatory Interfaces
6:30 PM - Kaufman Auditorium (Goldwin Smith Hall)

People Talking About Architecture – 04.13.2006

2006-04-09T22:09:00.000-04:00

University of Pennsylvania:
Varoius Speakers -- Talk 20
6:00 PM -- Meyerson Hall, Upper Gallery
Winka Dubbeldam, Ferda Kolatan, Anuradha Mathur, Jenny Sabin, Geoff Manaugh and others will speak as they present 20 slides.

University of Virgina:
Peter Zumthor – (Untitled Lecture)
1:00 PM - Old Cabell Hall Auditorium
If you can make it, this is a semi-rare opportunity to hear Mr. Zumthor speak publicly on this side of the pond.

Parsons:
David Rockwell - Interface Lecture
6:15 PM - 25 East 13th Street
The founding Partner of the Rockwell Group will present his recent projects with Parsons students.

People Talking About Architecture – 04.12.2006

2006-04-09T21:43:00.000-04:00

Princeton University:
Michael Maltzan - Breaking Points
6:00 PM - Betts Auditorium

Harvard University:
Nathalie de Vries - Recent Works
6:00 PM - Gund Hall, Piper Auditorium
The “DV” part of MVRDV will speak about her work in Rotterdam, and points beyond.

University of California, Berkley:
Aranda/Lasch -- Tooling Print
7:00 PM - 112 Wurster Hall

People Talking About Architecture – 04.11.2006

2006-04-09T21:32:00.000-04:00

Columbia University:
Mark Cousins - Architecture and the Lost Object: Home and Melancholia
6:30 PM - Avery Hall, Wood Auditorium
The director of History and Theory Studies and the Histories and Theories Graduate Programme at the Architectural Association Graduate School will speak on contemporary theoretical issues, from the perspective of his research in Psychoanalysis.

Parsons:
Pioneering Design Series - The Highline Design Team
6:30 PM -Tishman Auditorium - 66 West 12th street
The Highline Design Team - Robert Hammond (Friends of Highline), James Corner (Field Operations) and Ricardo Scofidio (Diller Scofidio+Renfro) discuss the progress being made on the preservation and re-use of the Highline, in New York. The Highline is an abandoned 1.5 mile elevated railway that runs along the West Side of Manhattan. Their goal is to convert the elevated rail structure to public open space. www.thehighline.org

Massachusetts Institute of Technology:
Ying-Chun Hsieh - Sustainable Construction in Community
6:30PM - Room 10-250

Harvard University:
Maxine Griffith - (Untitled Lecture)
6:00 PM - Gund Hall, Piper Auditorium

Woodbury Institute:
Marcello Spina - (Untitled Lecture)
6:30 PM - Design Center . 7500 Glenoaks Boulevard
The professor at SCI-Arc and founding principal of PATTERNS in Los Angeles will speak about recent work.

New York:
Eyal Nir - Zero-Dimensional Design
6:00 PM - Center for Architecture, 536 LaGuardia Place
This lecture will presents ParaCloud, a design tool based on parametric point-clouds as design drivers. The novel approach of unfolding design complexity and creating schematic design interfaces is explored through case studies of generative design and fabrication. Mr. Nir is an architect and technology specialist with more than 10 years of experience in developing CAD solutions for complex systems in the architecture, engineering and construction industries.

People Talking About Architecture – 04.10.2006

2006-04-09T21:28:00.000-04:00

Southern Illinois University:
Will Bruder - Architectural Studies and Interior Design
7:00 PM - Parkinson 124, Brown Auditorium.
The “self-trained” architect will speak about some of his 450 commissions that “have celebrated the craft of building in ways not typical in contemporary architecture, striving to invent form specific to function and his client’s aspirations.”

Washington University:
Marcelo Ferraz -- (Untitled Lecture)
7:00 PM - Steinberg Auditorium
The Brazilian architect and visiting professor will speak about past projects.

Rice University:
Francoise Fromonot – The Cabbage Patch and the Stork
5:00 PM - Farish Gallery, Anderson Hall
The architect and Associate Professor at the Ecole d'Archietcture will deliver a lecture whose full title stretches, The Cabbage Patch and the Stork: Classifying Contemporary Urbanism

New York Institute of Technology:
Discussion - Should the Future Be Designed?
6:30 PM - 16 West 61st St., 11th floor
Michael Sorkin will moderate a discussion between Marshall Berman, M. Christine Boyer, David Harvey, Laura Kurgan, and Brendan Moran. The full title of the talk is Should the Future Be Designed? Alternative Approaches to Activism, Politics and Professional Practice in the Design Disciplines.

People Talking About Architecture – 04.07.2006

2006-04-03T01:10:00.000-04:00

Harvard University:
Jean Nouvel – (Untitled Lecture)
6:00 PM - Gund Hall, Piper Auditorium
This will make four lectures in the last five days for Harvard. Wow.

University of Virgina:
Several Lectureors – Hearways
5:00 PM -Campbell Hall
The Dean of the UVa School of Architecture will be joined by Joel Sanders -- founding partner of Joel Sanders Architect; and Ben Rubin -- the founder of EAR Studio.

Yale University:
Frank Gehry and Paul Goldberger - A Conversation
6:30 PM – Hastings Hall (180 York Street)

University of Milwaukee:
Steven Ehrlich - "Multi-Cultural Modernism"
4:30 PM - Room 170 (School of Architecture and Urban Planning)

University of California, San Diego:
Julie Eizenberg – (Untitled Lecture)
12:00 PM - VAF Seminar Room
The founder of the Santa Monica-based firm, Koning Eizenberg is “ known for (her) imaginative, site-specific and people-oriented approach to the design of buildings and places of everyday living.”

Cornell University:
Patrik Schumacher - Title TBD
6:30 PM - Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium (Goldwin Smith Hall)

People Talking About Architecture – 04.06.2006

2006-04-03T01:09:00.000-04:00

Parsons:
Tim McDonald - Physical Work
6:15 PM - 25 East 13th Street
Mr. McDonald will describe the recent work of his Philadelphia firm, including Rag Flats, an 11-unit residential development designed to bring a new form of housing to an old neighborhood.

Pratt:
Hernan Diaz Alonso – Grotesque Mutations
6:00 PM - Higgins Hall Auditorium

People Talking About Architecture – 04.05.2006

2006-04-03T01:05:00.000-04:00

Princeton University:
David Adjaye - Making Public Space: Specificity, Customization, Imbrication
6:00 PM - Betts Auditorium
Calculations could be wrong on this, but with this lecture Mr. Adjaye will have lectured at a majority of the Ivy League schools in the bast 16 months. Perhaps he has worked into his lecture a reaction to the flack he got in the press this winter accusing him of speaking out against poorly design public space in Briton.

Harvard University:
Luis Mansilla – (Untitled Lecture)
6:00 PM - Gund Hall, Piper Auditorium

SCI-Arc:
Manuel DeLanda - Deleuze and the Use of Genetic Algorithms in Architecture
7:00 PM – Main Space
The Mexico City based Philosopher and author of 1000 Years of Non-Linear History will lecture. The book is fascinating: hopefully someone who attends the lecture will be able to comment here if the lecture is half as enjoyable.

University of California, Berkley:
Jurgen Mayer - Re-public Print
7:00 PM - 112 Wurster Hall

Archeworks:
David Brown - Failure as an Option
6:00 PM - 625 N Kingsbury St
Mr. Brown is expected to speak about his investigation into ways in which the concerns of existing organizations overseeing various scales of metropolitan development can provide parameters for modes of urban design and planning that can negotiate an area’s transformation in time.

Washington DC:
Emerging Voices: deicoi/George Yu Archhitects
6:30 PM – National Building Museum (401 F Street NW)
Mark Goulthorpe, founding principal of dECOi in Paris and Cambridge, will present his firm's work ranging from pure design to architecture and urbanism. Then Los Angeles-based George Yu will discuss, among other projects, the creative workspaces of the Sony Design Centers in Los Angeles and Shanghai.

People Talking About Architecture – 04.04.2006

2006-04-03T01:04:00.000-04:00

Massachusetts Institute of Technology:
Steven Holl -"Steven Holl: Recent Work"
6:30PM - Room 10-250
Hopefully the namesake of Steven Holl Architects will describe the design of Pratt’s new addition. The building is on the currently featured Architect's homepage.

Harvard University:
Terrance Riley – (Untitled Lecture)
6:00 PM - Gund Hall, Piper Auditorium

People Talking About Architecture – 04.03.2006

2006-04-03T01:01:00.000-04:00

Yale University:
Werner Sobek - Archi-neering the Future
6:30 PM – Hastings Hall (180 York Street)

Princeton University:
Ryue Nishizawa - Recent Work
6:00 PM - Betts Auditorium
Principle of Sanaa Ltd., and Kazuyo Sejima Ryue Nishizawa & Associates and Princeton's Jean Labatut Visiting Professor will deliver a close-to-home-turf lecture.

Harvard University:
Ricky Burdett – (Untitled Lecture)
6:00 PM - Gund Hall, Piper Auditorium

Washington University:
Bill Valentine – (Untitled Lecture)
7:00 PM - Steinberg Auditorium
The Chairman of, Design Principal at, and 43-year veteran of HOK, will advocate for sustainability and promote his definition of "good design" as a simple idea, elegantly executed and inspiring, with social significance and in harmony with the environment.

New Jersey Institute of Technology
Andrew MacNair - Not Architecture and Egg City
5:45 PM - Weston Lecture Hall 1

University of Illinois at Chicago:
Martin Fischer – (Untitled Lecture)
6:00 PM - 1100 A+A Building

Technology and its several definitions in Architecture

2006-03-30T08:41:00.000-05:00

Over the past several days the following quotes have been sitting together in a document waiting for a clever person to find the thread that links them. This is an open invitation to find the missing link.

The first quote is from a current RIBA Journal article, one of many singing the praises of Building Information Modeling (BIM). It speaks directly to the parametric heart of the medium and is quite possibly the best way to approach the second quote. First, from Martin Reise…

While the palette of tools has decades of 3D-specific design development, you have to remember that with Digital Project, you're not inputting just lines or shapes, but rules and knowledge. They can adapt and evolve and have incredibly powerful generative capabilities.

The focus of the quote is not about BIM, but about the development of a rule set. The focus of much of the last few decades of architectural theory has focused on rule sets, syntax, and the shared grammar that enables our communication, not only with sounds but also with posture, fashion, and building materials.

Which is why this second quote, again from Leon Krier, is worth pausing to consider. Prudence suggests always giving ample reflection to those statements, starting with “That is my main ambition, to…” These are the statements we’re all prone to toss out in a moment of bombast, however, here we’re given a rare moment to reconsider what we so quickly take for granted. This is Leon Kreir describing the work done by recent students interrogating structures already several hundred years old…

We go through so many steps of analysis [in this studio], not only of geographical structure, but also building logic and symbolic structure. And it is impossible for any human to accumulate so much knowledge in three months. An apprenticeship for the Beaux Arts lasted ten years. You started by scratching the floor and you finished by doing sublime things in watercolor. The problem is that these [students] are already grown-up people. They may look young, but they are grown-ups. And they are netting this knowledge. So in three months they get this overload. For this reason they will completely reject it. But at least they know what the system is. […] They will of course have to give copy to what is now fact, and they will get into this, and I think we will be able to break down the barriers, which stopped them to see this as history. But from now on, my hope is that they will see this as technology. That is my main ambition, to turn traditional architecture from being a historic subject to [the] subject of technology. To understand this.

Here Kreir is qualifying his studio as still significant, even if the material studied has been cast aside. What is interesting is that he does this by making an unusually Hidegarrian arguement. One of those trademark Hiedigarian ideas was enframing – that uniquely human impulse that runs out in front of man’s actions and orders the world for him. It’s the impulse that turns forests into dimensioned lumber before we know the wood's use – or divides up land into giant subdivided grids before we know the land's use. As a result, architects just know that wood comes in 2x’s and a townhouse in New York will stand 16’-0” x 50’-0”. By lumping traditional architecture (read ‘vernacular architecture’) in with other technological achievements, Krier changes the battlefield ever so subtly.

Instead of approaching the traditional like historians, with catalogues and dates, Krier invites listeners to attack the body of work with the same skepticism that we reserve for the deployment of nuclear energy.

By claiming traditional architecture is a technology he invites speculation about how we understand our aesthetic achievements, how conventions are adopted and reused, and how architectural conventions have grown to reflect the order in the rest of society… These are broad statements, but have their bearing here, the same way that the car has reorganized our landscape or the clock has reoranized our social relations. At the heart of these broad questions is the assumption of progress. Progress is the engine that drives technology, but it’s a little more rare to here an aesthete (very indirectly) claim that progress is driving investigations in Architecture.

This post began with a quote about rule sets though, and that is where the disconnect lies. With parametric modeling allowing us to act with potency on the rules that organize our compositions, why isn't traditional architecture the first and easiest model to make? Why is the result of such modeling ‘conventional’ office buildings or swooping swerving blobs? Why does Resolution: 4 Architecture have scores of modernist prefab homes on their site (a la ArchiKluge), but there is no killer app to spank out all the possible greek temples according to Virtruius? What is the missing piece? Or what is not being said between the two quotes?

People Talking About Architecture – 04.01.2006

2006-03-26T19:05:00.000-05:00

Columbia University:
Colloquium - RESURRECTION
1:00 PM - 6:00 PM - Wood Auditorium, Avery Hall

Yale University:
Symposium - On the Waterfront
10:00 AM – Hastings Hall (180 York Street)
Addresses will include presentations from Robert Breugmann’s, discussions by Alex Garvin, Tom Elghanayan, Thom Mayne, Sir Stuart Lipton, Malcolm Smith and more.

People Talking About Architecture – 03.31.2006

2006-03-26T19:04:00.000-05:00

Yale University:
Hon. Joseph Riley – The Mayor As Urban Designer
6:30 PM - Hastings Hall (180 York Street)
This Keynote address is co-sponsored by School of Management and Regional Plan Association, and will kick off a weekend of discussions about urban design.

Cornell University:
Valerio Olgaiti - Projects
6:30 PM - Lecture Hall D (Goldwin Smith Hall)

SCI – Arc:
Dennis Crompton – ARCHIGRAM ARCHIVES
7:00 PM – Main Space
There is a new book coming out, this could be to promote it.

Syracuse University:
Richard Gluckman - Form'L Structure
4:30 PM - The Warehouse, Main Auditorium
The principal at Gluckman Mayner Architects is expected to present recent work.

People Talking About Architecture – 03.29.2006

2006-03-26T19:00:00.001-05:00

New Jersey Institute of Technology:
Pablo Campos – The Educational Campus
12:30 PM - Weston Lecture Hall 1
The architect will deliver a talk whose full title is The Educational Campus: Architecture + Learning - The Innovative University of Salamanca Campus at Villamayor.

Columbia University:
Wolf Prix - Beyond the Blue
6:30 PM - Wood Auditorium, Avery Hall
The founding principal of Coop Himmelb(l)au is expected to present recent work. If you miss him in at Columbia, you have a second chance to see him at the Center for Architecture the next day.

Cornell University:
Francoise Fromonot - The Decline and Fall of Urbanism in Paris
6:30 PM - Lewis Auditorium (Goldwin Smith Hall)
The full title of this lecture is The Decline and Fall of Urbanism in Paris: The Belly and the Architects

SCI-Arc:
Craig Hodgetts and Ming Fung – (Untitled Lecture)
7:00 – Main Space
Craig Hodgetts and Ming Fung (the SCI-Arc Graduate Program Director) have been partners in the Los Angeles based architecture firm Hodgetts+Fung for several years. Hopefully some trouble-makers will ask tough questions to spice up the home-turf lecture.

University of Detroit Mercy School of Architecture:
Billie Tsien – (Untitled Lecture)
6:30 – McNichols Campus (at the corner of Livernois and McNichols)

New York:
Resonating Frequencies with Lebbeus Woods and DJ Spooky
6:30 PM - Center for Architecture (536 LaGuardia Place)
The full title of this event is Resonating Frequencies with Lebbeus Woods and DJ Spooky - an exploration of the symbiotic relationship between architecture and music. It is moderated by architect/composer Christopher Janney and features special guests Lebbeus Woods and DJ Spooky.

People Talking About Architecture – 03.30.2006

2006-03-26T19:00:00.000-05:00

Pratt:
Ricky Burdett - Urban Transformations
6:00 PM - Higgins Hall Auditorium

Columbia University:
Symposium/Exihibit - Chaos, Delirium and the Phantom Territories
8:00 PM - Avery Hall, Wood Auditorium
It is not understood if this is an architectural event, but giving it the benefit of the doubt, it is posted. This event is billed as the official introduction to a new movement entitled “The Breaking”. To quote Columbia's literature, "At this occasion, unseen procedures of perception and experience will be exposed and encountered. By traversing the borders of the real and turning thought into action, the opening night of the Center for Broken Thought intends to provide a bridge to the extreme, and therein a new form of vitality."

University of Pennsylvania:
Terence Riley - Modern in a Post-modern World
06:30pm | B-1 Meyerson Hall
The Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at MoMA and Principal of K/R Architects may be delivering his last lecture with that first title.

Syracuse University:
Aaron Betsky - How Dutch Design Will Save You
4:30 PM - Slocum 108
The Director of the Netherlands Architecture Institute in Rotterdam will have some explaining to do with a lecture title like that.

New York:
Wolf Prix presents the Busan Cinema Center
6:00 PM - Center for Architecture (536 LaGuardia Place)
The co-founder of Coop Himmelb(l)au, will present the competition winning proposal for the Busan Cinema Center in Busan for South Korea. The project will serve as home of the Pusan International Film Festival, and is billed to suggest new intersections between architecture, cultural programs and public space that create lively and vibrant icons within the urban landscape.

Washington University:
Olafur Eliasson - Moelmania
6:00 PM - Steinberg Auditorium
This lecture simultaneously inaugurates the international symposium After the Digital Divide? German Aesthetic Theory in the Age of New Media and concludes the series Unsettled Ground: Nature, Landscape, and Ecology Now!

People Talking About Architecture – 03.28.2006

2006-03-26T18:56:00.000-05:00

University of Toronto:
Peter Eisenman - Architecture Against Itself
6:30 PM - Earth Sciences Auditorium (5 Bancroft Avenue)

People Talking About Architecture – 03.27.2006

2006-03-26T18:51:00.000-05:00

Yale University:
Stephen Johnson - The Urban Web
6:30 PM – Hastings Hall (180 York Street)

Columbia University:
Mark Cousins - Architecture and the Lost Object
6:30 PM - Wood Auditorium, Avery Hall
The Director of Histories and Theories at the Architectural Association Graduate School in London will continue this theme with two additional lectures on April 4th and 11th.

Washington University at St. Louis:
Rainer Mahlamäki – (Untitled Lecture)
7:00 PM - Steinberg Auditorium
Mr. Mahlamäki is currently professor and head of the Department of Architecture at Oulu University and has been chairman of the Museum of Finnish Architecture since 2002.He is a partner at Lahdelma & Mahlamäki Architects and is expected to present recent work.

Rice University:
Robert Fishman – Cities After the End of Cities
The Professor of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Michigan will discuss a 21st century urbanity.

Washington DC:
Shigeru Ban – "Spotlight on Design" Lecture
6:30 PM – National Building Museum (401 F Street NW)
The celebrated Japanese architect will discuss his work in temporary housing, the Nomadic Museum, the Curtain Wall House, and a new outpost for the Pompidou Center, to be built in Metz, France.

Materiality and Architecture - Leon Krier

2006-03-24T09:11:00.000-05:00

In this forum, a reoccurring theme in some posts has been the relationship between the materiality of Architecture and the ephemeral and transcendent nature of Architecture. It’s materiality has been painted as a medium for larger concepts, and sometimes hindrance to the delivery of these ideas, by infatuation, fetishization, or disinterest. The Jacque Herzog quote two months ago, from his Pritzker Prize acceptance speech, may have most succinctly and poetically captured this duality – how the conceptual and the material in Architecture are forever interdependent, yet necessarily autonomous at operational levels.

Mapping an unexpected corner of this relationship is Leon Krier. The Belgian architect and designer for Prince Charles has built a career from a frontal assault on Modernism, earning professional celebrity in the 80’s from an ongoing debate with Peter Eisenman about the direction of design exploration. The two are dear friends now, and recently Mr. Eisenman sat on a final jury for Mr. Krier’s studio. The following discussion is a polite exchange between the two as Mr. Krier introduced the studio problem. It is valuable as it suggests a way to approach Western Architecture’s cultural heritage and even catches a participant in one of those “Architecture is…” moments, where in order to explain why we intervene in a certain way with our work, we end up offering a definition of Architecture as a common starting point…

Leon Krier: We looked at this. The students – everyone—had to draw. We had to research here. They had to draw for the first time in their life one of the buildings. Not only in […] but also in grade elevation, understand the construction, understand the materials. An all of this material had to be put on the computer so it becomes a bank of knowledge, not only of style but also of technique. Which then became a common index which can be reused by everyone in the next phase, which was the problem phase. Once these records were made, we could do some brief exercises -- to take a detail and to distort it. Distort it from the grotesque to the sublime, [in order] to be able to understand what is classical. To understand what is the nature of the classical, what is the best proportion of the column in a given situation.

[Three minutes later, at the end of the studio problem introduction.]

Peter Eisenman: Leon, before we get started, I have two questions. What is the difference to you between the grotesque and the sublime? You said before you were going to take a classical column and move it towards the grotesque or the sublime

Krier: There are many, many ahh...

Peter Eisenman: I need a quick mission statement.

Krier: Bulimia or anorexia would be a good, ahh...

Peter Eisenman: Oh. And the other would be, what's the difference between classical and vernacular?

Leon Krier: Yes. Ahh. [...] I think that architecture is ninety percent vernacular. Any of it...

Other: But what does it look like?

Leon Krier: It is technology. It is technique of building. It has no "style." It is joining natural materials in a tectonic way. Concrete and steel displaced this, because everything becomes style. When you use concrete there is no more "vernacular."

Peter Eisenman: Why not use concrete instead of vernacular materials?

Leon Krier: No. It’s not a natural material. It’s nature. And we are not nature, we are cultural. We are artificial. Whereas concrete is a form of blubber, which has no shape. It sticks together in forms which are completely untectonic and holds up for a while. But not for very long. Its a very fragile material. And very well nasty...

Peter Eisenman: What's the difference between bricks... bricks and mortar, mortar and concrete materially?

Leon Krier: Bricks? Oh, the cost. The energy cost. We should have Glenn Murcutt up. The energy cost to produce or create one brick is about... "x", and to produce reinforced concrete cost would be a factor of about seven -- at a minimum.

Peter Eisenman: But P.S. -- just in terms of cost – [Demitri Porphyrios?]'s brick-and-mortar building at Princeton is the most expensive buildings ever built, at Princeton. And I don't know what...

Leon Krier: We are conducted to an architecture, to brick buildings, any style -- all our buildings are fake. Even our industrial building. But that's the industrial condition. Nevertheless, we have the model of joining natural materials in a tectonic way, that is the overriding intellectual discipline. Materials, which informs architecture. Now Architecture is when you join these materials in an artful way. But I don't think you need 150% of []'s to be happy. Maybe 10% of the [] is enough. It is correctly those...

Peter Eisenman: That's the artfulness of the vernacular? When vernacular becomes artful it's classical?

Krier: Yes.

The shifting Forms of Architectural Debate

2006-03-18T21:46:00.000-05:00

Over the past month, a master-student in the Netherlands has been organizing and dominating one of the most directed debates the Archinect forum has seen in quite some time. Citing last year's article 'The Hokusai Wave' by Alejandro Zaero-Polo, he tries to weave a more clearly defined relationship for Architecture and iconography, with balanced input from several forum contributors. In this way, the efforts of one student has given this “discussion” thread the look, weight, and feel of the “features” section The illustrations certainly work in the image-focused subject's favor, but the discussion feeds off a point-counterpoint method of debate with images and words and genuinely profits from these different ways to make a point. This type of well-illustrated, somewhat-thought-out dialogue between designers is usually reserved for university lectures and other prepared events. Its willful emergence in other public forums is a promising for the quality of future architectural debate and as a medium to bring outside attention to the discussion. Even in spite of less directed thread topics.

People Talking About Architecture – 03.23.2006

2006-03-17T19:31:00.000-05:00

Los Angeles:
Convention – CA Boom 3
March 23 thru March 26 – Several Venues
This year the convention is billed as THE FIRST EVER MODERNIST PREFAB MARKETPLACE (!!!) (Emphasis, only in the form of exclamation points, added.)

UBC School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture
Paul Lewis – (Untitled Lecture)
6:00 PM - C 300 Theater, (800 Robson Street, Vancouver, BC)

People Talking About Architecture – 03.22.2006

2006-03-17T19:29:00.000-05:00

Harvard University:
Sarah Graham & Marc Angelil - Between Cultural Landscapes
6:00 PM - Gund Hall, Piper Auditorium
Here two of the five architects at agps architecture speak about some recent work, likely to include the ULB Darmstadt.

SCI-Arc:
Paffard Keating-Clay – Modern Architect(ure)/Modern Master(s)
7:00 PM – Main Space
This architectural lecture that continues the use of parentheses to facilitate double antandre will be webcast at 7:00 PST at http://www.sciarc.edu/live/

University of California, Berkeley:
Dennis Crompton - Experimental Architecture 1961-74 (and beyond)
7:00 PM - 112 Wurster Hall
Archigram’s Dennis Crompton will catch us up, maybe about a new book.

Maryland Institute College of Art:
Ray Huff – (Untitled Lecture)
6:00 PM - Falvey Hall at Brown Center
The other partner at Huff & Gooden Architect will speak to a crowd assembled through the efforts of the Baltimore AIA.

Washington D.C.:
Bercy Chen Studio & Escher GuneWardena – (Untitled Lecture)
6:30 PM – National Building Museum

People Talking About Architecture – 03.21.2006

2006-03-17T19:28:00.000-05:00

Harvard University:
Susan Fainstein - Planning and the Just City
6:00 PM - Gund Hall, Piper Auditorium
This night in Boston one can hear both Columbia’s Professor and Acting Director in the Urban Planning Program, and Harvard’s Professor of Planning, GSD, give a home turf lecture.

Woodbury Institute (San Deigo):
Kevin Alterwill – (Untitled Lecture)
6:30 PM - Design Center
In this lecture Mr. Alterwill will share his research in new materials and emerging fabrication techniques.

University of Toronto:
Christopher Girot – Shifting Landscapes – Moving Horizons
6:30 PM - ROOM 103 (230 College Street)
Listen to the Professor and Chairman of the Landscape Design Department at Ecole Nationale Supérieure du Paysage in Versailles France, and Visiting Critic in Landscape Architecture give a home turf lecture.

People Talking About Architecture – 03.20.2006

2006-03-17T19:24:00.000-05:00

Washington University:
Iñaki Abalos – (Untitled Lecture)
7:00 PM - Steinberg Auditorium

New Jersey Institute of Technology:
Douglas Gauthier & Jeremy Edmiston - SYSTEMs in play
5:45 PM - Weston Lecture Hall 1
Douglas Gauthier & Jeremy Edmiston are partners at SYSTEM Architects, hence the title. Hopefully someone will comment here on how the two present the Parish House, recently constructed in Austrailia.

Rice University:
Juan Hernandez Leon – The Resonance of Place (My work with Alvaro Siza)
5:00 PM – (6100 Main Street, Houston TX)

University of Florida:
Lawrence Scarpa – Outside the Frame
6:00 PM - Harn Museum
The principal of Pugh + Scarpa in Los Angeles will speak about recent work. This will close out Rice’s Lecture series for the school year

Pixel Points

2006-03-12T22:21:00.000-05:00

Nancy Levinson has posted another well-crafted piece at ArtsJournal.com, with her endorsement of Terry Castle's article about "shelter magazines" in this month's Atlantic. The two turn a critical eye to the basic impulses that young designers all suffer -- the need to be different, to express that difference thought materialism, and the inevitable run to modernist-oriented furniture stores to satisfy the need. Of course the posts continue to be so well written it makes this modest endeavor look downright amateur, but the work these two have done hands all readers a little more ammunition for a serious look at architecture. The reminder is for an attention to content, not image -- and reminds readers of the wisdom in digging for the philosophical underpinnings of what we strive for.

People Talking About Architecture – 03.17.2006

2006-03-12T17:05:00.000-05:00

University of Virgiana:
Gregg Pasquarelli - Virginia Society of the AIA Design Forum
5:00 PM - Culbreth Theatre

University of California, San Diego:
Anuradha Mathur – (Untitled Lecture)
12:00 PM - VAF Seminar Room
The assistant professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania will speak about design and the representation of landscapes as shifting and dynamic. Mathur is currently investigating the landscape of the Deccan Plateau in South India, providing the basis for an innovative design strategy for the city of Bangalore. Mathur and Dillip da Cunha along with Tom Leaders were one of the 6 teams invited to compete in the Fresh Kills competitions.

People Talking About Architecture – 03.16.2006

2006-03-12T17:02:00.000-05:00

Vancouver:
Jeppe Aagaard Andersen – (Untitled Lecture)
6:00 PM - C 300 Theatre, UBC Robson Square (800 Robson Street)

University of Pennsylvania:
David Adjaye and Nikolaus Hirsch - Making Public Buildings
6:30 PM - B1 Meyerson Hall (210 South 34th Street)
This is an opportunity to watch a discussion between David Adjaye, the Louis I. Kahn Visiting Professor of Architecture Penn, and Nikolaus Hirsch, who is a Partner at Wandel Hoefer Lorch & Hirsch in Frankfurt.

New York:
New Practices Roundtable: Marketing by Design
6:30 PM - Center for Architecture (536 LaGuardia Place)
The roundtable will focus on how new architectural practices can define themselves while nurturing clients and generating business. It will be moderated by Martin Finio, and speakers include Michael Beirut, Graphic Design Partner at Pentagram; Cathy Ho, Editor of The Architect’s Newspaper; Nancy Kleppel, Independent Marketing Consultant; Linda Ong, Branding Consultant; David Resnick, AIA, Associate Commissioner NYC Department of Design and Construction.

Architectural Association:
Symposium: Techniques and Technologies in Morphogenetic Design
10.00 AM - Lecture Hall
This symposium aims to introduce the interrelated concepts of self-organisation and emergence in relation to morphogenetic design and introduce relevant methods, techniques and technologies. The symposium will mark the launch of Techniques and Technologies in Morphogenetic Design, guest-edited by Michael Hensel, Achim Menges and Michael Weinstock. Participants include Robert Aish (Director of Research at Bentley Systems; Smart Geometry Group), Christopher Hight (Rice School of Architecture), Prof. George Jeronimidis (Chair of Biomimetic Engineering, University of Reading), Benot Fauchon, Hugh Whitehead (Director Specialist Modelling Group, Foster and Partners, Smart Geometry Group), Michael Weinstock (Director of Emergent Technologies and Design, AA), and Michael Hensel and Achim Menges.

People Talking About Architecture – 03.15.2006

2006-03-12T16:59:00.000-05:00

University of California, Berkley:
Alice Friedman - People Who Live in Glass Houses: Gender, Sexuality and Modernism Print
7:00pm PM - 112 Wurster Hall

SCI-Arc:
Peter Swinnen - In Comes the Space Producer (The Architect Dissected and Declared Dead)
7:00 PM – Main Space

Cornell University:
Riken Yomamoto - Urban Fusion
6:30 PM - Lewis Auditorium, Goldwin Smith Hall

University of Toronto:
David Adjaye - al&d Lecture Series
6:30 PM – 230 College Street
(If you miss him in Canada, you can catch Mr. Adjaye tomorrow in Philadelphia.)

Harvard Univerity:
Stefano Boeri - SUPER PLACES: A Couple of Compelling Metaphors for Globalisation
6:00 PM - Gund Hall, Piper Auditorium

New York:
John Krieble & Laurie Kerr - Greening the Knowledge Base
6:30 PM – Steelecase (4 Columbus Circle)
The full title of this event is Greening the Knowledge Base: The Research Program at NYC DDC's Office of Sustainable Design. The pair from New York City’s DDC's Office of Sustainable Design will discuss the relationship of research to sustainable practice as it has evolved at the DDC. The agency's sustainable program began with a large study -- how to implement sustainable design within the context of city operations, and this resulted in The High Performance Building Guidelines.

Boston:
Ellen Lipsey - Preserving Boston’s Landmarks
6:00 PM - Rabb Lecture Hall, Boston Public Library
The Director of the Boston Landmarks Commission will examine “what’s new with Boston’s old buildings” as she reviews current preservation issues and recent and current preservation projects in Bean Town.

People Talking About Architecture – 03.14.2006

2006-03-12T16:57:00.000-05:00

Massachusetts Institute of Technology:
Thom Mayne - Working Progress
6:30 PM - Room 10-250
If you haven’t seen him all over the rest of the country, here’s a chance for Bostonians to see the Prizker Laureat and Santa Monica Architect present recent work.

Harvard University:
Robert Marino – (Untitled Lecture)
6:00 PM - Gund Hall, Piper Auditorium

Pratt:
Elizabeth Kolbert - Field Notes from a Catastrophe: The Future of Climate Change
5:30 PM - Higgins Hall Auditorium
If you can’t catch the lecture, here’s a recent interview.

Chicago:
Craig Dykers – (Untitled Lecture)
6:00 PM - Buck Lecture Hall Gallery, ArchiCenter (224 South Michigan Avenue)
The guys from Snohetta are everywhere it seems. This time Mr. Dykers is joined by Alexander Garvin, Edward Uhlir, Charles Renfro.

City University of New York:
George Ranalli - Architecture as Icon
6:00 PM - CCNY, Shepard Hall S95 (Convent Avenue at 138th Street)

Architectural Association:
François Roche – (Untitled Lecture)
6:30 PM - - Lecture Hall (36 Bedford Square, London)
The designer who collaborates with architects Stephanie Lavaux and Jean Navarro to form R&Sie(n) architects, will present speculative urban planning, biomorphic space, and generative heterogeneous mutations.

People Talking About Architecture – 03.13.2006

2006-03-12T16:53:00.000-05:00

New York:
Shaun Donovan & Donald Elliott - New York New Housing: A Discussion
6:00 PM - Room 905, The Kimmel Center at NYU (60 Washington Square South)
This conversation between the current Commissioner of the New York City Department of Housing, Preservation and Development and the former chair of the NYC Planning Commission will look at Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently announced plans to build and preserve 165,000 units of low- and moderate-income housing by 2013. The event is one of the first this year sponsored by the Forum For Urban Design, a friend of the blogging community.

New York:
William Horgan & Shane Burger - Venturing Forth from Eden
6:00 PM - Main Lecture Hall, Center for Architecture (536 LaGuardia Place)
The Associate and Designer from Grimshaw Architects will be presenting underlying and aesthetic philosophies adopted by their firm. They look forward to presenting a system of form generation based site and program characteristics, which inform a rigorous relationship-based geometry

University of Illinois at Chicago:
Keller Easterling – (Untitled Lecture)
6:00 PM - 1100 A+A Building
The Associate Professor at the Yale School of Architecture will likely present concepts for his new book Enduring Innocence: Global Architecture and its Political Masquerades. Hopefully she will also find time to present her two web installations Wildcards: a Game of Orgman and Highline: Plotting NYC.

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign:
Kenneth Neumann - Building on Lessons Learned From the UIUC
7:00 P.M. - Lawrence J. Plym Auditorium, Temple Hoyne Buell Hall

University of North Carolina, Charlotte:
Mark West – (Untitled Lecture)
2:00 PM - 9201 University City Blvd.
See the founding director of CAST - The Centre for Architectural Structures and Technology and Assistant Professor of Architecture at University of Manitoba discuss current research projects are in two areas: 1. The design and production of pre-cast, fabric-formed, compression vault and shell panels; and 2. The design of the first fabric-formed building.

New Jersey Institute of Technology:
Lalurie Hawkinson - Working Public Infrastructure
5:45 PM - Weston Lecture Hall

University of California, Berkley:
Tracy Metz - Holland and Water: A Restless Marriage
7:00 PM - 112 Wurster Hall
Tracy Metz, a native of California who now lives in the Netherlands, is a journalist who writes about architecture, urbanism and landscape, and is an international correspondent. She has published books on highways, on manmade ‘new nature’ and in 2002 a book called FUN! Leisure and Landscape that deals with the influence of leisure on historical city centers, on large-scale developments at the urban edges (‘the pleasure periphery’) and on the transformation of the traditionally agricultural countryside.

Summary of the BIM Symposium at the University of Minnesota

2006-03-10T09:18:00.000-05:00

There was a time when a person who missed a symposium was out of luck. He could ask for first hand accounts of what was said, or if the discussion was broadly appealing, a book might come of the papers delivered to profit from the endeavor and document who was on that cutting edge. In yet another way the web is changing the dissemination of information, the symposiums that don't get books may still enjoy a healthy afterlife. The work Lachmi Khemaini has done at AECbytes to document the recent BIM symposium at the University of Minnesota is an excellent example of this.

Not only is the article a great primer for professionals or offices considering BIM implementation for their own work, but also the document is the first in a while to raise pedagogical concerns for the new technology. By just dedicating ten minutes to this piece and skimming the 2004 AB roundtable about architectural technologies, one can get a healthly overview of the genuine paradigm shift occurring with architecture's "deliverables." (The kind of paradigm shift Thomas Kuhn wrote about in The Structure of Scientific Revolution, not the abused term so many snake-oil salesmen are quick to use.) From the "Panel Discussion and Conclusions" section of Mr. Khemaini's article...

"It was generally agreed that BIM is going to bring about many changes in the architectural profession. It calls for new learning, the application of new processes, the development of new workflows, and better knowledge of other building disciplines. The position of draftsperson will certainly be eliminated. What is not clear is if it will be replaced by a new "modeler" position with the same disconnect between designer and modeler as there currently is between the draftsperson and the designer. This also relates to the question of how to best educate students for a professional future in which BIM will play an important role. How much of BIM should be taught in schools? Even with CAD, there was always the fear of "students getting lost in the computer," which made many studio instructors prohibit their students from using CAD on projects. Will this be the same with BIM? Or is BIM so fundamentally different from CAD that it could prove of tremendous value in core architectural education, in helping students understand how a building goes together?"

... and from the AB roundtable in the November / December 2004 issue intitled "Blur"...

[Phillip Bernstein] Nicholas Negroponte — the founder of the MIT Media Lab — talks about the phases of technology adoption. In the initial phase, you use the technology to replicate the ways you’ve always done things — so for architects, it’s the replacement of hand drafting. Then there’s the intermediate step of integration, where the relationship gets changed. And then ultimately the technology enables a way of pproaching the problem that’s fundamentally different. Technology is an underlayment that creates a degree of fluidity that didn’t exist before. And that fluidity combines with some other external factors that have to do with widespread dissatisfaction with the way current processes work. The reason your clients today say, “We don’t care what your role is” is that they are desperate for a good idea; they don’t care about the source. In many ways, the disintegration of old processes and old structures has to happen before things re-form into new, clear approaches.

[Mikyoung Kim] Technology is also an enabler for this kind of collaborative dialogue.When you can send a drawing back and forth so quickly between all the different parties, it allows a dialogue through the drawing that didn’t happen with hand drawings.

[Phillip Bernstein] And with certain kinds of technologies, you don’t just send a drawing any more. You can send insight. It’s not like a better fax machine — it’s something more. You can transmit intent and relationships and other kinds of metadata that create a whole different dynamic around the design process. What we haven’t yet developed are clear business processes that respond to what this means. For example, the owner says, “Why don’t you just do this and send this thing over to this other guy?” and the architect says, “Well, I didn’t get paid to make the data. I’m not going to take the risk of sending the data over there.”

[Jeffrey Inaba] It strikes me that “metadata” and “data” seem now to be the same thing, in the sense that meta-information, like intention or insight, is as much a part of the scope of architectural work as, say, dimensions on a drawing. We are responsible for having both the intention and insight in hand, as well as very specific descriptive bits of information.

[Phillip Bernstein] There’s still a useful distinction between “data” and “metadata.” Data is the information that’s transacted as part of traditional processes. You send me a drawing; I send you data that indicates the boundary of your landscape work. But the metadata is the stuff that, at least in traditional transactions, rides on top — non-graphic stuff like area calculations, quantities, or key relationships between components. It’s now possible to communicate both kinds of information. But unfortunately, there are no well-understood protocols for how to do all this.

Michael Graves at The New School

2006-03-08T08:28:00.000-05:00

In case is got buried in the People Talking About Architecture postings, Michael Graves will join Dean Paul Goldberger for a discussion this evening at 6:30. This is the first public event DYWSC? has found since his serious illness several years ago. Luckily, the whole event will be webcast at the New School's website, so anyone not able to attend might still see.

Tough Questions

2006-03-08T08:24:00.000-05:00

To compliment the Emerging Voices series that the New York Architectural League puts together, it has now started podcasting ten minute interviews of the spotlighted architects done immediately after their presentation lectures. Although the interviews and lectures seem to focus on the issues that the next generation of architects is tackling, listeners may find interviewer Andrew Blum asking accidentally grilling questions. The following exchange, from the Teddy Cruz discussion, was at first listen a cordial getting-to-know-you discussion. But after a moment of reflection, listeners may hear the almost epic struggle that these Emerging Voices designers are engaged in -- to just find their voice and be heard, even while the spotlight is on them. From the interview...

[5:53] Cruz: ...That's the reason people say "What have you built?" "Why aren't they built?" It takes time to build a position -- even more at times than building a building. It really has taken time to negotiate with the non-profit and the city itself. I realize out of interaction with the non-profit that these projects could not happen without designing or sculpting a policy, a kind of political framework..."

Blum: So it's almost as if instead of designing within the zoning code, working within the existing code, you're using these designs and the association with the community in order to change that."

Cruz: Exactly. That maybe summarizes it better. The project became a political instrument to change code.

Blum: So what have you built?

Cruz: I mean, I built a big house in Tijuana, I've done a winery in Baja California, you know, a couple of houses...

Blum: But that's not the way you've arranged your practice.

Cruz: Right. In reality its part of my experience, but the relevance... I mean, I think it was Steven Holl once who said "In order to build a practice..." it's not to just build like everything but the stuff that is important to you, that interests you. It's about being selective. I think the projects I presented, even thought they're not built yet, they really were the facilitators of this transformation of the regulation. [ed -obscured] That for me is a missing legacy.."

People Talking About Architecture – 03.10.2006

2006-03-05T15:29:00.000-05:00

Cornell University:
Ricahard Meier - (Title to be announced)
6:30 PM - Baker Auditorium (Goldwin Smith Hall)
Meier is the second and last of the New York Five to speak in the New York metro area this week. It is unclear wether he will be speaking in conjunction with the Project Architect Symposium that lasts from 9:30 -6:30 Sunday, in the same space. However, perhaps he will shed light on the design issues his office faced while designing Life Science Technology building.

People Talking About Architecture – 03.09.2006

2006-03-05T15:25:00.000-05:00

New York:
Colloquium - On-Site: New Architecture in Spain
6:30 p.m. - KJC Auditorium (501 Washington Square South)
The Museum of Modern Art and The King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center (KJC) will co-sponsor an interdisciplinary colloquium held in conjunction with the exhibition On-Site: New Architecture in Spain. Colloquium participants will include Alexander Tzonis, Professor of Architectural Theory, Deft University of Technology; Susan Larson, and others.

The Art Institute of Chicago:
Brad Cloepfil - The Projects of Allied Works
6:00 PM - Fullerton Hall

San Francisco:
Steven Ehrlich – (Untitled Lecture)
6:30 - SFMOMA Phyllis Wattis Theater (151 Third Street)
The principal of Steven Ehrlich Architecture, in LA will speak -- as confirmed with his office. This is confusing though.

London:
Discussion - Let the People Design
6.30 PM - The Yard, 49 Old Street
The third of four consecutive seminars aimed at brining architecture to wider audiences. Sarah Carrington, Alex de Rijke, Sophia de Sousa,and Liza Fior, tackle issues surrounding the question “ Why should the public participate in architecture and how can it be done successfully?”

People Talking About Architecture – 03.08.2006

2006-03-05T15:18:00.000-05:00

Parsons (The New School):
Micahel Graves - At the Parsons Table
6:30 PM - 66 W. 12th St. Tishman Auditorium (New York)
In some small way, this is history. Since many cannot make it to the event, Parsons has set up a webcast location at www.online.newschool.edu.

SCI-Arc:
Stanley Tigerman - Ethics and Morality in Architecture
7:00 PM – Main Space
The principal of Tigerman McCurry Architects and Co-founder of ARCHEWORKS will speak, and like Mr. Grave’s discussion, this lecture will be webcast live through the SCI-Arc website.

Syracuse University:
Mark Linder - Literal is More
4:30 PM - The Warehouse, Main Auditorium

Princeton University:
Edward Dimendberg - Falling to bytes: Preservation and Cinematic Memory in Los Angeles
6:00 PM - Betts Auditorium

Harvard University:
Gary Hilderbrand – (Untitled Lecture)
6:00 PM – Gund Hall Piper Auditorium
The principal of Reed Hilderbrand Associates and Adjunct Associate Professor, Harvard Graduate School of Design will likely speak about recent work.

Ohio State University:
Kevin Kennon - (Untitled Lecture)
5:30 PM - Knowlton Hall Auditorium
The award winning architect and founder of KKA will speak in the at The Ohio State University campus as part of the Winter 2006 Lecture Series.

University of California at Berkley:
Klein Dytham - Architecture is More Print
7:00 PM - 112 Wurster Hall

Washington DC:
Jeanne Gang - Discussion
6:30 PM - National Building Museum (401 F Street NW)
The Principal of Studio Gang will discuss the Chicago-based firm and work, which includes the Starlight Theatre at Rock Valley College in Rockford, IL; a community center in Chicago’s Chinatown; and the Marble Curtain, an installation for the Masonry Variations exhibition at the National Building Museum.

London:
Discussion - Underage Architecture
6.30 PM - The Yard, 49 Old Street
The second of four consecutive seminars aimed at brining architecture to wider audiences. Nicole Crockett, Catherine Smith, Sally Tallant, and Frances Morrell will try and tackle the question “How can you teach children about contemporary architecture?”

Vancouver:
Chris Wilkinson - - (Untitled Lecture)
6:00 PM - H.R. MacMillan Space Centre (1100 Chestnut Street)

People Talking About Architecture – 03.07.2006

2006-03-05T15:12:00.000-05:00

Architectural Association:
George Legendre - Before and After: What a Mess
6:30 PM - - Lecture Hall (36 Bedford Square, London)
Mr. Legendre will present a home-turf lecture where he tackles the question, “Is the surface any good?” The author of IJP: the Book of Surfaces, the esteemed theorist of mathematical surface ontology, and the architect of a large surface-inspired infrastructural project, will ponder the usefulness of the three-dimensional surface in writing, teaching, and practice – and offers a couple of tips.

Cornell University:
Michael Van Valkenberg - Recent Works
6:30 PM - Hollis Cornell Auditorium (Goldwin Smith Hall)

Harvard University:
Grahame Shane – (Untitled Lecture)
6:00 PM – Piper Auditorium (Gund Hall)

University of Toronto:
Jorge Silvetti - Recent Work
6:30 PM - Room 103
The principal at Machado and Silvetti Associates in Boston will likely present the Getty Villa & Museum in Malibu, CA.

New York:
Discussion - Views and Vision: Megaprojects in New York City in the 21st Century
6:30pm - Center for Architecture (536 LaGuardia Place)
Nicolai Ouroussoff, the Chief Architecture Critic for the New York Times, Mark Wigley the Dean of Columbia’s GSAPP, and others discuss the relationship Architecture and Journalism have enjoyed.

London:
Discussion - Architecture on Show
6.30 PM - The Yard, 49 Old Street
The second of four consecutive seminars aimed at brining architecture to wider audiences.

People Talking About Architecture – 03.06.2006

2006-03-05T15:10:00.000-05:00

Rice University:
Paul Lewis – Opportunism at Play
5:00 PM - Farish Gallery, Anderson Hall

University of Florida:
Enrique Walker – (Untitled Lecture)
6:00 PM - Harn Museum of Art auditorium

New Jersey Institute of Technology:
Ron Witte - Watch Your Figure
5:45 PM - Weston Lecture Hall 1

Washington University (St. Louis)
Ben van Berkel - (Untitled Lecture)
7:00 PM - Steinberg Auditorium
The architect and co-founder of Amsterdam’s UN studio, to lecture about recently realized projects -- the refurbishment and interior design for a Fashion Hall in Seoul, La Defense office building in Almere, an exhibition pavilion for Living Tomorrow in Amsterdam, and a hotel expansion and apartment building in Zuoz (Switzerland). Current projects include restructuring the station area of Arnhem and a new Mercedes Benz Museum in Stuttgart (Germany).

University of Illinois at Chicago:
Joe Rosa – (Untitled Lecture)
6:00 PM - 1100 A+A Building

Pratt:
Kolatan & Erich Schoenenber - Composite Strategies
12:00 - Higgins Hall Auditorium

London:
Discussion - The Image of Architecture
6.30 PM - The Yard, 49 Old Street
The first of four consecutive seminars aimed at brining architecture to wider audiences. Monday’s session will look at how different media can be used, and the challenges architecture faces in presenting itself to the public in this way. Print, TV and other media offer different opportunities and challenges for architecture. The panellists will explore how they approach this, and how the sector is developing. Panelists include David Barrie, of Channel ; Shumon Basar, Architect, Curator and Journalist; Jane Wentworth, Brand Consultant at Jane Wentworth Associates; and Marcus Fairs, the Editor of Icon Magazine.

Lessons from the Father

2006-03-02T23:55:00.000-05:00

The managing editor at Artforum has brought DYWSC?'s (and other 's) attention to this month's Artforum Feature Article; it spotlights six proposals for the redevelopment of the disaster area left in Katrina's wake. Like Rowe and Tafuri before him, Aaron Betsky's multi-page introduction eloquently encapsulates the fear that Architecture cannot reach Marx's "base," or affect the economic and political structures whose invisible hand shapes our landscapes more than the product of ten thousand drafting boards. From Rowe's introduction to Five Architects...

"For we are here in the presence of what, in terms of the orthodox theory of modern architecture, is heresy. We are in the presence of anachronism and, probably, frivolity. If modern architecture looked like this c. 1930 then it should not look like this today; and if the real political issue of the present is not the provision of the rich with cake but of the starving with bread, then not only formally but also programmatically these buildings are irrelevant. Evidentially, they propound no obvious revolution... "

Ground zero presented the far simpler challenge of encapsulating the "spirit of rebuilding," or the "will of the nation" in a small complex of skyscrapers. Plenty of argument has been waged on whether the nine teams even approached that artistic goal. But Betsky and Kroloff risk exposing a far more embarrassing impotence, and one wonders if the six teams they've assembled had a chance to read the introduction Betsky would publish before accepting the challenge. From this month's Artforum...

"…Can the art of building solve problems created not by nature alone but by the very ways in which we have historically tried to conquer its potent forces? And on a more practical level, can architecture provide structures that are more logical, just, and useful than those now seemingly ordained by the economic and political powers that be (and not just in the Big Easy)? These, at any rate, were the questions we asked ourselves as the possible contours of a rebuilt New Orleans began to emerge from the destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina. The situation in New Orleans, it seemed to us, was only an extreme instance of the quandary in which architecture in general finds itself. When the economic "realities" imposed on us by relentless market forces compel the proliferation of nonplaces leached of any individual or social meaning or coherence, how is architecture to respond? When the aim of building is merely to achieve the highest possible return on the smallest possible investment in the shortest amount of time, and when the very notion that urban development should be anchored by common services and communal spaces has all but disappeared, there seems little for architecture to do beyond slapping up prefab high-rises, cloning glass-and-steel office towers, and providing basic shelter for the masses (not to mention the occasional escapist fantasy for those who can afford it). But now, with the rebuilding of an entire city on the line, don't we need at least to ask whether architecture can do more?”

Before deciding for yourself weather or not the following projects rise to the challenge, remember what the introductions remind readers at least twice, that "the results appearing in the pages that follow are offered not as polished proposals or completed plans, but as images and forms meant to trigger discussion and widen the scope of possibilities for New Orlean's resurection."

"Images" and "Forms" -- of course not for their own sake, but as trusted stewards of larger, sweeping, grand ideas. Now imagine the pause this must give a reader, especially if they just attended the MoMa discussion where Jeff Kipnis and Terrance Riley bid adieu to Philip Johnson before the Yale Symposium and Mr. Kipnis snuck into his presentation...

"[Philip Johnson copied. He copied in a way that had a message...] These kinds of activities bother us. It bothers us for a couple reasons. It bothered us because, I think, at the core of modern life is a distrust of aesthetics and a distrust of representation. And Philip made it his career to explore those issues. Representation and Aesthetics."

People Talking About Architecture – 03.03.2006

2006-02-28T23:38:00.000-05:00

Cambridge:
Patrick Berger - MILIEUX
6:00 PM - SHARE, Consulate of Switzerland (420 Broadway)
Pascal at SHARE wrote to tell of Mr. Berger's lecture, where he will share his perspective on the city and its natural environment and focus on structures and materials. He will also describe his vision of planning strategy to design building with ties to the city.

University of California – Berkley:
Symposium - Thinking/Drawing: Drawing in an Electronic Age
(March 3 & 4) 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM - 112 Wurster Hall
The Symposium is a two-day examination of the need and role for drawing today in the design professions and fine arts. Organized by architecture professor Marc Treib, the program will broadly address the question “Why draw?” by variously examining the dynamic relationships between media, process, thought and environment. Presenting papers and/or their work will be: Errol Barron, Professor of Architecture, Tulane University; Christopher Brown, Adjunct Professor of Painting, California College of the Arts; Catherine Dee, Senior Lecturer in Landscape Architecture, University of Sheffield; Anthony Dubovsky, Professor of Visual Studies, University of California, Berkeley; Christopher Grubbs, Architectural Illustrator; San Francisco; Lynn Gumpert, Director, Grey Art Gallery, New York University; Katie Hawkinson, Lecturer in Visual Studies, University of California, Berkeley; Mark Hewitt, Architect and Adjunct Professor of Art History, Rutgers University; Harley Jessup, Pixar Animation Studios, Emeryville; Laurie Olin, Professor of Landscape Architecture, University of Pennsylvania; Chip Sullivan, Professor of Landscape Architecture, University of California, Berkeley; and Marc Treib.

People Talking About Architecture – 03.02.2006

2006-02-28T23:36:00.000-05:00

New York:
Architectural League : Emerging Voices 2006
6:30 - Scholastic Auditorium (557 Broadway)
Join Eric Bunge & Mimi Hoang of nARCHITECTS in New York, and Teddy Cruz of estudio teddy cruz in San Diego, for discussion and award presentations.

Toronto:
Chris Wilkinson – (Untitled Lecture)
6:00 PM - "The Pit" of the Architectural Science Building (325 Church Street)
The principal of Wilkinson Eyre Architects will speak.

People Talking About Architecture – 03.01.2006

2006-02-28T23:30:00.000-05:00

JCC of West Orange:
Daniel Libeskind - Breaking Ground
7:30 - Maurice Levin Theater (760 Northfield Ave. West Orange, NJ)
Mr. Leibeskind will speak to the organization that meets the needs of the 10th largest Jewish community in the nation.

Columbia University:
Will Alsop - The Behaviour of the Architect
6:30 PM - Wood Auditorium, Avery Hall
The audience may not detect cultural misspellings like “behaviour” in the prepared speech from the principal of Alsop Architects.

Sarycuse University:
David Erdman – “network in_formation”
4:30 PM - The Warehouse, Main Auditorium
The professor at UCLA Architecture School, and principal of Servo will speak about recent work.

Sci-ARC:
Discussion - (Dis)Educating Architects in Zürich
7:00 PM – Main Space
Dr. Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani, and Prof. Andrea Deplazeswill be in conversation with Eric Owen Moss and Dr. Oya Atalay Franck.

Chicago:
Lee Bey - The Politics of Architecture and the Architecture of Politics:
6:00 PM - ArcheWorks
The full title of the lecture is The Politics of Architecture and the Architecture of Politics: How Aldermen, Civic Groups— and Mayors—Shape the Built Environment. Lee Bey is not an architect, but from 2001 to 2004, he served as the deputy chief of staff for planning and design for Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley. In that role, he helped shape local policy on urban development, lakefront protection, park construction, sustainable design and architectural preservation.

People Talking About Architecture – 02.28.2006

2006-02-27T01:09:00.000-05:00

Columbia University:
Rem Koolhaas - The Lagos Project
4:00 PM - Wood Auditorium (113 Avery Hall)
Or
Peter Testa - Rethinking Systems
6:30 pm - 111 East 59th Street
(It’s hard to figure out which is which… here.)

Cornell University:
Rickard Burdett - Urban Transformations in London
6:30 PM - Hollis Cornell Auditorium (Goldwin Smith Hall)

Harvard University:
Byoung Cho – (Untitled Lecture)
6:00 PM - Gund Hall Piper Auditorium
Byoungsoo Cho will be giving a home-turf lecture.

Massachusetts Institutute of Technology:
Bruce Lindsey & Andrew Freear - Rural Studio & Collective Practice
6:30 PM - Room 10-250
The Co-Directors of the Rural Studio at Auburn University will give a talk whose full title is Rural Studio & Collective Practice: Reconnaissance at the Social and Environmental Edge.

Architectural Association:
Zaha Hadid/Hanif Kara - The Design of the Phaeno Centre
6:30 PM - - Lecture Hall (36 Bedford Square, London)
To open the AA exhibition of the project, both Ms. Hadid and Mr. Hanif will present the architecture and engineering of the Phaeno Science Centre, in the motor city of Wolfsburg. The evening's presentation will provide insight into the architectural and engineering ideas that are at the core of the project. (The realization of the project will be described more fully two nights later with a more technical presentations by the project architects and engineers who carried out the design development and construction of the building within the offices of Zaha Hadid Architects and Adams Kara Taylor.)

University of Toronto:
Raoul Bunschoten - From Matter to Metaspace
6:30 PM - Room 103
The principal of CHORA, in London will present favorite projects.

People Talking About Architecture – 02.27.2006

2006-02-27T01:03:00.000-05:00

Uinversity of California, Berkley:
Thomas Sieverts - “Soft” Regional Management Strategies
7:00 PM - 112 Wurster Hall
The Professor Emeritus of the Darmstadt Institute of Technology, will deliver a lecture whose full title is “Soft” Regional Management Strategies A Collaborative Approach to Regional Design & Planning and whose subject is will address regional design and planning concepts used for the RuhrDistrict region in Germany, and Vision Bern, Switzerland. He is the author of Cities without Cities.

University of Florida:
Marc Mimram – (Untitled Lecture)
6 p.m. - UF Harn Museum of Art auditorium
The French engineer will speak about favorite projects.

Washington University:
Antoine Picon – (Untitled Lecture)
7:00 PM - Steinberg Auditorium
Antoine Picon is professor of the History of Architecture and Technology and Director of Doctoral Programs at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

California College for the Arts:
Stephen Cassell - Architecture Research Office (ARO)
7:00 PM - Timken Lecture Hall (San Francisco campus)
ARO was established in 1993 by Stephen Cassell and Adam Yarinsky. Their work has become a model for research-driven architectural practice, as each project evolves out of a deep engagement with specific physical, social, and economic conditions.

New York:
Discussion - Obsession and Practice
6:00 PM - Titus 2 Auditorium (MoMA)
In collaboration with the American Folk Art Museum’s exhibition Obsessive Drawing, MoMA will present an interdisciplinary panel that investigates the repetitive, detail-oriented creative practices of artists, writers, and performers. Panelists include artists Trenton Doyle Hancock and Daniel Zeller, poet Susan Howe, and musician David Grubbs. Moderated by Brooke Davis Anderson, curator of Obsessive Drawing.

Ottawa:
Massimiliano Fuksas - (Untitled Lecture)
6:00 PM - National Gallery of Canada Main Body (380 Sussex Drive in Ottawa.)

Sforzinda and Levittown

2006-02-23T09:35:00.000-05:00

With mass production and the industrial revolution came mechanized travel, warfare, and production. When the construction industry became standardized and mechanized, America got it’s first tangible look at the sublime limitless space implied by tract housing landscapes. (Here BldgBlog spotlights a photographer whom has done some frightening work documenting seemingly limitless rows of these things.) One would think that this is a problem unique to modern time: that it was a dystopia first dealt with recently because it is uniquely the byproduct of the machine age.

Much to the contrary, Hanno-Walter Kruft documents renaissance thought on the subject his book "A History of Architectural Theory: From Vitruvius to the Present." There in Chapter Three, he has a remarkable paragraph about renaissance architectural theoretician Antonio Averlino’s (Filarete) view on repetitive row-housing. This is about a two-page passage written arount 1450…

"Alberti's notion of "varieta"" as the expression of human individuality leads Filarete to the further claim that, just as one human being differs from another, so each building is unique: 'You will never see any building or .. house or dwelling that exactly resembles another either in appearance, in form or in beauty.' At the same time he formulates -- for the first time as far as the present writer can see -- the possibility of limitless rows of identical houses: 'If he wished, man could build houses that resembled one another in form and appearance, so that they all looked alike.' But he stigmatizes this as an offence against the divine plan of Creation."

This passage is valuable because it demonstrated the timelessness of some architectural theories -- and the rich past we inherit. At stake here is a reason to react to the banal, everyday work that is done, sometimes as a byproduct of larger forces. In that search, in that justification, are present the core values for what we do. In Filarete's 14th Century text, that justification naturally bows towards divine motivation, and percolated into his plans for Sforzenda. And today? Comments are, of course, always welcome...