15th October/Liz Diller Lecture/Christopher Ingold Building Bartlett/London



Architect Liz Diller shares her practice Diller Scofidio + Renfro's (DS+R's) recent work.

Liz Diller is a founding principal of DS+R, an interdisciplinary design studio that integrates architecture, the visual arts and the performing arts. DS+R’s completed projects include the renovation of Lincoln Centre for the Performing Arts, the High Line park in New York and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, credited for revitalising the city’s waterfront and is highly regarded for its inventive planning of exhibition and educational programmes. Additional completed projects include the Creative Arts Centre at Brown University, and Blur, designed for the 2002 Swiss Expo. Projects currently in construction include The Broad museum in downtown Los Angeles, the Museum of Image and Sound in Rio de Janeiro, the Medical and Graduate Education Building at Columbia University, the McMurtry Building for Art and Art History at Stanford University, and the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.

Diller is the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation ‘Genius’ Award, the first awarded in the discipline of architecture. In recent years, she was named among Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World and recognised by the Smithsonian Institution with the National Design Award, by the American Academy of the Arts and Letters with the Brunner Prize, and by the National Academy of Design with a Lifetime Achievement Award. Diller is a recent recipient of an Honorary Doctorate of Humanities from Occidental College and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She is an International Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, a graduate of the Cooper Union School of Architecture and a Professor of Architecture at Princeton University.

More info at:
http://www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/architecture/events/liz_diller_bartlettils

9th October/New Architecture Narratives Lecture-Andres Jaque lectures/ Barbican/London

What are the borders of architecture? How has the discipline evolved to face the non-stop challenges of the city? What means can be used to communicate and connect with society?

This lecture is lead by Silver Lion recipient and acclaimed Spanish architect / theorist Andrés Jaque, as he explores the new narratives that contemporary architecture employ to engage with the public realm and the persuit to define the limitations of this modernised profession.

This lecture will be followed by a Q&A with Brendan Cormier, lead curator of 20th and 21st century design for theShekou Partnership at the V&A.


More info at:
http://www.barbican.org.uk/film/event-detail.asp?ID=17003 

08th October/James Wines Lecture/Darwin Lecture Theatre Bartlett/London


What is an Idea?'It’s a great idea!!' appears to be one of the more hyperbolic and ubiquitous mantras, used to introduce new cultural phenomena today. James Wines’ presentation is based on the cautious premise that ‘everything can’t be THAT great’. For this reason, he explores the most significant ideas in the arts and architecture, which have been shaped by social, political, psychological, economic and cultural influences, from the early 20th Century to the present. His choice of content is intended to reinforce Dadaist advocate Richard Huelsenbeck’s enduring observation: 'The highest art is that which, in its conscious content, reflects the problems of the day'. Prof. Wines also evaluates the vast difference between aesthetic choices, which are merely predicated on scavenging recent history, versus ideas that liberate the arts from past-due stylistic baggage. Crediting many conceptual exchanges between art and architecture, he discusses the seminal work of such movements as Constructivism, Futurism, l’Architetture Radicale, L’Arte Povera, Performance Art, Earth Art, Fluxus, Conceptual Art, Arch-Art ...concluding with observations focused on some potentially fertile sources of ideas for the future. 

James Wines is founder and president of SITE, a New York City-based architecture and environmental arts organisation, founded in 1970. He is also a Professor of Architecture at Penn State University. He has designed and built more than one hundred and fifty architecture, environmental art, landscape, interior, and exhibition projects for private and municipal clients in eleven countries. He has lectured on environmental issues in fifty-two countries and contributed essays to many books and magazines in the USA, Europe, and Asia. In 1987 his book De-Architecture was released by Rizzoli International and, during the past two decades, there have been twenty-two monographic books and museum catalogues published on his projects for SITE. In 2000, Taschen Verlag released Professor Wines’ book on Green Architecture. He lives and works in New York City. His major interests are in environmental design, public space, the fusion of buildings with context and the connections between art and architecture.

6.30pm – 8pm
No booking required / first come, first seated