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

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

22 January/Kees Christiaanse Lecture:The city as a Loft/Bartlett Christopher Ingold Auditorium/London

Tomorrow at 18:30 at Bartlett Christopher Ingold Auditorium there will be the Lecture "The City as a Loft" by Kees Christiaanse(KCAP).

A desire for urbanity, identity and indentification has been a major factor during the last thirty years in stimulating the preservation and conversion of derelict structures dating from the industrial era. Buildings like this have their own specific features and a relationship to history and context, while at the same time being open to current and future needs. The buildings attract involvement by local people and stand out with their qualities of stability and openness. The word 'loft' is used to describe these urban qualities: adaptable, flexible and at the same time powerful and authentic spaces in which people can live and work.

More info at:

http://www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/architecture/events/kees-christiaanse-bartletils

16 January/The Two Cultures: Brian Clarke and Zaha Hadid in Conversation/The Architecture Foundation/London

Five and a half decades on since C.P. Snow delivered his famous Rede Lecture, 'Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution', it seems as relevant today as it did in 1959. Snow described what he called a “gulf of mutual incomprehension” between science and the humanities. The clashing point between the two cultures was not producing enough “creative chances” - opportunities for new breakthroughs or new ways of looking at the world. More serious was Snow’s warning that we have lost even the pretence of a common culture. “This loss,” he wrote, “is leading us to interpret the past wrongly, to misjudge the present, and to deny our hopes of the future".

This event takes artist and outgoing AF Chair Brian Clarke’s Two Cultures, a series of prints dedicated to C.P. Snow held within the Tate collection, as a starting point for a conversation between Clarke and the internationally acclaimed architect Zaha Hadid, reflecting upon architecture’s role as a mediator at the crossroads of the arts and sciences. The dialogue will be chaired by Nicholas Serota, Tate's Director.

Clarke’s eight screenprints will be available to view before and after the event in the Prints and Drawings Room, as well as from Monday 13 January to Friday 17 January 10.30am–1pm and 2–4.30pm.

January16th at 7pm

More info at:

http://www.architecturefoundation.org.uk/programme/2013/the-two-cultures

19 Nov/2013 Jencks Award Benedetta Tagliabue/Riba/London

The annual Jencks Award is given to an individual, or practice, that has recently made a major contribution internationally to both the theory and practice of architecture. This year's winner Benedetta Tagliabue is an international architect who has carved out a reputation for an architecture fused with a passion for landscape and design.

Among Tagliabue’s most notable projects are the Scottish Parliament building in Edinburgh, Diagonal Mar Park and the Santa Caterina Market both in Barcelona. She studied architecture at the Istituto di Architettura di Venezia (IUAV) and currently acts as director of architecture firm EMBT Miralles Tagliabue, founded in 1994 with her late husband and partner Enric Miralles.

She has won numerous international awards in the fields of public space and design, including the RIBA Stirling Best Building Award in 2001 for The Scottish Parliament. Tagliabue is also visiting professor at Harvard University, Columbia University and Barcelona ETSAB, lecturing regularly at architecture forums and universities around the world.

In this lecture, Tagliabue presents her key projects and reflects on the inspirations behind her work and those in future. The award will be presented as part of the event chaired by Charles Jencks – designer, author and broadcaster.

6:30 PM - 8:00 PM
Venue:

66 Portland Place, London, W1B 1AD

More info at:
http://www.architecture.com/WhatsOn/Talks/Events/2013/Autumn/2013RIBAJencksAwardLecture.aspx#.Uot0BEK7cyE

12 Luglio/Couchsurfing Architecture/Must/Lecce

COUCHSURFING ARCHITETTURE _ LECCE ROMA A/R


BIGLIETTO DI ANDATA E RITORNO PER ESPERIENZE DI ARCHITETTURA A CONFRONTO


LE > > > RM 24.06.2013
RM > > > LE 12.07.2013

LECCE ROMA A/R: 2 città, 2 incontri, 6 studi di architettura a confronto che operano in realtà differenti.
Couchsurfing Architecture ha una doppia dimensione, pubblica e privata. Pubblica perché propone degli
incontri aperti, delle occasioni di confronto per presentare l'attività professionale, la ricerca e la poetica di studi di architettura. Privata perché richiede ai partecipanti l'adesione ad un gioco di scambi di ospitalità, che chiama in campo le case, la vita familiare, le abitudini ma anche il rapporto intimo tra gli architetti e le loro città.
L'ospite ha infatti il compito di preparare una cena così come di condividere un risveglio ed una colazione, una passeggiata al mare o per la città con lo straniero che, venuto per raccontarsi, godrà a sua volta della
narrazione che chi lo ospita gli farà della sua città, portandolo alla scoperta dei propri luoghi, reali e immaginari. Couchsurfing Architecture nasce dal piacere dell'incontro e del viaggio, e usa il dono (del proprio tempo e spazio) come risorsa finanziaria, chiedendo ai partecipanti di spostarsi a proprie spese, utilizzando un “biglietto di invito A/R” come dispositivo relazionale per instaurare un vero confronto.
Il progetto è a cura di Marialuisa Palumbo e del centro studi Punto a Sud Est

More info:
www.puntoasudest.it

8 June/Sou Fujimoto public talk/Serpentine Gallery/London

Architect Sou Fujimoto discusses his visionary design for the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2013, a delicate, cloud-like structure that experiments with immateriality and weightlessness. Widely acknowledged as one of the most important architects coming to prominence worldwide, Sou Fujimoto (born 1971) is the leading light of an exciting generation of artists who are re-inventing our relationship with the built environment. Inspired by organic structures, such as the forest, the nest and the cave, Fujimoto's signature buildings inhabit a space between nature and artificiality. 

Describing his design concept, Sou Fujimoto said: "For the 2013 Pavilion I propose an architectural landscape: a transparent terrain that encourages people to interact with and explore the site in diverse ways. Within the pastoral context of Kensington Gardens, I envisage the vivid greenery of the surrounding plant life woven together with a constructed geometry. A new form of environment will be created, where the natural and the man-made merge; not solely architectural nor solely natural, but a unique meeting of the two."

In this talk - the first of a series of public events that will take place in the 2013 Pavilion over the summer - Sou Fujimoto speaks about his practice and the concepts driving his designs.

More info:

http://www.serpentinegallery.org/2013/04/public_talk_sou_fujimoto.html