Netherlands Architecture Institute
Exhibition at NAI Rotterdam: 19 february 2010 – 16 may 2010
24 architecture designers take the lead. Assessing what society needs now. Pursuing strategies the market is hesitant to explore. The designs that are presented are the fruits of an ambition to find sustainable designs for the future.
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“The international travelling exhibition ‘Architecture of Consequence’ highlights a changing selection of the same urban designers included in the accompanying book. After Sao Paulo and Moscow, the exhibition will travel to the NAi in Rotterdam in February. The designs that are presented are the fruits of an ambition to find sustainable designs for the future. The theme is expanded by exhibiting the selected designs in different scales.

With contributions by: 2by4-architects, De Zwarte Hond, Doepel Strijkers Architecten, MVRDV, Studio Marco Vermeulen, West 8, CONCEPT0031, Anne Holtrop, Next Architects, seARCH, 2012 Architecten, Atelier Kempe Thill, biq stadsontwerp, MUST Urbanism, OMA / AMO, ONIX, Powerhouse Company, Rietveld Landscape, Stealth.ultd, Van Bergen Kolpa Architecten, Venhoeven CS, ZUS

For more information about ‘Architecture of Consequence’ visit www.architectureofconsequence.nl.
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ECOWEEK

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REGISTRATION FOR THE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE & WORKSHOPS IS NOW OPΕΝ
www.ecoweek.gr
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Registration is now open for the for the international conference and design workshops ECOWEEK 2010: ECOLOGY + COMMUNITY + ARCHITECTURE on passive solar and ecological building and a look at sustainability in local communities and societies, for architects and young architects, to be held in Athens on March 13-20, 2010.
The UN Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen may not have yielded the expected results and commitments, but ‘green’ buildings are already in global spotlight and will remain – in Greece too: towards a 20% energy reduction by 2020, the implementation of EU Directive 2002/91 (Greek law N3661/2008 FEK89A) for energy conservation in buildings, for the implementation of the Law for the waste management in construction and very soon the new EU target for energy autonomous buildings by 2016.
The conference takes place under the auspices of the European Institute of Law, Science and Technology and the City of Athens.
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INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE & WORKSHOPS:
The international conference and workshops design ECOWEEK 2010: ECOLOGY + COMMUNITY + ARCHITECTURE, is taking place in Athens again this year catering to architects, young architects and architecture students, engineers and environmental engineers.
WORKSHOPS & Thematic lectures: ‘Design a passive solar house of zero emissions’ The thematic lectures will be addressed by specialists from international consulting firms such as ARUP, Buro Happold, and Sustainable Cities / CABE; including architect Ana Serra, environmental engineer Byron Stigge, the engineer Vasilis Maroulas and architect Brian Mark.
The design workshops of ECOWEEK 2010 will be hosted this year, for the first time in Greece, in 20 architectural offices in Athens. The workshop participants will learn and apply the principles of ‘green’ buildings in small groups in architectural firms, under the guidance of established, new and emerging architects from Greece and abroad, for three days. The subject of the ECOWEEK 2010 studios: the design of a passive solar house of zero emissions.
The architects who will host the design workshops ECOWEEK 2010 are (alphabetically):
Angelidakis (www.angelidakis.com), Daskalakis Architects (www.rkitekts.eu), deltArCHI – Dragonas + Christopoulou Architects (www.deltarchi.com), Doxiadis + (www.doxiadisplus.com), Drifting City (www.driftingcity.com), KLAB Architecture (www.klab.gr), Kotionis Architects, Agni Kouvelas Architect (www.couvelas.net ), John Kounelis and Associates
(www.artektondesign.com), Meletitiki – Alexandros Tombazis
(www.meletitiki.gr), PLEIAS – Dimitris Diamantopoulos and Associates (www.pleias.com.gr), Nikos Rousseas Architect, Architects Smyrlis (www.smyrlis.gr), TEAM4 (www.team4.com.gr), K. and T. Tsipiras (www.tsipiras.gr), Michael Photiadis Architect (www.photiadis.gr) and Zerefos Tessa Architects (www.zerefos – tessas.gr).

Participation to the international conference and workshops requires registration. For more information, registration and the program, visit EcoWeek website www.ecoweek.gr.
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SITE VISIT TO ECOLOGICAL BUILDINGS AND BUILDING USING COB:
For 2010 ECOWEEK is planning an interactive workshop, building with mud and a visit to ecological buildings in Larisa on March 13-14; registration is required. Places are limited. For more information and registration visit
www.ecoweek.gr.

LECTURES OPEN TO THE GENERAL PUBLIC:
In 2010 ECOWEEK will host for the first time in Greece a keynote lecture by the environmental entrepreneur, activist for ‘green’ jobs and McArthur “Genius” Majora Carter from the Bronx, New York, who will talk about
creating urban ‘green’ communities. Majora Carter’s TED talk was attended by Al Gore (www.majoracartergroup.com).

ECOWEEK will also host for the first time in Greece, a keynote lecture by Berlin architect Diebedo Francis Kere (www.kere-architecture.com) winner of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture and the Global Award for Sustainable Architecture 2009 for projects in the communities of Burkina Faso in Africa.

Following the keynote lectures, a buffet and a temporary installation will take place in cooperation of CARTECO with ECOWEEK. Majora Carter and Diebedo Francis Kere keynote lectures will be held on Thursday, March 18, 2010. The lecture program and opening of ECOWEEK 2010 start at 17:30. Parnassos Foundation Hall, St. George’s Square, Karytsi 8, Athens 105 61 (metro: University).

For information Tel: +30.694.7405280 and
Email: faidra@ecoweek.org). Admission is free.

In 2010 ECOWEEK will also host lectures by architect Sarah Grahn of the internationally renowned firm WHITE Arkitekter (Sweden) and architect Menno Koostra of the internationally architectural firm Paul de Ruiter Architects (Netherlands). Additional lectures by architects from Denmark and France will be announced shortly. The full program is posted on www.ecoweek.gr The lectures will take place on Friday, March 19, 2010. The program starts at 17:30. Parnassos Foundation Hall (St. George’s Square, Karytsi 8, Athens, metro: University). Admission is free.

On Monday, March 15, at 19:00 at the Papasotiriou bookstore (Panepistimiou 37, metro: University) ECOWEEK 2010 will screen and present the documentary “A thousand lost golf balls” on the planned development of a golf course in Cavo Sidero, Crete; raising questions of environmental management,
integrated development and the importance of local society and the environment. Director: Kalaitzis E. Script: Cliff Cook. Admission is free.
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DOCUMENTARIES
ECOWEEK 2010 includes the screening of the following documentaries. Admission free.

* “Taking Root: the Vision of Wangari Mathai” (Tuesday 16 / 3, 19:00, Metropolis, 54, Panepistimiou Ave., Metro: Omonia). Admission free.
* “The Garden” (Wednesday 17 / 3, 19:00, Metropolis, 54, Panepisimiou Ave., Metro: Omonia). Admission free.
For information: +30.694.7405280 and E: faidra@ecoweek.org

* “The 11th hour” with Leonardo DiCaprio on Climate Change (exclusive promotion for High School students – free admission upon subscription and a composting bin as a gift for the school, courtesy of VELTIOTIKI-G. PAPPAS – places are limited. For contact information and participation refer to ecoweek@ecoweek.org)
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Bustler

Donald Wexler, who helped define Palm Springs architecture in the 1960s, will be honored for his contributions to the profession at the three-day Wexler Weekend, Jan. 22-24 in the city where he built his reputation.
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“Wexler, whose archives are housed at Cal Poly Pomona, designed the iconic Palm Springs Airport and counted Frank Sinatra and Dinah Shore among his celebrity clients, but he is best known for his steel houses. The virtually all-steel structures were fabricated at a factory and assembled on site – a revolutionary technique for residential construction at the time. Wexler and his partner Ric Harrison master-planned a neighborhood of 38 such homes, but changes in the steel company’s management structure in the early 1960s limited the project to seven sites. Most have been restored and are a must-see for devotees of Palm Springs modernist architecture.

“We feel privileged that Don Wexler chose to give Cal Poly Pomona his collection,” says Lauren Bricker, an associate professor in the Department of Architecture. “His work is of considerable interest to the architecture community and the general public. Design professionals are attracted to his prefabrication systems and his minimal-design aesthetics. Sustainable design is certainly one of the major directions in architecture today, and Wexler’s architecture continues to offer valuable lessons for current practitioners.”

Although Wexler is best known for his residential and business projects, his work on more than 30 public schools throughout the Coachella Valley is an important part of his legacy, Bricker says.

“These projects catapulted him into the public sector, and he found deep satisfaction in contributing to the civic life of the desert.”

The Wexler Weekend kicks off Friday, Jan. 22 with the screening of “Journeyman Architect: The Life and Work of Donald Wexler” at the Camelot Theatres. On, Jan. 23, which is Wexler’s 84th birthday, guests will enjoy a champagne brunch, followed by a five-hour house tour and an evening fund-raiser.
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A clip from the documentary “Journeyman Architect: The Life and Work of Donald Wexler” released by Design OnScreen.
http://www.vimeo.com/3868781
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The weekend will conclude on Jan. 24 with an event at the Wexler Steel Houses and a book signing of a Wexler tribute journal written by architect-author Patrick McGrew. The 56-page monograph is based on extensive research and interviews with Wexler.

“While the Wexler Weekend is full of great activities, what will remain long after the three-day event is our 56-page Don Wexler tribute journal,” says Ron Marshall, chair of the Palm Springs Preservation Foundation, which is sponsoring the event. “The foundation is very proud of its long history of publishing similar journals that celebrate the architecture of Palm Springs. The addition of a Wexler tribute journal to that small library will help educate a broad audience about the importance of historic preservation in our desert oasis.

“Don Wexler’s incredible body of work is one of the big reasons Palm Springs is recognized throughout the world for its outstanding modernist architecture. But aside from being a great architect, Don is one of the most modest and self-effacing gentlemen you could ever meet.”
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www.szhkbiennale.org

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Rem Koolhaas talks at 2009 Hong Kong & Shenzhen Bi-city Biennale of Urbanism \ Architecture..
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La Triennale di Milano

“LA CITTA’ FRAGILE”
“Non è rinchiudendo il vicino che ci si convince del proprio buonsenso” F. Dostoevskij

November 20th, 2009 – January 10th 2010
Curated by Aldo Bonomi
Exhibition and graphic design by AquiliAlberg
Sponsors: Pirelli, Corriere delle Sera, Regione Lombardia, Unicredit Group, Fondazione Cariplo, Eurostands, Philips, Abet Laminati, Epson
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“LA CITTA’ FRAGILE” - click image to enlarge

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Opening November 19th, 2009, 7.00 p.m.
Press conference November 19th, 2009, 11.30 a.m.

La Triennale di Milano presents the strong and scenographic exhibition “La città fragile” curated by Aldo Bonomi, design by AquiliAlberg. After La città infinita (2003), La rappresentazione della pena (2006), and La vita nuda (2008) the exhibition focuses on fragility and fear that affects people who are overwhelmed by a modernisation that breaks the references of community and family, that used to ensure the passing of values from one generation to the next.
The exhibition, through photographic documents, video, illustrations, maps and relevant statistical data, seeks to represent some aspects of the fragility of the present-day city. It highlights the relationship between the resenting community, which is closed in and looks for a scapegoat, and the caring community, which seeks to assume responsibility for social weaknesses, in a hard-working community, and acts in a privileged way in regard to production and work.
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The design of the exhibition aims to translate its content into architecture that interacts with it, to create a fusion that stages the fragile city. The exhibit is divided into three main parts: the fragility located on the left side, the care community on the right side, and the rancorous community that runs down the central area. The exhibition therefore is not only a host of the content, but also an architectural transposition of the content. Going into detail of each of these three components, the fragilities have been interpreted as actual deconstructed volumes composed of splintered fragments, and channeled through videos, photographs, passages and data, to develop themes related to their fragility. On the other hand, the outer surface of these volumes is reflective to allow the visitor to be mirrored, in order to rediscover themselves in the exhibit and to consider that what they see in the shards could be experienced by them in some way in their present or in their future.
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The spaces are deliberately disorientating, narrow, long and incumbent, with sloping surfaces that accentuate the drama of the content. All the shards are sliced on the top by a single inclined plane, and gradually increase in volume as you travel through the exhibition. A unique and strong gesture perceived by the eye as one enters the space. The care community on the right side, unfolds in a continuous band made of linear modules, illustrating in their steps the work of the care community. In the central spine, between the care community band, and the shards of fragility, the path is obstructed by six unpredictably tilted bolts, representing the rancorous. Binding powerfully into space from above (and below) with their 6 meter height, illustrating disturbing messages displayed through images, videos, and phrases. They try to obstruct the path, but instead their volume casts a red shadow on the ground that spreads to reach all the components involved. A sort of ‘fil rouge’ that sews and connects all the elements, embracing the videos in the shards located on the left side, and translating into graphic lines in the care community located on the right, ultimately developing into a three dimensional volume creating the pavilion of enlightenment. Here the architectural and graphic language merges, and the last of the six bolts, sheds its color before being incorporated. The shards come together, and the care community is integrated to create a unique space dedicated to public meetings, screenings, and assemblies, to complement and conclude the conceptual route.
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About AQUILIALBERG design + architecture studio – Milan – Italy:

Laura Aquili & Ergian Alberg from 1999 worked in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Rome, London and Beijing (China) for different internationally recognized offices: Zaha Hadid, OMA Office for Metropolitan Architecture of Rem Koolhaas, UNStudio of Ben Van Berkel & Caroline Bos, ONL of Kas Oosterhuis and Massimiliano Fuksas. They have been responsible for different scale projects, from products design to architecture.

Founded in 2006, AQUILIALBERG is an experimental and innovative international architectural and design practice based in Milan, Italy, with extensive experience in the fields of architecture, interior design, product design, urbanism and infrastructure on different scale and development levels, approaching research and technology with a a multicultural and multidisciplinary attitude.
The use of innovative technological platforms, allows the studio to pursue a continuous experimental approach in the field, and at the same time to support the evolution and development of each project from concept to realization.
Vertigo table, presented at the Milan Design Week 2007, was chosen by Elle Décor as one of the Best New Tables 2007, and is the first collaboration with the leading italian furniture company MOROSO.
In 2007, they also designed a limited edition tray called Fossil, for Corian by Dupont for the event “CORIAN: 40 years / 40 designers”, a travelling exhibition presented during the Milan Design Week 2007. The exhibition was later shown in New York (ICFF), London (100% design), Frankfurt (Design Annual), Paris, Oslo, and Brodeaux. Fossil was also auctioned last December by Pierre Bergé & Associés in Brussels.
Recently, they have been appointed architects for an housing projects and an ambitious touristic harbour.
AQUILIALBERG studio has also been selected to design the Casa-Décor lounge installation in Turin, in collaboration with Moroso and Iris Ceramica.
At the 2009 Milan Furniture Fair they presented Swing-Up with Serralunga: an innovative and versatile stacking vase system that can also be used as a pouf and side-table.
Their collaboration include: Moroso, Corian, Serralunga, Ritzenhoff, and Christie’s auction house for whom they designed the new Italian headquarter in Milan and their new main exhibitions lay-out in Milan and Rome.
Provincia di Milano and Camera di Commercio awarded AQUILIALBERG, “New Creative & Innovative Company ‘08″.
In 2009, “Interni King Size”, selected AQUILIALBERG as emerging talented designers in the international scene.
Laura Aquili & Ergian Alberg regularly write about architecture and design on different italian magazine and newspaper such as Il Sole 24 Ore, Interni, L’Arca, Progettare and L’Industria delle Costruzioni.
They write about “Emotional, digital and technological cross-pollination between design, art and architecture” in their blog, “Des-art-chitecture”, for the NOVA100 on-line newspaper, powered by Il Sole 24 Ore.
Work of AQUILIALBERG has been recently published and exhibited around the world.
They participated at the first edition of the international format “Pecha Kucha Night” in Milan at the Bovisa Triennale, “Milano in Progress” during the “Innovation Circus” event, “Rizoma” (Young Architects Biennale), Beyond the Media 2009, and “CanActions” (Biennale di architettura in Kiev).
They have been teaching ‘Theor. background on the influence of dig. techn. on society, culture & arch.’, at Delft University of Technology – International Master Programm ‘Hyperbody’, along with kas Oosterhuis.
They are currently designing “La città Fragile” exhibition at La Triennale di Milano.

website: http://www.aquilialberg.com
mail: info@aquilialberg.com
blog: http://aquilialberg.nova100.ilsole24ore.com
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Details:
TRIENNALE DI MILANO
viale Alemagna 6
T. +39 02 724341
F. +39 02 89010693
www.triennale.it

PRESS OFFICE
Antonella La Seta Catamancio, Head of Press Office
Damiano Gullì, Marco Martello, Mattia Pozzoni
T. +39 02 72434241/205/247
F. +39 02 72434239
ufficio.stampa@triennale.it
www.triennale.it/press/
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Archined

“Sooner or later many urban neighbourhoods have to contend with a lengthy period of decline, demolition and new construction. This ‘interval period’ offers opportunities for alternative uses and new initiatives. Many of them disappear again, however, as soon as renewal is complete. A half-finished block of houses in the Transvaal district in The Hague formed the setting for the workshop entitled ‘Urban Transformation in the Interim’ on Thursday October 15. The workshop reflected on the qualities generated during this interim period and on ways to ensure that these qualities don’t vanish.”
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Workshop in the interim (photo: Marc Heeman)

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The workshop formed the presentation and closing event of the ‘Laboratory for the Interim’, a series of studies in which architects, designers and artists examined the restructuring of the Transvaal district over a period of two years. They looked at the possibilities that open up in the ‘interim period’ to use vacant premises and disused sites, and asked whether transformation should take another course. The laboratory was a follow-up to Hotel Transvaal, an art project that took place in Transvaal from the summer of 2007 to the autumn of 2008. This hotel lodged itself in temporarily vacated houses scattered across the neighbourhood, with breakfast provided by a local caterer. The period of transformation, often experienced as negative owing to decline and vacancy, formed the impetus for hospitality and welcome.
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Presentations in half-finished block of houses (Photo: Marc Heeman)

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The laboratory participants found inspiration in the charm of empty places, in informal use, and in the liveliness of small-scale business ventures. They devised concepts in which the available spaces could accommodate and stimulate commercial activity, proposing everything from a car-repair garage to a constitution for the interim. In addition, the participants questioned the way in which the transformation process is now tackled. Would it not be better to stop viewing this as a project with a starting date and completion date and, instead, approach it as a continuous process? After all, the city is constantly subject to change.

Bernadette Janssen (urban designer at BVR), Corine Keus (E19 architects) and Henk Jan Bouwmeester (philosopher/artist/designer) came up with an alternative model in which the transformation of Transvaal Noord, a section of the neighbourhood that has not yet been tackled, is spread over a longer period. Their advice is not to wait until decline sets in everywhere but to invest right now in qualities. Don’t focus attention on problems but strengthen existing qualities in the housing stock and public space, is their message. If the basic value of a neighbourhood is maintained and pearls are created here and there, then the value of property, and of the entire urban structure, will be boosted. That will allow a neighbourhood to develop very gradually, with just minor bad patches though no major ruptures.
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coffee break in the interim (photo: Marc Heeman)

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The results of the ‘Laboratory for the Interim’ reveal the ideal of a healthy and dynamic urban ecosystem that gradually adapts as time passes. To achieve this, many projects place emphasis on strengthening relations and exchange between residents, housing stock, economic activity and public space. But how do you change an area – where a large number of homes are owned by one housing association: Staedion – from a centrally run structure into a self-organising system? For the men and women at the wheel, it’s as though they have to transfer their passengers from a sturdy ocean-going steamer to wobbly rowing boats.

But it hasn’t come to that yet. During the morning session philosopher René Boomkens spoke about the memory of the city, a memory that consists physically of buildings, streets, parks and squares, but to an important extent also of the everyday environment of residents and occupants. When large-scale demolition takes place and residents have to move elsewhere in large numbers, this memory is largely erased. In Transvaal one can clearly see how that works. On the walk from the tram to the workshop location one can see how ‘radical’ the restructuring has been undertaken up to now. Whole streets have disappeared to make way for brand-new development that bears no memory of what used to be there. This is not a subtle facelift but a complete makeover.

Boomkens also points out another problem. According to him the ‘Laboratory for the Interim’ relates to the dominant city development in the same way that the Slow Food movement relates to McDonalds. In this comparison, the fast food giant stands for ‘the same taste, the same smile, the same turnover – everywhere’, while Slow Food stands for ‘inefficient, slow, different every season, local, small-scale, yet extremely profitable in spite of all that because it’s expensive’. The danger of this comparison for city development, says Boomkens, is exclusiveness and elitism. For problem neighbourhoods like Transvaal are mostly home to immigrants and low-income white residents with little education – typical McDonalds customers, according to Boomkens. He wonders whether initiatives like the ‘Laboratory for the Interim’ – whose participants are usually members of the creative classes who have little in common with the residents of the neighbourhoods in which they operate – can bridge that gap.
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a walk through Transvaal (photo: Marc Heeman)

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Enthusiasts of the interim therefore steer a middle course between two gaps — that with administrators and that with residents. It is the paradox of designers and artists drawn to the plight of problem districts. They argue for a bottom-up approach and for engagement with events, yet at the same time they are relative outsiders who project their ideas on a situation that they are scarcely part of. That distance is also their strength, however. For they can put their finger on the tender spot without having to be brought to account immediately. They can reveal, depict and highlight hidden qualities. And that is therefore what Boomkens advises them to do: compile an archive of special and everyday urban phenomena — from the history of a neighbourhood supermarket to interventions in the interim — and then make that archive available on Internet. A declaration of love for the city as it is, and an inexhaustible source to build on – though that isn’t always so easy in practice.”
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Info:
The Laboratory for the Interim was initiated by Iris Schutten and Sabrina Lindemann. The workshop was organised by them in collaboration with Trancity.
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The Architectural League of New York

http://www.vimeo.com/7473313
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David Benjamin, Natalie Jeremijenko, Deborah Richards, and Soo-in Yang
Introduction by Mark Shepard
Recorded October 16, 2009
Running time: 1:09:40

Presented as part of the public program series organized in conjunction with the Architectural League’s fall 2009 exhibition Toward the Sentient City.

David Benjamin, Natalie Jeremijenko, Deborah Richards, and Soo-in Yang talk about the interconnected ecosystems of land and water, and the potential overlap between social networks of fish, people, and buildings. “Amphibious Architecture,” their project for the League’s exhibition Toward the Sentient City, creates a public interface to water quality and aquatic life of urban rivers, and our interest therein.

BIOS
David Benjamin and Soo-in Yang are Directors of The Living Architecture Lab at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation

Natalie Jeremijenko is the Director of the xdesign Environmental Health Clinic at New York University
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deegan day design

Within and without Architecture?
Blow x Blow stages a bout between two trends in exhibition: the claiming of gallery space by architects, and the ceding of that space to the ambient possibilities of new media. To chart this collision, techniques of cinematic projection and scripting are repurposed to spur new orders of spatial and structural sequencing, and new environments for communing with new art.
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Click image to enlarge - photo by Joshua White

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The installation derives first from the filmic, rather than architectural, relationship between script and projection – the former usually serving as the template or pretext for filmmaking, and the latter its (increasingly historical) mode of delivery and final fruition. Projection precedes script in our equation, with the parameters of the projected image ‘cast’ in roles of formal generation.

‘Bounce-line’ scripting, in which a single projection-based vector is allowed to rebound ad infinitum through the space of the gallery, evolved in two more disciplined directions. First, the space of the gallery was reconceived as a 6’x7’x8’ gridded frame, the proportions of which allow a 4:3 televisual image on one face, and a 9:16 cinematic aspect ration on the diagonal. (These dimensions also mimic those of a prison cell.) Within this matrix, a randomized 16-part vector path was developed in which each third vector point was triangulated back to its origin to create a continuous, facetted surface. A ‘braid’ of two of these paths supports two dual-screen projection areas. Rather than simply blacking out the gallery, the spanning surfaces of the vectorpaths create a ‘grey room’ condition in which viewers may see each other, but projected images are shaded from clerestory exposure.
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click image to enlarge - Photo by Joshua White

click image to enlarge - Model View

click image to enlarge - rendering view

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“The title Blow x Blow alludes to a few ‘blown’ opportunities, including Antonini’s Blow Up (1966), Gordon Matta-Clark’s Blow Out of 1976, and George Yu’s earlier pneumatic installation in the SCI-Arc Gallery, also titled Blow Up.
The choreography of freedom and constraint in the design of Blow x Blow also keys to its inaugural programming, ‘Collections+Corrections’: Architectures for Art and Crime, a study of prisons, museums and their complementary roles in contemporary high design and US urban renewal. Duration in exhibition, like sentencing in incarceration, is a variable we hope to test. After a two week-run of ‘Collections+Corrections’, the installation will host work by leading artists working in new media in a series entitled ‘Friends of Friends’.”
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click image to enlarge - photo by Joshua White

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‘Friends of Friends’ Discussions
These informal discussions with groundbreaking artists working in new media will begin at 7:30 pm on Mondays in the gallery:
- Nov 9 – An Te Liu, with ForYourArt founder Bettina Korek
- Nov 16 – Andrea Fraser, with art historian Rhea Anastas and MoCA curator Bennett Simpson
- Nov 23 – Josh Melnick, with LAXART director Lauri Firstenberg
- Nov 30 – Sarah Morris, with graphic designer Richard Massey
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Project Details:
Joe Day Design Principal
Yo Oshima Project Designer
Taiyo Watanabe Fabrication Leader
Eva Fernandez-Villegas
Michelle Paul
Special Thanks to: SCI-Arc / Columbia College Hollywood – Mosaix Software

For more info please visit: www.deegandaydesign.com/bxb
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The Architecture Foundation

Image: Silent Collisions, Frédéric Flamand / Thom Mayne, Ballet National de Marseille © Pino Pipitone

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“The Architecture Foundation is pleased to announce the participants in the inaugural annual John Edwards Lecture are founder of Morphosis Architects, Pritzker Prize Winner and newly appointed Member of President Obama’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, Thom Mayne, and Director of the National Ballet of Marseille and renowned choreographer Frédéric Flamand. The lecture takes place at 7.00pm, on Monday 7 December 2009 at Tate Modern.
The John Edwards Lecture is a new annual dialogue, curated by The Architecture Foundation, which presents leading international architects in conversation with influential figures from other disciplines, from artists and filmmakers to writers and philosophers.
Thom Mayne is an architectural provocateur, fearlessly devoted to the present and the future and the negotiation between concept and reality. His architecture appears as futuristic constructivism; its jagged forms are loaded with rigorous ecological and social considerations. As founder and design director of Morphosis, Mayne speaks for a practice dedicated to interdisciplinary research and design, and architecture as a collaborative enterprise. Morphosis’ work has been the subject of major solo exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou and the Netherlands Architecture Institute and has been featured in the past four Venice Architectural Biennales. This year, their new building for Cooper Union in New York opened to widespread international acclaim; major projects for Shanghai, Dallas and Paris are currently underway. In 2003 Mayne completed a 2,400 square foot stage set for Frédéric Flamand’s production of Silent Collisions.
Frédéric Flamand has staged dance performances in empty swimming pools, abandoned churches and steel mills: anywhere that allows him to investigate the point of intersection between the body and built form. This interest has led him into a number of fruitful and acclaimed collaborations with some of the most important figures in contemporary architecture, including Zaha Hadid, Jean Nouvel and Elizabeth Diller & Ricardo Scofidio. His choreography freely mixes the traditions of ballet with his own formative grounding in avant-garde theatre and contemporary dance. It never seeks a signature style, but rather allows the changing environments of his work’s setting to evolve an ever-translating physical language in constant dialogue with technology, the city, and other art forms. For his next collaboration in 2010, Flamand will work with Chinese artist and architect, Ai Weiwei.
In 2003 Mayne and Flamand’s Silent Collisions inaugurated Body ↔ City, the first International Festival of Contemporary Dance at the Venice Biennale, programmed by Flamand as Artistic Director. Freely inspired by Italo Calvino’s book Invisible Cities, they collaboratively developed an approach to the city that emphasized urbanity as a place of exchanged words, desires and memories through the medium of the human body. Choreographed as a dynamic system of tensions, ruptures and conflicts, these were in turn framed and influenced by a moveable, jointed set design.
The first John Edwards Lecture, a conversation between Mayne and Flamand, supported by the Estate of Francis Bacon, will investigate the rhythms of urban life, the structuring of space through the built environment and the body, and architecture as a form of urban choreography.
The John Edwards Lecture is supported by the Estate of Francis Bacon
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Event Details:
Date: 7.00pm, Monday 7 December 2009.
Venue: Starr Auditorium, Tate Modern, Bankside, London SE1 9TG
Tickets: Standard: £11, Architecture Foundation Members: £8, Concessions: £8.
020 7887 8888 / www.architecturefoundation.org.uk
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Thom Mayne is co-founder of the Southern California Institute of Architecture, Member of the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities and Distinguished Professor at UCLA Architecture and Urban Design, where he extensively researches and publishes on contemporary urbanism. Mayne founded Morphosis in 1972 as an interdisciplinary and collective practice involved in experimental design and research. Under Mayne’s direction, the firm has been the subject of numerous exhibitions throughout the world, including large solo exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Contemporary Art Center in Cincinnati, the Walker Arts Institute in Minneapolis, and the Netherlands Architectural Institute. Morphosis holds permanent offices in Los Angeles and New York. Recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, Thom Mayne’s architectural projects include the San Francisco Federal Building, the Cooper Union academic building in Manhattan, Phare Tower in Paris, and the FLOAT House – an affordable, sustainable, and pre-fabricated housing prototype in New Orleans.

Frédéric Flamand has been General Director of Le Ballet National de Marseille and the city’s École Nationale Supérieure de Danse since 2004. He set up the experimental dance group Plan K in 1973, creating and operating the multi-arts centre in Brussels to which it moved; a 4,000 metre squared former sugar refinery which attracted many artists from different disciplines, including William Burroughs, Charlemagne Palestine, Thomas Schütte, and Joy Division. In 1991 Frédéric Flamand was appointed Artistic Director of the Ballet Royal de Wallonie, a neo-classical company which he renamed Charleroi/Danses, Centre chorégraphique de la Communauté française de Belgique to emphasise the company’s precise location in an industrial city under redevelopment and the different missions it had. Frédéric Flamand’s interest in establishing a dialogue between dance and other artistic disciplines led to him being offered the post of Artistic Director of the Venice Biennale’s first International Contemporary Dance Festival in 2003. Frédéric Flamand has been teaching at the University of Architecture in Venice since April 2004, running interdisciplinary creative workshops centred on dance.

The Architecture Foundation is a non-profit agency for contemporary architecture, urbanism and culture. We cultivate new talent and new ideas. Through our diverse programmes we facilitate international and interdisciplinary exchange, stimulate critical engagement amongst professionals, policy makers and a broad public, and shape the quality of the built environment. We are independent, agile, inclusive and influential. Central to our activities is the belief that architecture enriches lives. www.architecturefoundation.org.uk”
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from AIA NY
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An exhibition exploring the role and realization of new architecture in New York City’s historic districts will open on Tuesday, October 6, 2009, at the AIANY Center for Architecture, 536 LaGuardia Place, New York City.
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Context\Contrast: New Architecture in Historic Districts,
1967-2009 investigates how new buildings and historic districts have learned to coexist in the country’s most culturally and architecturally diverse city. Context\Contrast, which will be on view from October 6, 2009 until January 23, 2010, was organized by the American Institute of Architects New York Chapter, the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission, and the Center for Architecture Foundation, in partnership with the New York Landmarks Preservation Foundation.

The 1965 Landmarks Law laid the groundwork for preserving the city’s architectural history. In that year, Brooklyn Heights became the city’s first historic district; ninety-five more districts have since been designated as neighborhoods which should be preserved as cultural assets to the city. But the intent of designating neighborhoods has never been to freeze them. How can neighborhoods evolve while maintaining their historical and architectural character and integrity? Commission Chairman Robert B. Tierney said that question “is what makes proposals for new buildings in historic districts so challenging, difficult and enthralling for the Commission.”
Whether contrasting with the celebrated structures around them, cloning the features of their neighbors, or finding some intermediary between traditional modes and contemporary trends, new architecture in historic districts requires nuance and sensitivity. These design efforts must go through an extensive LPC review process and public hearings, then be deemed “appropriate” for the district.
From the first new building to go into Brooklyn Heights after its landmark designation, to projects currently in development across the city, Context\Contrast considers the history of architectural “appropriateness,” new architecture and historic neighborhoods. “The exhibition explores how particular neighborhoods challenge architects to respond in different ways,” explained Rachel Carley, the exhibition’s curator. “I hope and expect it will spark many conversations about the issues of preservation, contemporary design, and New York City.”
This exhibition documents the cityscapes of five historic districts: Brooklyn Heights, the Upper East Side, SoHo, South Street Seaport, and the Queens suburban neighborhood of Douglaston. Original photographs show the many ways new buildings have woven themselves into the fabric of their districts through their character, scale and texture. “The Landmarks Preservation Foundation is pleased to support an exhibition that promotes its goal of educational outreach for all New Yorkers about preservation and architectural history,” said Christina Davis, Chair of the LPF. “But Context\Contrast equally emphasizes new architecture” explained Sherida Paulsen, the 2009 President of AIANY. “As an organization committed to both historic preservation and architectural innovation in New York, it’s an exciting opportunity to present an exhibition that explores how New York’s architectural history and its future have learned to share the same city blocks.”

PRESS PREVIEW
Media are invited to a press preview for Context\Contrast on Tuesday, October 6, from 4:30–6pm at the Center for Architecture. RSVP requested, please contact Emily Nemens at enemens@aiany.org or 212-358-6126. Exhibition images, press tours, and interviews for Context\Contrast will also be available for members of the press.

EXHIBITION OPENING RECEPTION
Context\Contrast will open on October 6, 2009, with a public reception from 6–8pm at the Center for Architecture.

EXHIBITION ON VIEW
Context\Contrast will be on view from October 6, 2009 to January 23, 2010. The Center for Architecture is located at 536 LaGuardia Place, between Bleecker and West 3rd Streets in Greenwich Village, New York City.
(Directions) The Center for Architecture is open 9am–8pm, Monday-Friday and 11am–5pm, Saturday. Exhibitions are free and open to the public. A printed guide appropriate for children ages 7 and up will be available.

EXHIBITION CREDITS
Curator: Rachel Carley
Exhibition Design: Moorhead & Moorhead
Graphic Design: PS New York
Photography: Elizabeth Felicella
Exhibition and related programs are organized by the AIA New York Chaper, the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission, and the Center for Architecture Foundation in Partnership with the New York Landmarks Preservation Foundation.
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(L-R) 40 Mercer (465 Broadway) by Jean Nouvel, in Soho; 322 Hicks Street by Smith-Miller + Hawkinson, in Brooklyn Heights; Carhart renovation by Zivkovic Connelly, in the Upper East Side; 38-51 Douglaston Parkway by Gary D. Cannella Associates, in Douglaston. All photos by Elizabeth Fellicella.

Program:

Wednesday, October 21, 2009, 6-8pm
The Great Hall, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art
Inaugural Forum
Introduction by Commissioner Robert B. Tierney; Moderator: Suzanne Stephens; Panelists: Hugh Hardy, Richard Meier, Peter Pennoyer and Annabelle Selldorf
Organized by the NY Landmarks Preservation Foundation

Wednesday, November 4, 2009, 6-8pm
Center for Architecture
Roundtable discussion on “Appropriateness”
Organized by the AIA Historic Buildings Committee

Saturday, November 14, 2009, 1-3:30pm
Center for Architecture
FamilyDay@theCenter
Organized by the Center for Architecture Foundation

Wednesday, November 18, 2009, 6-8pm
Center for Architecture
Preservation in Context: Communities and their Landmarked Districts
Moderated by Sherida Paulsen

Please check for updates on AIANY’s calendar, aiany.org/calendar.

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from Wallpaper

“The city is topic of the month at the Royal Academy this summer, with the launch of the architecturally inspired Paper City exhibition.
Set in the architecture room of the gallery, the show offers an insight into how some of the biggest names in design relate to the urban sprawl and all its trappings.”

click the image above

The show features a menagerie of drawings, photomontages and collages produced for architectural magazine, Blueprint. Commissioned as part of the publication’s Paper Cities program – running for the past three years – the work addresses a glut of ideas, hopes and fears concerning the city.

An array of the original prints will be on show, including Peter Cook, Gavin Robotham and Lorene Faure’s dystopian renderings of a city-cum-swamp, whilst a smattering of pieces from current RA students including Inez de Coo and Rachael Champion will hang alongside.

click the image above

click the image above

Gallery-goers will also be greeted with a blank pad at the end of the show, encouraging them to design their own visions of the city. The drawings will then be entered into a competition, with the winner to be announced at the show’s close on October 27th.

click the image above

click the image above

Graphic Design Company, Bibliothéque, has come up with another interactive addition to the show, studding the space with a selection of tear-off pads, featuring prints of all Blueprint’s Paper City entries over the years.”

Source: Wallpaper
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