Lectures are a big part of architecture school. It’s an opportunity for budding students to hear the big dawgs face-to-several-hundred-faces, and a delightful chance for the big dawgs to boost their careers.
UCLA has a lot of people I don’t recognize, which is potentially good (lots of rising stars, fresh voices, and local talent) and potentially bad (couldn’t get the big guns). Yale has the numbers and the players, mostly the people making the rounds along the American architecture circuit.
UCLA Winter & Spring 2007 Lecture Series:
January 8: Keller Easterling (Yale SOA professor, author Enduring Innocence)
January 25: Stefano Boeri (Politechnico Milan professor, editor of Domus, founder of Multiplicity)
February 5: Mirko Zardini (architect, Director of the Canadian Center for Architecture)
February 26: David Grahame Shane (Columbia GSAPP professor)
March 5: Teddy Cruz (UCSD Dept. of Visual Arts professor)
April 9: Doug Aitken (LA Artist)
April 16: Oliver Touraine and Deborah Richmond (principals, Touraine and Richmond Architecture in Los Angeles)
May 2: Jurij Sadar (principal, Sadar Vuga Arhitekti in Slovenia)
May 7: Edwin Chan (partner, Gehry Partners in Los Angeles)
May 14: Masamichi Udagawa (co-founder, Antenna Design in New York City)
Yale Spring 2007 Lecture Series:
January 11: Roger Madelin—Edward P. Bass Distinguished Visiting Architecture Fellow—”Building a New Piece of City”
January 12: Zaha Hadid—Eero Saarinen Visiting Professor—”Current Work”
January 18: Ali Rahim—Louis I. Kahn Visiting Assistant Professor—”Catalytic Formations”
January 19-20: (Symposium) “SEDUCTION: Forms, Sensations, and the Production of Architectural Desire,” Keynote by Sylvia Lavin (Dean of UCLA AUD)—Morning Session: Gregory Crewdson, Jeffrey Kipnis, Herbert Muschamp, Ben Pell, Peggy Phelan; Afternoon Session: Hernan Diaz-Alonso, Peter Eisenman, David Erdman (Professor at UCLA AUD), Mark Foster Gage, Sanford Kwinter, Chrissie Iles, Mark Linder, Greg Lynn (Professor at UCLA AUD), Edward Mitchell, Kivi Sotamaa, Henry Urbach, Roemer van Toorn
January 29: Aine Brazil, Gordon H. Smith Lecture, “Pragmatic Creativity: The Structural Challenge”
February 1: Peter Eisenman and Raphael Moneo—Louis I. Kahn Visiting Professor—”Architecture Today: A Conversation”
February 12: William McDonough—”Cradle to Cradle: A World of Good Design”—plus a screening of “China: from Red to Green?”
February 15: Gwendolyn Wright—”Permeable Borders: Modern Architecture in America”
February 19: Kengo Kuma—”Anti-Object”
February 22: Deborah Berke—”This Time and That Place”
February 26: Charles Rose—”Liberation and Deliberation: Recent Work by Charles Rose Architects”
March 30-31: (Symposium) “The Market of Effects,” Intro by Dean Robert A.M. Stern, Keynote by Mark Gottdiener (SUNY Buffalo) “Foreground/Background: Architecture as Sign and the Culture of Theming,” Welcome by Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen (Yale)—Morning Session “Spaces of Consumption”: Bernard Zernheld (Yale) “Advertising as Architecture’s Nemesis and Model in the Rue Réaumur,” Sara Stevens (Princeton) “Learning from Billboards,” Winnie Wong (MIT) “The Trade Dress Tertium Quid and the Economy of Ambient Exchange”; Afternoon Session “Spaces of Immersion”: Lydia Kallipoliti (Princeton) “Electronic Urbanism 1952-1977—Takis Zenetos’ aeroform colonizations and brain-power space-making,” Wendy Fok (Princeton) “Cultural Sounds: Mapping Communication,” Erica Robles (Stanford) “Media, Landscape and Architecture at the Crystal Cathedral”
April 2: Belinda Tato & José Luis Vallejo—”Recycling the non-city: The Work of [ecosistema urbano]”
April 5: Mack Scogin—”The Rinoceros Next Door”
April 9: Ljiljana Blagojevic—”New Belgrade: The Capital of No-City’s-Land”
April 12: Ben van Berkel—Paul Rudolph Lecture, “Everything is curved”
April 23: Adriaan Geuze—Timothy Egan Lenahan Memorial Lecture, “Lost Paradise”
*Who the fuck are these people?
(This is largely off the top of my head, so the descriptions are perhaps wrong or even blatantly wrong.)
Ben van Berkel: Of the Dutch firm UN Studio, single-handedly promoted the abuse of the word “mobius loop” in architecture with his Mobius House. When an architect says “mobius loop/strip,” he really just means a fucking loop.
Edwin Chan: In Sketches of Frank Gehry, introduced as Gehry’s right-hand man. Gehry commented that they couldn’t get him to speak “a word” when he first started.
Peter Eisenman: Archduke of architectural theory from the late 70s to today, driving force behind architectural discourse at both Yale and UCLA for way too long. Known for a rigorous, Jacques Derrida-aligned process that’s produced many irritating buildings.
Zaha Hadid: Pritzker Prize Laureate and the most prominent female architect to ever exist. Designs lots of long, sensual, exceptionally impractical but deliciously graphic buildings.
Jeffrey Kipnis: Leading architectural theorist. Like any good theorist, tries to explain everything using sex.
Kengo Kuma: Supermodernist (in the Michael Speaks/Hans Ibelings sense) aiming to “recover the tradition of japanese buildings’
and to reinterpret it for the 21st century.” Likes black and white.
Sylvia Lavin: Former Dean of the UCLA AUD, dramatically improved UCLA’s faculty during the 90s/00s, celebrated theorist/English major, currently preparing a book on the relationship between Pop Art and architecture.
Greg Lynn: Leading proponent of blobs and the use/abuse of Maya to make bad architecture; hasn’t exactly built a whole lot for an “architect,” has he. His Embryo House makes me cringe. Professor at UCLA; popular guest at Columbia and SCI_Arc.
William McDonough: Leading the drive to “green” architecture; thrilling to New Urbanists, hippies, and leprechauns the nation over.
Raphael Moneo: Pritzker Prize Laureate and author of Theoretical Anxiety and Design Strategies In the Work of Eight Contemporary Architects, the incredible book with the incredibly pretentious name. Designed, besides a bunch of Spanish stuff, Our Lady of Angels Cathedral in L.A.
Herbert Muschamp: Former architectural critic for the New York Times who stepped down in 2004. Had an iron-clad grip on architectural taste during his brutal tenure.
Ali Rahim: Big on digital design and production techniques AKA rationalized blobs. His designs look best when not built.
Mack Scogin: Of Mack Scogin Merrill Ellam Architects; designed Knowlton Hall for the Ohio State school of architecture, possibly the least-shitty architecture school building on the continent.
Robert A.M. Stern: Dean of the Yale SOA, super-duper old boy of the Old Boys Club, leading historical/vernacular/classical architect despite being Dean of the Yale SOA. Center of accusations that the Yale SOA is populated by his cronies.
(Photo of Rem Koolhaas lecturing at Cornell, taken by this guy.)
Recent Comments