Spring 2012 GSAPP Lectures

Parisian architect and urbanist Odile Decq contends that black, not white, is the "truly neutral" color for a museum. At the Museo D'Arte Contemporanea Roma (MACRO), where she inserted the new program into an early-20th century Peroni beer factory, dark surfaces shroud the red polygon that houses the museum's auditorium. Elsewhere, Decq embraces white. Her red-and-white "Phantom" restaurant weaves throughout the porte cochere of the historic Palais Garnier in Paris. Without touching the opera house's protected surfaces, the restaurant floats on a steel skeleton covered with white plaster in homage to its famous specter. #wood040912

Yoshiharu Tsukamoto is one half of Atelier Bow-Wow, the Tokyo-based firm he founded with his partner Momoyo Kaijima in 1992. Whether working on a micro scale, as with their residential projects that transform the spatial constraints of congested sites into opportunities for domestic invention, or on the urban scale by cataloging the programmatic juxtapositions in Tokyo’s fabric, their practice explores the relationship between space and human behavior. In 2010, Atelier Bow-Wow was invited to create the inaugural BMW Guggenheim Lab, a temporary event space designed to engage the public in a dialogue about the future of the city. The Lab, which will ultimately travel to three cities worldwide, began its journey in New York last summer and is slated to open in the Prenzlauer Berg neighborhood of Berlin in June 2012, after its initial site in Kreuzberg was met with considerable public resistance.

With the [Park Avenue] Armory, New York City is finally getting the kind of cultural space that just a handful of other cities have," noted the New York Times in 2011. Like the Arsenale in Venice or the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern in London, the voluminous Upper East Side drill hall can uniquely accomodate large-scale artwork and performances. The ongoing renovation/restoration by Herzog & de Meuron and executive architects Platt Byard Dovell White reveals layers of history within the five-story, 210,000 square-foot regimental building—uncovering work by Louis Comfort Tiffany, Stanford White, Herter Brothers and other key American designers in its collection of 19th century period rooms—while activating the Wade Thompson Drill Hall and interiors for dance, opera, theater, and visual arts presentation curated by the Park Avenue Armory. Moderated by Historic Preservation and Urban Planning Program Associate Director Janet Foster, this conversation with architects Ascan Mergenthaler and Charles Platt, and Park Avenue Armory President and Executive Producer Rebecca Robertson will illuminate the relationship between site and cultural programming, and the way that preservation fosters change.

The Inaugural Percival and Naomi Goodman Lecture In a lecture marking the fifth anniversary of the Percival and Naomi Goodman Fellowship at Columbia University GSAPP, San-Diego based architect Teddy Cruz will examine the gaps between haves and have-nots, institutions and publics, and the effects of these widening chasms on public culture in the United States. Cruz will argue that the institutionalization of greed has affected urban planning and legislation, and undermined collective political efforts to enable public infrastructure and education. Where is our collective and civic imagination today, and how can it can be reconnected to policy and social justice? #wood033012

Vienna-based author and curator Marion von Osten's work investigates post-colonial conditions and the built environment. Her recent exhibition "In the Desert of Modernity" at Berlin's Haus der Kulturen der Welt explored 20th century housing programs in Casablanca—the Cité Horizontale and the Cité Verticale, and specifically, the Patio House—built by the French Protectorate for colonized workers, as well as the spread of these typologies throughout North Africa and Israel. How were colonial European fantasies of race and nation articulated through housing developments? Elsewhere, von Osten has advised on Creative Time’s 2011 exhibition “Living as Form,” an archival exhibition of social and community engagement related to SPURA (Seward Park Urban Renewal Area) and other gentrification-related issues, housed in New York City’s historic Essex Street Market. How can architectural and historical research best be conveyed in the space of a gallery or museum? #wood032812

11:00-11:30 The Preservation of Form and Function in American Public Housing Elizabeth Milnarik, Davis Buckley Architects, Washington DC 11:30-12:00 Recording our Recent Past: Scotland’s survey and preservation initiatives of Post-War Sites and Monuments, 1985-2012 Diane Watters' Buildings Investigator, Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland 12:00-12:30 Panel discussion and summary

9:00-9:30 Welcome and Opening Remarks Andrew Dolkart ,Director of the Historic Preservation Program and the James Marston Fitch Associate Professor of Historic Preservation, Columbia University 9:30-10:00 Preserving Public Housing: Dilemma or Opportunity? Theodore Prudon, Associate Professor, Columbia University and President, Docomomo US 10:00-10:30 What do we preserve? Lessons from 75 years of public housing in America? Joseph Heathcott, Associate Professor of Urban Studies, The New School

1:30-2:00 Public Housing in France Jean-François Briand, Deputy Chief of the Quality of Architecture and Landscape French Ministry of Culture 2:00-2:30 The Netherlands: Housing before and after WWII and their appreciation Dirk van den Heuvel, Faculty of Architecture, Technical University Delft 2:30-3:00 Mid-afternoon break

Helen Caldicott, Physicians for Social Responsibility Kate Orff, Columbia University GSAPP A cross-disciplinary dialogue on energy, environmental health, landscape, and care between physician and anti-nuclear activist Helen Caldicott and Urban Landscape Lab Director Kate Orff. Caldicott, whose iconic 1978 book Nuclear Madness: What You Can Do changed the discourse on energy production, forewarned of the earthquake-related vulnerabilities to Japanese reactors before the 2011 disaster in Fukushima, and continues to challenge notions that nuclear power is the answer to global warming today. This event takes inspiration from her work, as well as Richard Misrach's and Kate Orff's collaborative publication Petrochemical America, a photographic and graphic investigation of the cultural, physical, and economic ecologies of a 150-mile stretch of the Mississippi River from Baton Rouge to New Orleans known as "Cancer Alley." How do demands for energy and economic efficiency affect population health? By caring for the planet and its people in different ways, what can doctors and designers learn from each other? #wood040212

What happened to architectural objectivity? UNStudio's Ben van Berkel says: "In both art and science objective observation has of course always been paramount to understanding the nature and behaviour of that which is being observed. However, objective observation does not in itself lead to progress. It is in how we apply the knowledge gained from our observations, in how we translate, redefine and apply this knowledge, that true transformation can occur. In architecture we not only have to engage in depth with the objective, but we have to find a balance between the subjective-objective relationship in order to create well balanced architectural concepts and solutions." #wood040412

Aaron Betsky called visionary architect Lauretta Viciarelli's (1943–2011) watercolor paintings of buildings, light, and water "spaces for the senses, without ground, program, or context" that are "more beautiful than real." Her artwork is included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery in Washington, DC, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and has appeared in the Venice and Whitney Biennales and the arresting monograph Not Architecture But Evidence That It Exists. In this conversation, Viciarelli's colleagues reflect on her work as educator, architect, and artist—from teaching drawing at Columbia University GSAPP and collaborating with Donald Judd in New York and Marfa, Texas, to producing the body of work in "Clear Light: The Architecture of Lauretta Vinciarelli," on display 3/1–5/25 at The City College of New York.

Ascan Mergenthaler, Herzog & de Meuron Charles Platt, Platt Byard Dovell White Rebecca Robertson, Park Avenue Armory Moderated by Janet Foster, GSAPP

The latest in a series of conversations at GSAPP between design-education leaders Mark Wigley and Brett Steele explores NY–LON, the connection between New York and London. How do these cultural capitals communicate, and how has their exchange shaped a unique educational axis? What is the future of design pedagogy in NY–LON and beyond?

Carme Pinós, Estudio Carme Pinós, Barcelona will discuss her recent work

Who's listening, and what's being said? This conversation between New York Times architecture critic Michael Kimmelman and PBS History Detectives co-host and GSAPP faculty member Gwendolyn Wright will cover audiences, reception, architecture, media, and the difficult processes of getting to know a place.

Alison Brooks, Alison Brooks Architects, London -- Brooks contends that the field gains new relevance and formats, typologies, and hybrids as the continent's design culture continues to evolve from the dogma of 20th-Century Modernism into more pluralistic practices -- ones that include social anthropology, relationships and networks, and politics and iconography. She will describe how these notions have informed Alison Brooks Architects' work in urbanism and architecture, including her Folkestone Performing Arts Centre and plans for a third quadrangle for Exeter College at the University of Oxford, scheduled for completion for the college's 700-year anniversary in 2014. #wood022212

A screening of the documentary film The Pruitt-Igoe Myth followed by a conversation between Catherine Fennell, Columbia University Anthropology, and Reinhold Martin, GSAPP Organized by The Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture #wood021312

Featuring: Eduardo Behrentz, Isabel Cuervo, Alejandro Echeverri, Beatriz Elena Rave Herrera, Milena Gomez Kopp, Maria Helena Botero Ospina, Jorge Otero-Pailos, Patricio del Real, and Ana Elvira Velez Villa Curated by Clara Irazabal and Alejandro de Castro Mazarro, Latin Lab, GSAPP

Featuring: Eduardo Behrentz, Isabel Cuervo, Alejandro Echeverri, Beatriz Elena Rave Herrera, Milena Gomez Kopp, Maria Helena Botero Ospina, Jorge Otero-Pailos, Patricio del Real, and Ana Elvira Velez Villa Curated by Clara Irazabal and Alejandro de Castro Mazarro, Latin Lab, GSAPP

Arquitectonica partners Bernardo Fort-Brescia and Laurinda Spear will share stories from their practice that traverses architecture, landscape, product design and interiors. The Sarasota Herald Tribune suggested that the firm's "liberated, sometimes whimsical, exploration of shape, color and even graphics" -- such as their Pink House and Atlantis, a high-rise condominium made famous in the opening credits of Miami Vice -- were "born of the firm's melting-pot, beach-metropolis roots." Arquitectonica's latest New York addition includes MiMA, or, Middle of Manhattan, a 63-story Hell's Kitchen tower that features rental units, condos, a hotel, and an off-Broadway theater. Further north, Arquitectonica created a widely-praised addition to the Bronx Museum of Art. Fort-Brescia and Spear's stories will be livestreamed on arch.columbia.edu

David Chipperfield, David Chipperfield Architects, London On the occasion of the 2012 Paul S. Byard Memorial Lecture at Columbia University GSAPP, Sir David Chipperfield will speak on his much-heralded re-conception of the Neues Museum in Berlin -- a transformative blend of old and new that earned the 2011 Mies van der Rohe Award. Originally opened in 1855 by architect Friedrich August Stueler as the focal point of the capital's Museumsinsel, then destroyed by Allied bombing during World War II and subsequently neglected and exposed to the elements under German Democratic Republic rule, Sir Chipperfield's design for the newly reopened public building incorporates elements of its storied history into a "modern building that inhabits the ghost of an old one," according to the New York Times. #wood020212

Where is New York?* High Design at HL23 01.30.12 Neil Denari, NMDA Alf Naman, Alf Naman Real Estate Advisors Organized and moderated by by Vishaan Chakrabarti, RealEstate Development, and Lynne Sagalyn, Paul Milstein Center for RealEstate, Columbia Business School, this is the fourth installment of themonthly series "Where is New York?*" "The machine aesthetic is everywhere," observedthe New York Times of HL23 when it rose above the High Line in2011, noting that the 14-story Chelsea building's eastern panels werepartially manufactured on the same presses used to make parts for Mercedestrucks. Jointly sponsored by GSAPP and Columbia Business School,this event brings Los Angeles architect Neil Denari and New York developerAlf Naman together to discuss HL23's realization, from its aerodynamic designand site relationship to its significance for New York's high-endreal estate market. #wood013012 *Each month, one program at GSAPP will identify a site within the five boroughs that has been important to their discipline within the past year and bring designers, policymakers, developers, community activists, and other New Yorkers together to discuss the site and question where we are.

London and Berlin-based architect David Adjaye kicks off the spring 2012 GSAPP lecture series by questioning the meaning of time. When is now, and how does it manifest in his recent work? Projects range from the ephemeral to the institutional ("Genesis," Design Miami; Moscow School of Management, Skolkovo), and from the contemporary to the historic (Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver; Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington DC) #wood012512