Who do you want to see in a lecture boxing match next year?
james murray | March 31st, 2011
gray_matter(s) wants to hear who would be your dream guest lecturer if we had the chance to bring them to you. This year we had B.I.G. Who could be next?
[ COA, georgia tech soA, gray matter(s), guest lecturer ]
[1] Rem Koolhaas
[2] Joshua Prince Ramus
[3] SANAA [Kazuyo Sejima or Ryue Nishizawa ]
[4] Gigon / Guyer [Annette or Mike]
[5] Diller Scofidio + Renfro [Liz or Ricardo]
[6] Herzog and de Meuron
[7] Peter Zumthor
[8] Toyo Ito
[9] MVRDV [any of the three]
[10] Carlos Ferrater
[11] Monica Ponce de Leon or Nader Tehrani [probably not at the same time.]
[12] Tadao Ando
1. Jing Liu
2. Mimi Houang
3. Daisy Froud
4. Sam Jacob
5. Vincent Scully!
6. Jesse Reiser
7. Bruce Nichol
8. peter zumthor (yeah right)
there should be a good balance of theorists and practitioners, with those doing double duty seen as real opportunities
1) ben van berkel / caroline bos
2) farshid moussavi
3) juhani pallasma
4) antoine picon
5) jesse reiser / nanako umemoto
6) bernard tschumi
7) fernando romero
8) lisa iwamoto
9) steven holl
10) mohsen mostafavi / david leatherbarrow
11) rafael moneo
12) annette gigon / mike guyer
13) peter zumthor
14) toyo ito
15) MVRDV
1. Brian Bell + David Yocum
2. Jesse Reiser
3. Loring Sagan (Sagan Piechota Architecture)
4. Eric Owen Moss
5. Chris Sharples (SHoP)
With youtube and the internet you can pretty much get the same experience of seeing these people in person I feel. It would have to be people who are really off the radar. So not too many come to mind and several have been mentioned. I’d like to add to the list : Mike Rotondi, Tom Kundig, Alejandro Aravena, Peter Cook, Alvaro Siza, and a few others.
I recently talked with William Stanley about his firm’s involvement in Public Architecture’s 1% program. He spoke very eloquently about the importance of pro bono work in architecture – he really made me rethink the nature of our work, and it would be great if he could share his ideas with the whole school.
per ali’s comment :: could we set it up like a boxing match- and pair people to make a more interesting / unique conversation?
i second merica’s comment. Columbia does this every summer. Ole’ Pete Eisenman vs. Mark Wigley. I think tech could do it smarter. Lets put Moshen Mosefavi and Andres Duany in the same room. Or SOM head David Childs in the same room as Michael Arad. It could be centered around frictions and contradictory ideas.
but also. There is an energy in the school when those who are already on youtube visit. bjarke is all over youtube with his blatant european love of american pop songs (Jaz-Z anyone?), but when he visited, it was standing room only, and people came from as far away as Clemson to see his lecture. A group of thoughtful people in one room participating in a civic sort of thing is quite remarkable. I say lets reinforce events of the mega-star visit. Lets have exhibits, and cocktails, and a social, and a celebration! Lets celebrate the space that we all live in, for better or for worse. But let the young provocative architect/artists be the foundation.
Now thats an idea. I think the boxing matches/discussions/debates are far more interesting when it comes to the “big names”. The “imagining the future” discussions were much more informative than the individual presentations I felt.
i think erica brings up a very interesting point. brian bell and david yocum would be great lecturers. what about considering asking some in house professors to lecture in a similar time slot. it is very infrequent for professors to present their own work in a studio setting. it is also just as infrequent that they have their work online.
if the point of these lectures is to bring in outside voices then perhaps this lecture format is not as fitting, but i would still love to be able to see their work and perhaps have them present it. maybe it is a matter of display.
harris dimitropoulos gave a lecture for visual practice which was fascinating. there are other in house architect/artists that i would love to hear from. mark cottles work is on exhibition in chicago right now. he had a show in italy last year while he was my instructor. i have yet to see his work.
perhaps this is about display in general. now that the grad students are in a separate building it takes that much more effort to see what they are up to. but it is nearly impossible to see professors work, or student work outside of a pin up. how could we re-imagine this?
for sabir’s studio we took over the bridge for about three weeks and allowed the coa to wander through and get a sense of the work we were doing. could this happen more often?
@ pdr: agreed. on all accounts. visual practice (in my senior year) was the first time I had heard a teacher really describe their work in their words. disappointing.
another idea: student lecture series? we could do something really informal and fun, maybe even do it pecha kucha style. the student’s voices and personal works are just as silent in the coa as the professor’s.
There are not in any particular order
1) Sergio Palleroni, Studio At Large
2) Brent Brown, bcWORKSHOP
3) Bryan Bell, Design Corps
4) Studio Gang Architects
5) Peter Gluck, Peter Gluck and Partners
6) Lake Flato Architects
7) Emily Pilloton, Studio H
8) John Cary, Public Architecture
9) Preston Scott Cohen, Harvard GSD
10) REX architects
11) Tom Mayne, Morphosis
12) Michael Murphy, MASS Design Group
13) Winka Dubbeldam, Architectonics
14) Andrew Freear, Rural Studio
15) Dan Pitera, Detroit Collaborative Design Center
16) Shigeru Ban
17) David Perkes, Gulf Coast Community Design Studio
18) John Bielenberg, Project M
19) Teddy Cruz, Estudio Teddy Cruz
20) Urban Think Tank
Just to name a few…
I second Kelly’s list! Dan Pitera (a GT alum) has already expressed interest in doing a talk.
BIG NAME
1.kieran timberlake
2.peter cook
3.mvrdv
DEBATING
architecture CRITIC
jeffery kipnis
i really enjoy mr. kipnis’ opinions on architecture plus he is the most entertaining person i have ever witnessed debating architecture. when he came to tech last year it was like being shot with a adrenaline and hilarity.
- Zaha Hadid vs. Jean Nouvel (but really Zaha vs. any one, because I want to see her throw down)
- Daniel Libeskind vs Shigeru Ban
- Toyo Ito vs. Zumthor
- MVRDV vs. SANAA (battle of at abbreviations!)
- thomas heatherwick
- tom kundig
- peter zumthor
- minsuk cho of mass studies
- slot studio
- ma yansong of MAD architects
- ben van berkel of UNStudio
- carme pinós
- steven holl
- nicholas grimshaw
- wolf d. prix of coop himmelb(l)au
- eduardo souto de moura