Newsletter of the College of Architecture at Texas A&M University
Eight luminaries from the architecture world, including noted authors, designers and scholars, will visit the Texas A&M College of Architecture this spring to discuss their work as part of the Department of Architecture’s Spring 2010 Lecture Series.
The public lectures, which begin Jan. 25 and run through April, will be held at 5 p.m. primarily on Mondays in the Preston Geren Auditorium, located in building B of the Langford Architecture Center on the Texas A&M campus.
The lecture lineup features:
For more information about the Texas A&M Department of Architecture 2010 Lecture Series, contact Sarah Deyong, assistant professor of architecture, at 979.458.1133 or sdeyong@tamu.edu.
Lecture details and speaker bios:
Jan. 25 — Beatriz Colomina, noted author and professor of architectural history and theory at Princeton University will present “Blurred Visions: Architectures of Surveillance from Mies to SANAA," a lecture co-sponsored by the Melbern G. Glasscock Center for Humanities Research.
Head of the Ph.D. program and director of the media and modernity program at Princeton's School of Architecture, Colomina’s numerous books and essays examine the representation of architecture in print media, advertising, photography, film and television.
“The history of the modern window is a history of communication," said Colomina about her upcoming lecture. "Le Corbusier’s horizontal window is unthinkable outside of cinema, the Eames House is unthinkable outside of the color slide, and the picture window at midcentury is unthinkable outside of television."
In each of the aforementioned cases, she said, the ambition of modern architecture to dissolve the line between inside and outside is realized by absorbing the latest realities of communication.
Feb. 8 — Andreas Pedersen, associate partner of Bjarke Ingels Group in Copenhagen, Denmark, will be a featured speaker in conjunction with the College of Architecture’s Dr. F.E. Giesecke 1886 Lecture Series.
Pedersen, who leads many of BIG's master plan and large-scale projects in Europe and central and southern Asia, designed the prize-winning Shenzhen Energy Mansion in China and Zira Island, central Asia's first carbon-neutral master plan development in Baku, Azerbaijan. Among his other notable projects are the new Tamayo Museum, Ren People's Building, Lego Towers, Klovermark, Scala Library, Arlanda Hotel and his firm's contributions to the Venice Biennale in 2004 and 2008.
An architecture instructor at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, Pedersen also lectures internationally on the Bjarke Ingel Group’s research and projects.
The Dr. F.E. Giesecke 1886 Lecture Series honors Dr. Frederick E. Giesecke, who in 1905 founded the architecture program at Texas A&M, the oldest architectural education program in Texas. The lecture series was established in 2005 by a generous gift from Fort Worth, Texas architect Preston M. Geren, Jr. ’45, to honor Giesecke, his grandfather.
Feb. 18 — Sarah Whiting and Ron Witte, principals of WW, an architecture firm in Houston, will speak at the college. Whiting, an expert in urban and architectural theory, is dean of the School of Architecture at Rice University, where Witte also serves as associate professor of architecture.
Before coming to Rice, Whiting served on the faculty of the Princeton University School of Architecture. Perhaps best known for her professional criticism, Whiting has had dozens of articles published on urban and architectural theory. In addition to editing several journals, she has edited books on architects Ignasi de Solà-Morales and James Carpenter, is the author of the forthcoming book "Superblock City," and is the editor of "POINT," an architectural book series to be published by Princeton University Press.
This March, Witte will serve as the Herbert Greenwald Visiting Critic at the University of Illinois at Chicago's School of Architecture. He has participated in numerous international architectural projects, including work with the Office for Metropolitan Architecture in Rotterdam, Reid & Tarics in San Francisco, and Jacques Couëlle in Paris. He has also lectured at leading universities around the world and across the United States.
Whiting and Witte's firm, WW, is currently working on the Golden House, a private residence in Princeton, N.J., and a project for the drama division of the Juilliard School in New York.
March 1 — Ted Flato, principal of the award-winning San Antonio, Texas firm, Lake|Flato Architects, will be the featured speaker.
Flato counts Louis Kahn, Frank Lloyd Wright and Rudolph Schindler among his favorite architects. He served as the principal architect for the Shangri La Botanical Gardens and Nature Center in Orange, Texas. The project, which includes botanical gardens, a nature center, outdoor classrooms and structures on a 252-acre site, earned LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) for New Construction Platinum certification — the highest level possible in the Green Building Rating System developed by the U.S. Green Building Council. To date, this is the only building project in Texas to achieve this rating.
March 8 — Nicholas Boyarsky, a principal of London's Boyarsky Murphy Architects who has taught at universities in London, Norway, Istanbul and Taiwan, will lecture at the College of Architecture.
After forming the firm with Nicola Murphy in 1994, the two have worked in the fields of housing, urban design, renovations, interiors, prefabrication and smaller culture and educational buildings., with award-winning projects ranging from large-scale housing to new single-family residences.
Boyarsky had previously worked for Zaha Hadid Architects, Seifert Architects, and YRM, an architecture and design firm, on a range of commercial and cultural projects. In 2007, he was appointed director of Syracuse University's new London Architectural Study program.
March 25 — Ana Tostões lecture: 5:30 p.m. Thursday, March 25 in the Preston Geren Auditorium, Ana Tostões, associate professor in the Civil Engineering and Architecture Department of the Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade Técnica de Lisboa, will speak as part of the Department of Architecture’s Spring 2010 Lecture Series. Tostões, an architect and architectural historian, currently serves as chair of Docomomo International, the international committee for documentation and conservation of buildings, sites and neighborhoods of the modern movement. For more information about the Texas A&M Department of Architecture 2010 Lecture Series, contact Sarah Deyong, assistant professor of architecture, at 979.458.1133 or sdeyong@tamu.edu.
April 5 — Francois de Menil, a fellow in the American Institute of Architects and principal with the New York architecture firm FdM:Arch will lecture. He has served on numerous architectural review juries and is a trustee of New York's Cooper Union for the
Advancement of Science and Art.
de Menil designed the Byzantine Fresco Chapel Museum in Houston, which displays dome and apse fresco paintings originally housed in a small 13th century votive chapel in Cyprus.
April 12
Ted Flato lecture: 5 p.m. Monday, April 12 in the Preston Geren Auditorium, Ted Flato, principal of the award-winning San Antonio, Texas firm, Lake|Flato Architects, will speak as part of the Department of Architecture’s Spring 2010 Lecture Series. Flato counts Louis Kahn, Frank Lloyd Wright and Rudolph Schindler among his favorite architects. He served as the principal architect for the Shangri La Botanical Gardens and Nature Center in Orange, Texas. The project, which includes botanical gardens, a nature center, outdoor classrooms and structures on a 252-acre site, earned LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) for New Construction Platinum certification — the highest level possible in the Green Building Rating System developed by the U.S. Green Building Council. To date, this is the only building project in Texas to achieve this rating. For more information about the Texas A&M Department of Architecture 2010 Lecture Series, contact Sarah Deyong, assistant professor of architecture, at 979.458.1133 or sdeyong@tamu.edu.
April 19— Teddy Cruz, CANCELED!
- updated March 24, 2010 -
