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On Tuesday this week we have two European old guards. At 2:00pm the Portuguese architect and Pritzker laureate Álvaro Siza delivers the annual Arthur Rosenblatt lecture at the Center for Architecture, focusing on just one project - the Ibere Camargo Museum in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Then at 6:30pm Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani will give a lecture on urban design. Lampugnani is one of those rare architects who has successfully stood tall in theory and practice, having held posts as high and varied as Editor in Chief of Domus and chair for History of Urban Design at ETH Zurich, while also making the masterplan for the Novartis campus in Basel, a rigorous white grid holding buildings by Frank Gehry and, in fact, Álvaro Siza.
If you want something completely different, on Wednesday two political artists hold court. At 5:15pm, Cannupa Hanska Luger will be delivering the lecture at Cornell. Raised on Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota, his work collaborates with partners to respond to “site-specific issues” - so for instance he made a how-to video for mirror shields for the protesters at Standing Rock that were then used in the demonstration against The Dakota Access Pipeline. The simple and powerful idea was that police charging the protesters would see themselves, reflected, on the same side as the protesters. Distributed on social media, volunteers assembled and shipped protesters more than a thousand such mirrors. At 6:00pm Sanford Biggers will be delivering the lecture at MIT. Also an artist (based in Harlem!), Biggers, who is a visiting professor at MIT this year, is perhaps best known for a work which memorialized victims of police violence by buying African statuettes at markets, dipping them in wax, then ‘re-sculpting’ them at a shooting range. He is also a keyboardist, fronting the multimedia concept band Moon Medicin. The MIT lecture does not have a description, but its title, ‘Oracular’, would suggest it may have something to do with the sculpture and connected multimedia installation he made for the Rockefeller Center this spring, Oracle.
Over in the traditionalist camp, the ICAA has a Friday lecture (well, film screening) making the case for beautiful architecture from a neuroscience and public health angle.
Find the full list of events, with registration links, at the bottom.
ps: This narrative approach to lecture previews is something we do not usually do - if you enjoyed it, tell us about it.
DISPATCHES
9/9: “MAKE MAKE” with Gary Bates at the Cooper Union
There is something terribly amiss with the contemporary methodology of architectural presentation. The number of times I have attended a talk in which the host (and accompanying written material) has over-promised grand themes, surprising truths, and calls for revolution is equal in number to the times an invited speaker-architect has profoundly under-delivered on all of these charges. Over-hyped project walkthroughs masquerading as auguries of the Forthcoming Well-Designed World are not needed at the aesthetic, ecological, and political precipice the culture finds itself, yet the charade goes on.
The Thursday night lecture at Cooper Union by OMA alum and SPACEGROUP founder GARY BATES followed this same trajectory. Bates first sought to establish his credentials as an “Architect Doing Something Different” by introducing himself as an interdisciplinary scholar and critic (monikers that he finds “liberating”, although from what he didn’t elaborate). He introduced his lecture with a clip from Werner Herzog’s “Lessons of Darkness”, calling attention to the forged Blaise Pascal quote Herzog used to create an ambiance of mysterious apocalypse in the film. I’m not sure what the purpose of this was, other than to let his audience know he knows a little something about Art. From there, it was the typical plodding march through several projects of various typologies. If I were simply to judge Bates as an architect, I’d say he does fine work. His designs demonstrate a keen sensitivity to each site’s context; a public-good-first orientation to a project’s final deliverables; and serviceable, anti-hygge Nordic aesthetics. At the conclusion he introduced a Bates-invented concept called MakeMake (also the title of the presentation) (ed. note: and a dwarf planet / the creator god of the Rapa Nui people of Easter Island), something that he could only describe as an attempt to “make the real and really make it” — an anemic gesture at being something more like an artist than an architect (the biggest nail in the coffin on this front was his dismissiveness towards a student who identified some of his work as having an element of camp to it. “I’m not familiar with camp, this must be an American thing,” he scoffed. It’s not, actually—camp was born in London.)
How many more of these types of talks will we all have to endure until something changes? Until someone realizes that people want to be moved by architecture, not merely wowed by superficialities? I’m not holding my breath, but even if I were it wouldn’t matter—apocalypse is fast approaching and design ain’t saving us.
- ANNA GIBERTINI
Editor’s Note: By coincidence, the Cooper Union kicks off Climate Week on September 20, see the program here.
In the News…
A lot of 9/11 coverage - Sharon Zukin looks back on Rethinking New York, Dezeen collected day-of accounts from architects, and thought it a good idea to give Thomas Heatherwick the last word (in fact, four paragraphs), Kimmelman gives a history of the reconstruction, squaring its shortcomings with the successful renaissance of the financial district as a whole…
And at NYRA, Phillip Denny looks back on a proposal by Meredith Michaels…
Finally, the Chicago Biennial (no e! not Biennale!) opens this Friday - A|N has a guide…
DATELINE
The week ahead
Monday, 9/13
In Search of Geographical Re-enchantment with Robin Winogrond
12:00 PM | Harvard GSD
Tuesday, 9/14
15th Annual Arthur Rosenblatt Memorial Lecture: Álvaro Siza with Hana Kassem
2:00 PM | CFA
The City as Accumulated Knowledge: Urban Design and Research with Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani
6:30 PM | Harvard GSD
Wednesday, 9/15
The Story of Modern Design: 1963-2000 (3/5) with Daniella Ohad
5:00 PM | CFA
Baumer Series with Kimberly Gaza
5:30 PM | Ohio State University Knowlton School of Architecture
Cultural Asymmetries of Public Space: Addressing Minority Associations with the Urban Landscape with Jonah Rowen & Craig Wilkins
6:00 PM | New York Institute of Technology
Thursday, 9/16
LOG'RITHMS: Model Behavior with Tom Wiscombe, Marrikka Trotter, Thomas Demand, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun
10:30 AM | Log Journal
African Futures Institute with Olalekan Jeyifous
5:00 PM | Africa Futures Institute
Artist as Social Engineer with Cannupa Hanska Luger
5:15 PM | Cornell AAP
Oracular with Sanford Biggers
6:00 PM | MIT
The Art of Measured Field Drawing: The Battery Park City Pavilion of Demetri Porphyrios with Stephen Chrisman
6:30 PM | ICAA
Friday, 9/17
In-Person Tour: Madison Avenue, High Fashion and Historic Preservation with John Arbuckle
5:00 PM | CFA
Saturday, 9/18
Annual Shutze Fellows Lecture: Built Beautiful: An Architecture & Neuroscience Love Story with Donald H. Ruggles
10:00 AM | ICAA
Roosevelt Island: Cornell Tech & Four Freedoms Park (In Person!) with Kyle Johnson AIA
1:00 PM| CFA
For the complete list and future weeks, visit: nyra.nyc/events
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
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Four desk editors run NYRA: Alex Klimoski, Phillip Denny, Carolyn Bailey & Nicolas Kemper (who also serves as the publisher). They rotate duties each month.
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