S K Y L I N E | 6 | "Modernity for the Masses," Moynihan Train Hall, & the Week Ahead
Week of February 15
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Happy President’s Day. The week ahead is chockablock with exciting lectures and other online events. We’ll be tuning in to watch architect and historian Ana María León’s lecture “Barrio Sur: Modernity for the Masses” at Columbia GSAPP tonight at 6pm. Don’t miss it. A few other highlights to look forward to this week —
(2/16): Mason White + Lola Sheppard of Lateral Office lecture at Cooper Union. (2/17): Emmanuel Pratt, co-founder and executive director of the Sweet Water Foundation, speaks at GSAPP. (2/17): Pascale Sablan delivers a lecture, “I Was Asked to Stand,” at the Wexner Center for the Arts, in Ohio. (2/18): architect Chris T. Cornelius gives a talk at Yale. (2/18): Film screening and Q&A: Reimagining the City as Our Own: Towards an Architecture of Inclusion, at Berkeley.
Read on for timely dispatches from NYRA correspondents Zazu Swistel, Palmyra Geraki, and Natalie Dubois. Have a great week.
– Phillip Denny
P.S. You can now read Tess McCann’s profile of Walter Hood from No. 18 on NYRA’s Instagram page, link below.
2/4: PLAYING ARCHITECTURAL ROULETTE
My situation: In early February, for whatever reason, I end up on the Northeast Regional Amtrak train from New Jersey into the new Moynihan Hall. Backtrack, I mean into Penn Station, under Madison Square Garden. That’s right! I had to run up and down multiple flights of stairs and even out onto the street to see this damn hall.
Here’s the discovery: If you ride Amtrak and are seated in the back of the train, which is usually reserved for Business Class and the Quiet Car, you will exit into the new Moynihan Hall. But if you ride in the front or middle of the train, you will exit into the old Penn Station, which ultimately will drop you closer to the subway. If you’re a subway-riding New Yorker, this was by no means built for your benefit!
– ZAZU SWISTEL
2/11: LEADING THE CHARGE
CHRISTINE WILLIAMSON of BUILDING SCIENCE FIGHT CLUB gave a surprisingly accessible and entertaining webinar presentation about why buildings leak and her attempts to get them not to. Her Instagram account and courses help design professionals better understand the basics of building science. If there are celebrities in this industry, she’s one of them. The excitement Williamson generates in explaining such topics as water management in wall assemblies demonstrates how far architecture still has to go in pulling back the veil of egoism that limits the advancement of women and others who don’t feel comfortable faking it until they make it. Williamson’s advice: “Asking questions is not an indication that you’re dumb. It’s an indication that you want to learn something and care to hear the answer.”
– NATALIE DUBOIS
2/11: THE BIG PICTURE
The other MOYNIHAN, that is DR. THOMAS MOYNIHAN, the philosopher with a specialty in extinction (Upcoming book: X-Risk, ‘How Humanity Discovered Its Extinction.’ Past article: a piece for Vice on megastructures in space) laid out the Big Picture at Parsons: Since the Enlightenment humanity has gradually awakened to the range of immense goodness and badness in possible outcomes for its future. This high stakes worldview was borne out of the realization that value is made and therefore can be augmented or destroyed. Coupled with the growing belief that life in the universe is the exception and not an inevitability, as was once believed, this internalization of existential risk, argued Moynihan, makes the occupation of Earth by humanity one of the most consequential events in cosmic history and imbues all of humanity’s future actions with incalculable significance. Why the focus on space at a design school? To quote the about page of his host, the ‘New School Policy and Design for Outer Space’ (NS-PDOS), “because it’s fucking cool.”
- PALMYRA GERAKI
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Events
The Week Ahead
Monday, February 15
Faculty Talk: Blanking, with Troy Schaum
12:00pm, RiceThe Detlef Mertins Lecture on the Histories of Modernity: Ana María León
6:00pm, GSAPP
Tuesday, February 16
MASON WHITE + LOLA SHEPPARD: PILES, DRIFTS, FREEZERS, AND ICEBREAKERS
12:00pm, Cooper
Wednesday, February 17
Lecture: Emmanuel Pratt
5:00pm, GSAPPAmale Andraos: Water Works
5:15pm, Cornell AAPA WORLD OF MANY WORLDS: Cooper Architecture Thesis Projects
6:30pm, CooperPascale Sablan: I Was Asked to Stand
7:00pm, Knowlton
Thursday, February 18
Black Landscape Symposium Speaker Series: Activism and the Landscape
12:00pm, BLAN, $15Black Lives Matter Means Black Contracts Matter with Michael Reed, Cheryl McKissack Daniel, Steve Lewis, Nicole Hollant-Denis
12:00pm, CFA $10Lecture: Low Design Office
6:00pm, PrincetonChris T. Cornelius
6:30pm, YaleGreg O’Mullan: Techno-Critical Assemblies
7:00pm, GSAPPAN EVENING OF MEMORY & IMAGINATION WITH SAMUEL G. WHITE
7:00pm, ICAA $10Kate Thomas, “Lesbian Arcadia: Desire and Design in the Fin-de-Siècle Garden”
7:30pm, GSDReimagining the City as Our Own: Towards an Architecture of Inclusion
9:00pm, Berkeley
Friday, February 19
A Reckoning in Boston: Film Screening and Q&A with Director James Rutenbeck and Producer Kafi Dixon
12:00pm, CornellSilvio Lorusso: DESIGN AND DISILLUSION: A STARTER PACK
7:00pm, Pratt
Saturday, February 20
How We Mourn, Where We Remember
7:30pm, Norcal APA
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