UB Architecture Graduate Student Lecture, April 6: Jesse Reiser

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- On April 6, the University at Buffalo Architecture Graduate Student Association will sponsor a lecture by Jesse Reiser, founding principal of Reiser + Umemoto, a firm whose spectacular buildings are exerting considerable influence over the practice of contemporary architecture.

The talk will be held at 5:30 p.m. in 301 Crosby Hall, UB South Campus and will be free and open to the public. A reception will follow.

Reiser and his partner Nanako Umemoto, operating in New York City as Reiser + Umemoto, RUR Architecture, P.C., say they approach each project as the continuation of an ongoing inquiry into relationships among architecture, territory and systems of distribution.

Daniel Libeskind calls their work 'inspiring…characterized by an inventive constellation of amazing objects that raise questions about the chaotic disorder of institutionalized arrangements."

One of the firm's most notable recent buildings is "O-14," a 22-story commercial tower perched on a two-story podium in the center of Dubai's business district. The building has generated extraordinary international interest in the architectural press, as it is among the most innovative designs in a sea of generic Dubai office towers. Its 300,000-plus square feet of space is sheathed in a 40-centimeter-thick concrete shell perforated by more than 1,300 openings that create a lace-like effect on the building's façade.

Another of the firm's recent successes is its dazzling, dynamic, colorful design for the Taipei Pop Music Center, scheduled for completion in 2014. The center, marked by a daring discontinuity of design elements, is said to fundamentally reinvent the concept of live music, entertainment and pop production center. A startling wonder to behold, it features a 3,000-seat auditorium, a tower dedicated to the industry, a Pop Music Hall of Fame, an outdoor amphitheater with an incredibly adaptable mobile stage called "The Robot Theater," and myriad shops, markets, cafes and restaurants.

Reiser is the author of the Atlas of Novel Tectonics (2006, Princeton Architectural Press), a cerebral manual described by Architect Magazine as "reflections on matter and force, material science, art and architectural history, and the interrelationship of architecture and culture."