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Spanish architects to open lecture series
By PATRICIA DONOVAN
Contributing Editor
The School of Architecture and Planning, which annually brings more than 20 major national and international architects and regional and urban planners to Buffalo as speakers, has announced its 2007 spring lecture series.
The Great Court of the British
Museum (2000), London, Foster + Partners. A stunning, glass-covered dome
solves overcrowding at the neo-classical British Museum.
PHOTO:
NIGEL YOUNG/FOSTER + PARTNERS
Speakers include stars in the architectural firmament from the U.S., Spain and Britain. Their work, which will be presented in February and March, shares a visual excitement, a breathtaking sense of place, and national and international recognition.
All lectures will begin at 5:30 p.m. and will be free and open to the public. With one exception, they will take place in 301 Crosby Hall, South Campus. The Martell Lecture on March 30 will be held in 147 Diefendorf Hall, South Campus.
Spain has re-established a vibrant architectural dialogue that has resulted in brilliant and arresting building design. On Feb. 14, two of Spain's brightest architectural talents, Madrid-based architects Iñaki Ábalos and Juan Herreros, will present their austerely beautiful building and urban landscaping projects. They are marked by a liberal use of figurative patterns and architecture that fuses nature and artifice to give a new identity to blighted urban contexts.
Writings and practice by Ábalos and Herreros introduced their concept of a "New Naturalism," which dissolves disciplinary boundaries between architecture, art, garden and philosophy. Their practice has won many prestigious awards, including the 2005 Mies van der Rohe Award for the Northeast Coast Park in Barcelona, which turned a blighted area into public space.
On March 7, the speaker will be William Massie, director of the architecture program at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., who is actively involved in both practice and research related to new materials and fabrication systems.
On March 19, three speakers representing the principal entities involved in the building of the Federal Building in San Francisco will discuss their experiences working together on the project from start to finish. Speakers will be Tim Christ of the architectural firm Morphosis, Erin McConahey of the engineering firm Arup and Maria Ciprazo, representing the U.S. General Services Administration. The lecture will be co-sponsored by the School of Management.
On March 21, the speaker will be Sheila Kennedy, a founding principal of Kennedy & Violich Architecture, a practice that has received national recognition for its research and built works. Among them are the Interim Bridges Project, a satellite library in a landing between classrooms; the Canton Elementary School, noted for it shiny, sensuous, sound-absorbing building skin; the Gallery for Contemporary Art; and the Madden Dance Theatre and Gym, the electrified plywood floor of which becomes ramp, furniture and high-tech desktop. Kennedy is an associate professor in the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.
On March 27, Spencer deGrey, a founding principal of Foster + Partners, will present his firm's work in North America, Europe, Asia and Oceania. DeGrey was project director for the spectacular $70 million Sage Music Center on the River Tyne in northeast England and for several magnificent new City Academies in England. He currently is leading the Boston Fine Arts Museum project.
On March 28, Peter Eisenman will present the school's Birdair Lecture, sponsored by the Birdair Corp. Eisenman is one of the foremost practitioners of deconstructivism in American architecture, a movement characterized by fragmentation, non-linear processes of design, an interest in manipulating ideas about a structure's surface or skin and the use of non-rectilinear shapes to distort and dislocate some of the elements of architecture, such as structure and envelope. Eisenman is the architect of the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, the cultural complex in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, and the recently completed Cardinals' Stadium in Arizona.
On March 30, the school's Martell Lecture will be presented by Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, multiple-award-winning architects who have worked together since 1977 and have been in partnership since 1986. Among their triumphs is the American Folk Art Museum in New York City. Called "a beautiful place to be" by Newsweek, it received the Arup World Architecture Award, a top international prize, for "Best New Building in the World for 2001." The American Folk Art Museum also won the award for "Best North American Building" and "Best Cultural Building in the World."
Other notable work by the pair include the Natatorium at the Cranbrook School; the Rifkind Residence; the Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla, Calif.; and two interior projects, all of which have won National Honor Awards from the American Institute of Architects.
The Martell Visiting Critic Program is supported by a gift from architect Christopher Michael Martell and his wife, Sally. Martell holds bachelor's and master's degrees in architecture from UB.