So far I've skipped all of my commentary on all of the extracurricular activities that transpired last year. After that Ken Smith show, an intense installation that coincided with a final review, my blog became non-functional. So I haven't talked about any lectures or gallery shows.

First up, a few highlights of the lecture series. I wrote quite a bit in my journal at the time, but I'll spare you:

Cecil Balmond
This was a fantastic lecture. The work is fascinating and I appreciated his enumeration of the processes behind it. I especially liked his talk on non-repeating patternmaking. He covered an Ito pavilion, Koolhaas' CCTV, and the Libeskind coiling museum in London, among other things. Very cool.

Maurizio Meossi
This is a guy that was involved in translating Zaha Hadid's design concepts for the BMW building into a buildable reality. Pretty interesting stuff. Also interesting to hear about the "realities" of avant-garde design.

Francois Roche
This was a wacky lecture. I think this was the one where half the lecture consisted of a hypnosis-inspired video. Bet you weren't expecting that! (Beware of bizarro website...)

Bjarke Ingels: PLOT
This guy was hilarious. Small firm working out of Denmark. He put on a great presentation with an irreverent and witty flash movie about the consolidation of shipping in Denmark. It is hard to determine if PLOT's architectural proposals are tongue in cheek, but they are in fact winning competitions and being built around the world. Particularly in China. There were some great China-related archijokes in there, as I recall. FYI: I just looked up PLOT again and apparently the partners have split, as of 1/1/06, into Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) and Julien De Smedt (JDS) Architects.

Antoine Picon
This was a good one, too. Made me want to read some of Picon's books. (Haven't had time yet.) He talked mostly about the architects fascination with the visual image, and therefore, the allure of the connection between architecture and science.

Other notable lectures:

Jesse Reiser
James Corner
Ali Rahim
Verzone Woods Architects
Jurgen Mayer
Paolo Burgi

Sorry, no pretentious pictures of architects and their work for this one... just Hyperlinks!

Up next: KSA Banvard Gallery 2005-06