Archinect - studiospeak

23:90 supperstudio 02

2012-04-21T14:49:00-04:00

We've been busy organizing the next supperstudio.

Supperstudio is a new student-led speaker series happening in Perloff Hall twice a quarter - each evening features experimental practitioners working in and around the discipline of architecture. It's a loose dinner discussion series where students faculty and speakers come together over a shared meal, cooking and conversing together. This upcoming evening, Danielle Rago (co-founder with Tina DiCarlo of Archive of Spatial Aesthetics and Praxis) and Oliver Hess (of Materials + Applications) will be joining us in conversation around the topic of curation and conceptual programming within the discipline of architecture.

The last speaker series featured a group of designers, architects and writers, including Jere from Pulska Grupa (who was recently selected to represent Croatia in the Biennale! congrats!), Know How Shop, Erik Knutzen of Root Simple, Pieter Grandry (Crap=Good) and Valentina Karga (Berlin Farm Lab). Loose topic: ...

19:90 Conversation with Peter Eisenman, Sylvia Lavin & Michael Osman

2012-03-06T04:05:00-05:00

All kinds of exceptional visitors have stopped by UCLA recently. Today we had Peter Eisenman in conversation with Sylvia Lavin and Michael Osman, a kind of informal peek into the trajectory of Eisenman's earlier period when he was at the cusp of his rise with Lavin leading the questions as to how he got started and where we could/should be going now. Most of the conversation unfolded like a historical sketch of his life as he travelled from Columbia to Cambridge (brief detour to Paris).

Some nuggets below (its terrible redaction but we are 1.5 weeks from final review)

After some bantering of Eisenman's extreme dislike of Decafe's installation ("I have certain visceral standards and there are certain things that get me upset")...

Eisenman: Every night I would go to Colin (Rowe) house and every night he would bring out a huge book of architecture - he would say, LOOK. So we decided to travel together in summer of '61 and I made the itinerary. When we got to Zurich, Rowe sa...

18:90 Live Blog: Wang Shu on "Building a Diverse World Following the Natural Way"

2012-02-27T21:34:00-05:00

In repentance for my many absences I've decided to venture into the territory of live blogs ala Harvard's Lian - relegated to the back corner of Decafe in order to mask the terrible brightness of my laptop. Hangzhou-based architect Wang Shu speaks today, and through a happy alignment of stars, was just announced the new Pritzker Prize winner. So you can only imagine the energy and buzz radiating through the halls.

Given the nature of the blogging, I apologize in advance for all misconstructions, typos, grammatical shortfalls etc.

18:29
We're all waiting for the first Chinese Pritzker winner Wang Shu. Decafe has reached critical mass in terms of seating, but a separate room in Perloff with live feed is set up for all late comers.

Title of Wang's lecture: To Build a Diverse World Following the Natural Way.

18:36 Clapping and the dimming of lights.

Introductions by Neil Denari, Vice Chair. He got a call this morning from Caroline Blackburn that Wang Shu won the ...