The lottery gave me one of two student seats at dinner with
Rafael Moneo tomorrow night, after his lecture. What should I ask him?
Lian
[Addendum: The lecture was great. It was called "Design Conditioned by Circumstance: The Advantages of Obstacles for the Architect." Michael Meredith described it as taking Venturi Scott Brown's argument, which was "promiscuous" and radical in its context and making it into a moral argument. I saw it not so much in terms of making an argument about complexity or contradiction, but about making a building that is a good neighbor and a good leader, that respects its context while making the buildings around it better also. He looked at four American institutional projects and talked quite a bit about how his intervention related to the existing context in terms of urbanistic questions of paths through the site, creating linkages, doorways, and thresholds in a campus, and so on.
The dinner was even better. I'll write soon...]
This blog was most active from 2009-2013. Writing about my experiences and life at Harvard GSD started out as a way for me to process my experiences as an M.Arch.I student, and evolved into a record of the intellectual and cultural life of the Cambridge architecture (and to a lesser extent, design/technology) community, through live-blogs. These days, I work as a data storyteller (and blogger at Littldata.com) in San Francisco, and still post here once in a while.
12 Comments
for a job.
Ha! We'll see how that one goes over.
these after-lecture conversations are often most fun and memorable when kept casual. don't go in with your notes and your rehearsed question(s). propose a bourbon. start a conversation about something he's mentioned which appears to interest him, get him interested and engaged in talking to you. then just see what happens. [don't forget to have a bourbon yourself.]
A bourbon is a very specific recommendation! What about a gin and tonic? :)
i'm a kentuckian, after all. i have to be patriotic.
That's exciting... Can't go wrong with Knob Creek.
Knob Creek it is!
i would ask him what he's reading. it's my go to question for any architect.
Ask him why the MFA addition in Houston is such a bad museum building.
hold up strange objects in his face and ask him how it makes him feel.
or perform a myers-briggs personality test on him - 100 plus questions should take you thru most of dinner...
...wishing the GSD catering had Bourbon on call when I was there.
Ask his opinion about Representation in contemporary Architecture and know that from now on you can say, "on this point I disagreee with Rafael Moneo, and actually, I think..."
failing that go old-school and ask him to talk about the town hall at Logrono.
Thanks, everyone! Unfortunately, bourbon was not available: the options were red, white, and sparkling or still water.
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