For those in NYC next weekend there's a great conference shaping up "addressing the evolution of the architectural thesis project -- from the individual manifesto to collective research ventures" Sat. Feb 4th 10am@ GSAPP. Speakers include: Denise Scott Brown, Mark Wigley, Sylvia Lavin, Sarah Whiting and more. | All the details here


Wood Auditorium, Avery Hall
Columbia GSAPP
Saturday February 4th, 2006
Morning: 10am-12:30pm. Afternoon: 2:00pm-4:30pm.

Paratheses is a symposium addressing the evolution of the architectural thesis project -- from the individual manifesto to collective research ventures. Although not new, research within the profession of architecture is nebulous ground and within the last several years, this mode of collective research has become a distinct pedagogical direction within graduate schools of architecture. Collective research labs proliferate as educational models for innovation. Harvard's Project on the City, UCLA's LA Now, Architecture Association's Design Research Lab (DRL), RMIT's Spatial Information Architectural Lab (SIAL), Penn's Non-Linear Systems Organization (NLSO), Columbia's CLab, as well as Stanford's new " d.school" all claim a collective initiative for production. The architectural thesis project, which has historically served as a litmus test of forthcoming theoretical and aesthetic changes within the discipline, is currently being questioned, edited, and even eliminated altogether from graduate schools of architecture. While the independent thesis project exemplifies the image and model of the Architect as a heroic individual, unconstrained by exterior influences, the emerging "think-tank" type model instead engages reality in order to produce researched "options" or "findings" to table for discussion. But does this collaborative "think-tank" model jeopardize the independent thesis project and dilute its pedagogical aims? What is at stake in embracing these collective models of architectural research? What new direction is offered to the discipline?

Speakers:
Denise Scott Brown
Brendan Moran
Mark Jarzombek
Sarah Whiting
Roemer van Toorn
Jeffrey Inaba
Brett Steele
Sylvia Lavin
Keller Easterling
Mark Wigley
Reinhold Martin

Organized by Jonathan Lott, Brian Price, and Dominic Leong with Columbia GSAPP