BIArch Open Lectures - Stan Allen

The second BIArch Open Lecture of the Spring 2010 series is now available on BIArch’s Vimeo channel. Stan Allen, Dean of the Princeton University School of Architecture (SOA), member of the BIArch Board of Directors and MBIArch 2010-11 faculty member, presents a lecture titled “From Object to Field (and back)“. He is introduced by Madrid-based architect Arturo Franco.

BIArch’s Open Lectures are a complementary extension of the MBIArch, the Institute’s core academic Master’s Degree in Architecture program. The MBIArch starts in September 2010 and late applications will be received until July 15, 2010.

BIArch Open Lectures - Yung Ho Chang

Yung Ho Chang, founder of Atelier FCJZ, China’s first private architectural practice and head of the Architecture department at the MIT, delivered the first BIArch Open Lecture of the Spring 2010 cycle: “China, Carb, City, China”. A full-length video of the event is available online on our Vimeo channel:

BIArch Open Lectures: Yung Ho Chang from BIArch on Vimeo.

BIArch’s Open Lectures are a complementary extension of the MBIArch, the Institute’s core academic Master’s Degree in Architecture program. The MBIArch starts in September 2010 and late applications will be received until July 15, 2010.

The second BIArch Open Lecture of the Spring 2010 cycle will be delivered next Friday June 11th by Stan Allen, principal of Stan Allen Architect and Dean of the Princeton University School of Architecture (SOA). The lecture, titled “From Object to Field (and back)” will take place in the Auditorium of La Pedrera, at 7 pm. Allen will be introduced by Madrid-based architect Arturo Franco, Director of Arquitectura COAM.

Sagaponac House, The Hamptons, New York

Stan Allen studied at Brown University, The Cooper Union, and Princeton University. After working for Richard Meier and Partners in New York and Rafael Moneo in Spain, he established his own practice in 1990. For over 12 years he was a professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP), from 1989 to 2002. His work has been published in Points and Lines: Diagrams and Projects for the City (Princeton, 1999) and his theoretical essays in Practice: Architecture, Technique and Representation (G+B Arts, 2000).

Maribor Gallery, Slovenia

Allen’s academic work and professional practice illustrate his conviction that “in an increasingly specialized world, architects are the last surviving generalists.” Allen believes that architecture demands a particular set of technical or formal skills and professional traits but also openness and flexibility to incorporate different types of inputs into a truly “synthetic art form”.

Stan Allen is a member of the BIArch Advisory Council and will be part of the MBIArch Master’s Degree in Architecture program 2010-11 faculty (he will be leading one of the program’s design studios). At the the first BIArch Advisory Council Meeting, Allen argued in favor of a dual role of architectural education: “to train the best possible practicing architects…to provide the necessary skills to function within the discipline,” but also to “drive the discipline forward”.

BIArch Open Lecture
“From Object to Field (and back)”
Stan Allen
Introduction by Arturo Franco

Friday, June 11, 2010. 7 PM
Auditorium of “La Pedrera”
Passeig de Gràcia 92
Barcelona

Download a detailed flyer of the event here.

Attendance is free, but capacity is limited. The lecture will be broadcast live online. RSVP through Facebook. For more information, visit the event page on the BIArch website or contact us at events@biarch.eu.

Next Tuesday, May 25, BIArch renews its Open Lecture cycle with a talk by Chinese architect and head of the Architecture Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Yung Ho Chang. The lecture, titled “China, Carb, City, China” will be delivered in the Auditorium of La Pedrera, at 8pm.

"Dream Cube" Shanghai Corporate Pavilion, Shanghai Expo 2010 (Photo courtesy of Atelier FCJZ)

Chang will be introduced by Albert Ferré, Editorial director at Actar Publishers, Barcelona, and managing editor of the Prince Claus Fund Library, Amsterdam.

Split House, Commune by the Great Wall, 2002 (Photo by Flickr user Ole Wa Jian)

In 1993, after receiving a Masters degree in Architecture at University of California Berkeley and teaching in universities in the U.S. for over 15 years, Chang founded the first private architecture firm in China: Atelier FCJZ (which stands for Feichang Jianzhu, or “unusual architecture.”) In 1999 he founded and became the first director of the Graduate Center of Architecture at Peking University, and in 2005 he was named head of the Architecture Department at the MIT.

Bamboo Lantern, 2009

Yung Ho Chang’s work reflects the tensions and opportunities that mark contemporary China’s constant debate between local character or tradition and a stronger global presence. The architecture of Atelier FCJZ strives for a delicate yet significant balance (or play) between the two, putting particular emphasis on physicality and materiality, on the actual process of making buildings.

Jinhua Park Pavilion (Photo by Iwan Baan)

The firm’s projects include residential and smaller-scale tourist projects reminiscent of both traditional Chinese courtyard house typologies and classic American modernism, as well as larger mixed-use complexes and boldly-designed public commissions boasting advanced technological features.

Escalator, Dream Cube (Photo by Basil Childers)

Yung Ho Chang is a member of the BIArch Advisory Council. During his intervention at Council’s first meeting last June, Chang emphasized his conviction that architecture has to be anchored in a discipline that feeds on information exchanges between teaching, research and practice.

BIArch Open Lecture
“China, Carb, City, China”
Yung Ho Chang
Introduction by Albert Ferré (Actar)

Tuesday, May 25, 2010. 8 PM
Auditorium of “La Pedrera”
Passeig de Gràcia 92
Barcelona

Download a detailed flyer of the event here.

Attendance is free, but capacity is limited. RSVP through Facebook. For more information, visit the event page on the BIArch website or contact us at events@biarch.eu.

The BIArch Open Lectures part of the Institute’s public program, which complements the MBIArch Master’s degree program. Stay tuned for more information on our Spring 2010 agenda.

In the meantime, enjoy the videos:

BIArch Open Lectures: Smiljan Radic “Un Ruido Naranjo” from BIArch on Vimeo.

BIArch Open Lectures: Yoshiharu Tsukamoto, “Architectural Behaviorology” from BIArch on Vimeo.

The second of the Barcelona Institute of Architecture’s Open Lectures, Yoshiharu Tsukamoto’s “Architectural Behaviorology” is now available in a full-length video on the BIArch website. Tsukamoto is one of the founding partners of Tokyo-based Atelier Bow-Wow. His lecture was analytical and detailed, yet refreshingly lighthearted –a demonstration of what has become something of a signature style for Bow-Wow.  “Architectural Behaviorology” alludes  to the way buildings — just like people or climatic conditions — express certain types of “behavior” by bringing together human and environmental interactions at every scale, from a single building to an entire city.

The introduction by Dominique Boudet, French architecture critic, fomer editor in chief of AMC Le Moniteur, and early client of Rem Koolhaas (he and his wife commissioned the famous Villa Dall’Ava, in Saint Cloud, Paris) can also be viewed online.

Smiljan Radic, “one of the most interesting architects working today”, as Miquel Adrià of Arquine magazine metioned in his introduction, was invited to deliver the Barcelona Institute of Architecture’s first Open Lecture. The talk, entitled “Un Ruido Naranjo” (An Orange Tree Noise), not only met the high expectations that were set on it, but pleasantly surprised those present with a beautiful short film prepared by Radic specially for the occasion. The video is an extremely intimate and unique look at Radic’s architecture, and a refreshing take on presenting a body of work. We are happy and honored to be sharing the film along with the full-length video of Radic’s lecture on the Media section of our webpage. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

Links to the videos:

Introduction by Miquel Adrià
Smiljan Radic, “Un Ruido Naranjo”

Toni Gironès

Last December 15 Toni Gironès delivered the final BIArch Open Lecture of the Fall 2009 cycle: “Espais de trobada, llocs comuns” or “Spaces of Encouter, Common Places”. Gironès was introduced by Pere Riera of RGA Arquitectes, who described Gironès as being a “a post-industrial craftsman” due to his work that Riera characterized as intensity and clarity translated into built form, as well as a particular sensibility that combines the limits of creative desire, immediacy, and proximity, or “the absolute local”.

Pere Riera introducing Toni Gironès

Echoes from the past two Open Lectures resonated as Gironès spoke of the need to distance himself from the spectacle and the iconic saturation of contemporary architectural production, in order to focus on seeking out spaces of encounter (intermediate spaces) between nature and artifice.

Housing, Badalona

Through a brief review of some of his most significant works –including the Barcino Tennis club pergola and terrace, the project for the Vilassar de Dalt Roman ovens archeological site, the Weyler housing block in Badalona and the ongoing Environmental and Climate Museum in Lleida– Gironès addressed what he considers the fundamental challenge in urban contexts: finding ways to relate to the environment. Gironès’s projects were presented as shared spaces between urban life and nature, between large and small scales, between past and present. The lecture ended with a round of photographs that documented the ultimate encounter: projects as they are lived.

BIArch is closing its Fall 2009 public program with a very special offering: the final Open Lecture of the cycle to be delivered by Toni Gironès: “Espais de trobada, llocs comuns” (Places of Encounter, Common Places). After offering viewpoints from faraway places such asChile and Japan, this time the focus is on Europe –and Catalonia in particular– with a body of work that is both subtle and firmly rooted in the local. Toni Gironés won the Young Catalan Architects Prize in 1996, was nominated for the International Francesco Borromini Prize in 2001 and the FAD Prize in 2007. He has taught at universities in Spain, Argentina, Morocco, Italy and Switzerland, and is currentlly the head of Architectural Studies at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Reus, as well as a member of the BIArch Board of Directors. With this final Open Lecture, BIArch not only hopes to end its inaugural public event series on a high note, but also to build on the Institute’s identity and confirm its vocation of combined practice and reflection, local footing with a global scope. We hope you will join us.

Toni Gironès will be presented by Pere Riera of RGA Arquitectes. As all of BIArch’s Open Lectures, access is free but capacity is limited. For more information visit the BIArch’s Facebook page.

This coming Tuesday, November 10th, BIArch will host the second of its Open Lectures. This time, we have invited Yoshiharu Tsukamoto of Atelier Bow-Wow, who will deliver a lecture entitled “Architectural Behaviorology”. The term refers to the experimental analysis of behavior (of buildings, in this case). Atelier Bow-Wow, which Tsukamoto co-founded with partner Momoyo Kaijima in 1992, is one of contemporary Japan’s most unique, active young architectural practices. Bow-

Wow’s body of work covers books that chart informal urbanisms in Tokyo, dog-shaped chairs, houses built to fit on tiny irregular plots, and portable infrastructures for “micro-public-spaces”.

Details of the event are available on BIArch’s website, and you can RSVP through our Facebook page. The lecture will be held at the Auditorium of La Pedrera de Caixa Catalunya (Passeig de Gràcia, 92). Once again, entrance is free and open to the public, but capacity is limited, so make sure you arrive at least a little before 8 pm.