The Spring 2013 Lecture Series of the Auburn University School of Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Planning is entitled “Love & Hate: Points of View, Perspectives & Personalities” and is a continuation of the series of the same title from the Fall of 2012. The lectures this year focus on depth as opposed to breadth in the design practice. Lecturers will discuss specific project(s) of the designer's choice rather than a survey of their respective portfolios with an emphasis on the design process beyond the finished product—often a means to an end.  Lecturers will elaborate on the trials and tribulations of specific building endeavors in their recent past—the surprises, the small and large successes and the details of a project cycle. APLA is particularly pleased to add a variety of speakers this spring including, architects, planners and historians.

 

January 23: Chris Leong

Chris Leong is a founding partner of Leong Leong. Leong Leong was established by brothers Chris and Dominic Leong in New York in 2009.  The studio has completed projects in New York, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Seoul, and Napa Valley.  Leong Leong’s work includes a range of project types including interiors, furniture, exhibitions, and buildings. The studio’s interests are not defined by a particular project type but by the potential to create environments that have cultural resonance. They have recently been selected as finalists for the 2013 MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program and have been awarded a New York Council of the Arts for 2013.  In 2011, Architectural Record magazine featured Leong Leong as one of seven emerging architecture firms from around the world in their annual Design Vanguard.  In 2010, the American Institute of Architects selected Leong Leong for the 2010 New Practices award. The firm’s work has been featured in the New York Times, Wallpaper, Surface, Dwell, CNN, Interior Design, Detail, A+U, Architect, Architectural Record and other international press outlets.

 

Christopher received his Master of Architecture from Princeton University and his Bachelor of Arts from University of California, Berkeley where he received the Princeton Graduate Fellowship and the CED Alumni Award from UC Berkeley. Prior to forming LLA, Christopher worked at Gluckman Mayner Architects and SHoP Architects where he led a team in the redesign of Madison Square Garden and other large-scale projects. He has taught at the New Jersey Institute of Technology and has been an invited critic at various schools of architecture

www.leong-leong.com

 

 

February 06: On Imagination: Conversations with Architects Film Screening

Imagination is the unique human ability that drives all creative processes.  The employment of the imagination by architects toward imagining architecture is at once a most pretentious act and simultaneously a most grounded and essential act. It is indeed ironic that something as definitive as architecture is driven by the indefinable. Imagination is central to the authority of architecture and at the core of architectural discourse, though often as a subtext.

This 90-minute video looks at imagination through the musings of some of today's most creative architects. It includes conversations with twenty-five architects: David Adjaye, Alan Balfour, Jennifer Bonner, Henry Cobb, Preston Scott Cohen, Lise Anne Couture, Peter Eisenman, Frank Gehry, Steven Holl, Rem Koolhaas, Diane Lewis, Thom Mayne, Michael Meredith, Rafael Moneo, William Morgan, Monica Ponce de Leon, Hani Rashid, Hilary Sample, Martha Schwartz, Michael Sorkin, Nader Tehrani, Elías Torres, Billie Tsien, Michael Van Valkenburgh, and Tod Williams. The video was produced by Merrill Elam of Mack Scogin Merrill Elam Architects, Atlanta, Helen Han, Architect and Filmmaker, and Margaret Fletcher, Assistant Professor of Architect at Auburn University. The video will be introduced by Margaret Fletcher.

 

February 18: Julie Snow, FAIA

 

Julie Snow leads a studio-based practice in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The diverse scale and type of work is joined by a common exploration of material and detail. The studio’s interest in pragmatic and critical programmatic reflection results in innovative designs that expand our understanding of architectural performance. Design strategies engage issues of how architecture performs within each project’s social, cultural and economic context.

The practice has been recognized with numerous awards including the AIA Honor Award, Holcim North American Bronze Award, Progressive Architecture Design Award, the Chicago Athenaeum’s American and International Architecture Awards, Architect Magazine Annual Design Review, the Design Distinction Award from I.D. magazine, several Business Week/Architectural Record Awards and several US General Services Administration’s Design Excellence Awards.

Julie recently received the American Academy of Arts and Letters Architecture Award. The award read, “The architecture of Julie VandenBerg Snow might be characterized as invention within convention. That is not to say that her work is conventional but to recognize that, within a rigorous underpinning, she and her studio make the marvelous happen. Elegance is balanced by pragmatism—she is a ballerina who can dance in work boots. Albert Einstein is quoted as saying, ‘Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.’ The work of Julie VandenBerg Snow does this.’”

www.juliesnowarchitects.com

February 25: Marla Nelson

Marla Nelson, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Department of Planning and Urban Studies at the University of New Orleans where she serves as coordinator of the Master of Urban and Regional Planning program, the only accredited planning program in the state of Louisiana. Her areas of expertise include local and regional economic development, community development and urban revitalization.

Nelson’s recent research examined the economic and workforce development potential of health services in central cities throughout the United States. Her current work focuses on two key areas.  The first examines how cities cope with population decline, whether sudden or prolonged, sustained or temporary, and the tensions among equity, efficiency and environmental management in the implementation of redevelopment strategies in weak market cities.  The second investigates the locational preferences of a segment of the “creative class”— socially motivated professionals.  The rebuilding circumstances in New Orleans create a unique opportunity to examine this sub-group of professionals.  New Orleans, which had been facing a brain drain for decades prior to Hurricane Katrina, has attracted large numbers of highly mobile, young professionals who have moved to the city to take part in recovery and rebuilding.

 

March 18: Nasser Rabbat

Nasser Rabbat is the Aga Khan Professor and the Director of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at MIT. An architect and a historian, his scholarly interests include the history and historiography of Islamic architecture, art, and cultures, urban history, and post-colonial criticism. He teaches lecture courses on various facets of Islamic architecture and seminars on the history of Islamic urbanism and contemporary cities, orientalism, historiography, and the issue of meaning in architecture. In his research and teaching he presents architecture in ways that illuminate its interaction with culture and society and stress the role of human agency in shaping that interplay.

Professor Rabbat has published more than 80 scholarly articles and book sections in English, Arabic, and French. Among his recent articles are: “The Arab Revolution Takes Back the Public Space,” Critical Inquiry, Online Feature (January 2012); ‘What’s in a Name? The New “Islamic Art” Galleries at the Met,’ Artforum 50, 8 (January 2012); “The Pedigreed Domain of Architecture: A View from the Cultural Margin,” Perspecta 44 (2011); and "Circling the Square: Architecture and Revolution in Cairo," Artforum 49, 8 (April 2011). His books include: The Citadel of Cairo: A New Interpretation of Royal Mamluk Architecture (Leiden, 1995), Thaqafat al Bina’ wa Bina’ al-Thaqafa (The Culture of Building and Building Culture) (Beirut, 2002), Al-Mudun al-Mayyita: Durus min Madhih wa-Ru’an li-Mustaqbaliha (The Dead Cities: Lessons from its History and Views on its Future) (Damascus, 2010), Mamluk History Through Architecture: Building, Culture, and Politics in Mamluk Egypt and Syria (London, 2010), which won the British-Kuwait Friendship Society Prize in Middle Eastern Studies, 2011, and an edited book, The Courtyard House between Cultural Reference and Universal Relevance (London, 2010). He co-authored Interpreting the Self: Autobiography in the Arabic Literary Tradition (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2001), and co-edited Making Cairo Medieval (Lantham, Md, 2005). Two forthcoming books, L'art Islamique à la recherche d'une méthode historique, and al-Naqd Iltizaman (Criticism as Commitment) will be published in the coming year in Cairo and Beirut respectively. He is currently writing a book tentatively titled The Story of Islamic Architecture.All lectures begin at 3:30 p.m. unless otherwise noted, in Dudley B6. They are free and open to the public.