The Fall 2008 Lecture Series is sponsored by Professional Members of the William and Catherine Bauer Wurster Society. All lectures are held Wednesday evenings at 7 p.m. in 112 Wurster Hall (*unless otherwise noted). See Fall 2008 Exhibitions for shows of work related to the lecture series.

Lecture Series: CED 2009–10 | Spring 2009 | Fall 2008 | Spring 2008 | Fall 2007 | Spring 2007 | Fall 2006

September 24, 2008

Gwendolyn Wright
Professor of Architecture, Graduate School of Planning and Preservation, Columbia University

Lecture Title
A Prismatic History of American Modern Architecture

Bio
Gwendolyn Wright is Professor of Architecture at Columbia University where, in 1985, she was the first woman to receive tenure in the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. She also holds appointments in Columbia's departments of history and art history. She received her M.Arch. and PhD. degrees from the University of California at Berkeley. Academic awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Getty Fellowship, and election to the Society of American Historians which honors literary quality.

Wright has focused principally on American architecture and urbanism from the late-nineteenth century to the present day. She has also written extensively about transnational exchanges, especially colonial and more recent neo-colonial aspects of both modernism and historic preservation. She is the author of six books and scores of articles.

Her newest book is USA, part of the Modern Architectures in History series from Reaktion Books. USA recasts established ideas about American modernism by highlighting key shifts and conflicts about work, homes, and public life from 1865 to the present. Architecture and the entire built environment provide a matrix that interweaves social norms and individual imaginations, high art and popular culture, prevailing conditions and visions of change.

Since 2003 Professor Wright has also served as a host of the popular PBS television series, "History Detectives." This program traces the dynamic processes and quandaries of historical investigations. Attracting professionals and the general public alike, the show reveals how historians track ideas and weigh conflicting evidence about what happened, why, and history's implications for the present.

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October 1, 2008

Christoph Ingenhoven
Ingenhoven Architekten, Düsseldorf

Lecture Title
A Green Future

Bio
Christoph Ingenhoven is one of the world's leading architects in designing sustainable and ecological architecture. The work is guided by the principles set out by such bodies as the LEED Evaluation, ASHRAE, the Swiss Minergy Standard, BREEAM and the European Standard 2000. The RWE headquarters in Essen, designed in 1991 and completed in 1996, is one of the first ecological orientated high-rise buildings that provides for natural ventilation on each floor, with its double facade technology. The new Lufthansa Aviation Center, awarded in 1997 first prize in an international competition, requires only one-third of the energy of a conventional office building. The European Investment Bank in Luxemburg, to be completed in 2008, is certified as "very good" by the British Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM) and is the first building in continental Europe to be judged by these standards. Also, the project for the new Main Station in Stuttgart, to be built from 2010 up to 2016, was awarded the Europe Holcim Award Silver 2005 and the Global Holcim Award Gold 2006, the highest endowed architectural awards, for its sustainable construction. As a "zero-energy station" it requires no heating, cooling, or mechanical ventilation.

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October 3, 2008 (Friday)
12:30–1:30 p.m., 112 Wurster Hall

Daniel Bermúdez Samper
Architect and Associate Professor of Architecture, Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá

Bogotá, Lecciones de un Renacer: Symposium Case Study Lecture
The Architecture of Daniel Bermúdez: Urban Interventions and Civic Change in Bogotá

Daniel Bermúdez graduated from Los Andes University in 1973 with a degree in architecture. He has worked as an architect and independent developer since then.

Among his best projects in Bogotá are: the French Embassy; the Ciudad Salitre Urban Project; the Alberto Lleras Camargo Building, as well as buildings H, B and L at Los Andes University; the French Lycée’s gymnasium, auditorium and parking building; the Jorge Tadeo Lozano University’s library, auditorium and graduate school buildings; and the Tintal public library. Bermúdez is currently developing Bogotá's fourth public library (Centro Cultural Biblioteca Pública Julio Mario Santo Domingo), a project of 23.000m² comprised of a library, a theatre and the San Jose de Bavaria Park. He is also designing the buildings for the schools of architecture, art, industrial design and music at Los Andes University.

Among the numerous awards Mr. Bermúdez has obtained is the XII Colombian Architecture Biennale design excellence award, for the Alberto Lleras Camargo building at Los Andes University (1992); the XVI Colombian Architecture Biennale design excellence award, for the graduate school building at the Jorge Tadeo Lozano University (1998); and the award for excellence in concrete design, for the University Jorge Tadeo Lozano building (1998).

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October 3, 2008 (Friday)
7–9 p.m., 112 Wurster Hall

Enrique Peñalosa
Journalist and Politician; Former Mayor, City of Bogotá, Colombia (1998–2001)

Keynote Lecture
Symposium: Bogotá, Lecciones de un Renacer

Enrique Peñalosa is an accomplished leader who has achieved positive results in the diverse activities in which he has been involved. He is also an innovative and influential urban thinker who proposes imaginative projects and solutions to improve public spaces, quality of life and well being, mobility, sustainability and equity. He has particularly creative approaches for growing cities to profit from the world's advanced cities’ examples of failure and success and challenges them to invent a new and different model, more propitious to happiness, more sustainable, more equitable and more competitive.

Peñalosa is called all over the world to present his interpretations and proposals on how to create better human habitats. He has lectured internationally in numerous environmental, governmental, urban design and policy and university forums and has advised governments in Asia, Africa, Australia, Latin America and the United States. His vision and proposals have significantly influenced policies in numerous cities throughout the world. He currently is Senior International Advisor to the ITDP (Institute for Transportation and Development Policy) of New York and the Hewlett Foundation and a member of the experts’ team of the Urban Age Project of the London School of Economics. He is a consultant on Urban Vision, Strategy and Policy.

As Mayor of Bogotá, the 7-million-inhabitants’ capital of Colombia, Peñalosa profoundly transformed the city, turning it from one with neither bearings nor self esteem or hope into an international example for improvements in quality of life, mobility and equity in developing world cities. During his 1998–2001 tenure — the Colombian Constitution does not allow for immediate reelection — Mr. Peñalosa implemented an environmentally and socially sustainable model which prioritizes public transport, public pedestrian spaces and children’s happiness.

He created TransMilenio, probably the world’s best bus-based transit system; a network of bicycle paths; slum improvement projects; a land bank to provide low income housing with quality urbanism; greenways and pedestrian promenades through low income neighborhoods; radical improvements to the city center; daily car use restrictions during peak hours and an annual Car Free Day; formidable libraries and parks; dozens of high quality public schools managed through a innovative scheme by the best private schools in the country and marvelous nurseries and community centers.

Peñalosa’s ideas and proposals have been featured in many of the world’s most important media and he has also published books as well as articles in periodicals and books. He emphasizes that a humane city is the best instrument for competitiveness in the new century, when attracting highly qualified and creative individuals will be especially crucial for economic development.

Peñalosa holds a BA in Economics and History from Duke University, a Master’s Degree in Government from the IIAP in Paris and a DESS in Public Administration from the University of Paris II. He also was Visiting Scholar at New York University for three years and has taught at several Colombian universities.

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October 8, 2008

Video Screening
Renzo Piano: A Conversation with the Master (California Academy of Sciences Lecture)

Lecture Title
The True Story of the Design of the New Academy

UC Berkeley and California College of the Arts (CCA) architecture students have been invited to a special lecture by architect Renzo Piano/Renzo Piano Building Workshop at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. This event takes place from 4–6 p.m. on Friday, September 26, the evening before the grand opening of the Academy. It is a special event for students, but seating is limited. Berkeley was allotted 140 seats for our students and will distribute tickets on a lottery-basis. This video screening of the lecture is for the students unable to attend the lecture. CCA will do a pod-cast of the lecture which will also be available to our students.

Lecture Description
Nine years ago, world-renowned architect Renzo Piano arrived in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park with a green felt-tip pen and a sketch pad. His task: To design a building that would house the California Academy of Sciences’ 20 million specimens, 38,000 live animals, 400 employees, and three major attractions — an aquarium, planetarium, and natural history museum — all under one roof. Inspired by the Academy’s surrounding topography and natural setting, Piano created a simple sketch — ­an undulating green line that would become the museum’s iconic roof. His goal was to metaphorically lift up a piece of the park and slide the museum in underneath.

That green line is now a blossoming reality. Topped with a 2.5-acre living roof and bursting with light and life, the new California Academy of Sciences is a masterpiece of sustainable architecture. It is on track to become the largest LEED-platinum-rated public building in the world. In this intimate lecture, architecture students from UC Berkeley and the California College of the Arts will join the Pritzker Prize-winner in the heart of his new museum. Piano will share his thoughts on the building’s conception and realization, and explain why “architecture is about building emotion and telling stories.”

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October 13, 2008 (Monday)
11:30 a.m.–2 p.m., Wurster Hall (Location TBA)

Nader Tehrani
Principal, Office dA

Event Title
Office dA Workshop

This workshop will be followed by a joint lecture with Hailim Suh at California College of the Arts in San Francisco. Time/Location: 7 p.m., Timkin Auditorium, CCA-SF campus. This event is co-sponsored by UC Berkeley and CCA Architecture.

Bio
Nader Tehrani received a bachelor of fine arts and a bachelor in architecture from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1985 and 1986, respectively. He continued his studies at the Harvard Graduate School of Design where he received a master's of architecture in urban design in 1991. Tehrani attended a post-graduate program in history and theory at the Architectural Association in London. An associate professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tehrani has also taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, the Rhode Island School of Design, and the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he served as the Thomas W. Ventulett III Distinguished Chair in Architectural History.

In the academic context, Nader Tehrani has focused on research surrounding materials, methods of aggregations, geometry and the advancement of digital fabrication. His participation in the immaterial/ultra-material exhibition at the GSD is also paralleled by his installations at the Museum of Modern Art, Sci-ARC, and Georgia Tech, investigating new means and methods of fabrication in wood, steel, rope and polycarbonate.

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October 15, 2008

Annmarie Adams
William C. Macdonald Professor, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada; 2007-08 Arcus Endowment Scholar, UC Berkeley

Lecture Title
Sex and the Single Building: The Weston Havens House, 1941-2001

Bio
Annmarie Adams is an expert on the history of domestic architecture, hospital design, and gendered space who travels widely to lecture to university audiences and community groups. She currently serves as a Mentor in the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR)-funded training program, Health Care Technology and Place at the University of Toronto. With Professor Robert Mellin, she co-directs the post-professional option, Domestic Environments / Cultural Landscapes at McGill University's School of Architecture. In the spring of 2008 she was the first Arcus Scholar-in-Residence at the College of Environmental Design, UC Berkeley, where she taught a graduate seminar entitled "Sex and the Single Building."

The Arcus Endowment
CED's Arcus Endowment was established in 2000 with a generous gift from the Arcus Foundation in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The endowment seeks to support a wide range of critical activities that explore the relationship between gender, sexuality, and the built environment.

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October 22, 2008

José Oubrerie
Architect, France
Project Architect, Le Corbusier's Firminy Church, 1961-2006
Professor of Architecture, The Ohio State University

Lecture Title
Architecture Before Geometry: The Primacy of Imagination

José Oubrerie is a French architect and author and professor at The Ohio State University Austin E. Knowlton School of Architecture. In the early 1960s, he collaborated with Le Corbusier on the design of the Church of Saint Pierre at Firminy. Forty years later, Oubrerie completed the project and the building opened in 2006.

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October 27, 2008 (Monday)

Guy Nordenson
Guy Nordenson and Associates Structural Engineers LLP
Professor of Structural Engineering and Architecture, Princeton University

Lecture Title
Engineering in the Time of Climate Change

Bio
Guy Nordenson and Associates is a structural engineering practice concentrating on collaborative design with architects. Recent projects include MIT Simmons Hall residence and Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City with Steven Holl Architects; The Museum of Modern Art with Taniguchi and Associates; the Glass Pavilion at the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio and New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York with SANAA; and the Bridges community center in Memphis with BuildingStudio. Guy Nordenson and Associates designed and engineered the 2,000 foot tall World Trade Center Tower 1 that was adapted in December 2003 to become the Freedom Tower.

The practice was established in 1997 by Guy Nordenson, who began his career as a structural engineer drafting for R. Buckminster Fuller and Isamu Noguchi in Long Island City, New York. He worked in San Francisco and New York, and in 1987 established the New York office of Ove Arup & Partners, where he was a director for ten years before forming his own office in 1997. Nordenson has collaborated on structures ranging from power stations in China to a glass cantilever stair in New York, the first of its kind.

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November 5, 2008

Henry Smith-Miller
Smith-Miller+Hawkinson Architects, New York

Lecture Title
Moving Space

This event is the 25th Annual UC/AIA East Bay Lecture, co-sponsored by UC Berkeley's Department of Architecture and the American Institute of Architects, East Bay Chapter.

Bio
Henry Smith-Miller began his private practice in 1977 following a seven-year association with Richard Meier and Associates where he was a project architect for several nationally recognized architectural projects: The Atheneum at New Harmony Indiana, the Albany Mall Art Museum, and the Bronx Developmental Center. He received an undergraduate degree from Princeton University, a Masters in Architecture from the Graduate School of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, and a Fulbright Grant to study architecture in Rome, Italy. Henry Smith-Miller has held visiting adjunct professor positions at Columbia University, the City University of New York, the University of Virginia, the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University, the Thomas Jefferson Professor in Architecture at the University of Virginia, and the Saarinen Chair at Yale University. He has recently taught a graduate studio with Kenneth Frampton at Columbia University. He has also served on the Board of Creative Time and is a member of the Associate Council of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

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November 12, 2008

Amale Andraos+Dan Wood
Principals, Work Architecture Company, New York

Lecture Title
Sur Les Paves La Ferme

WORKac shapes ideas - inspired by difference and applying research, programmatic expansion and a surrealist's eye to translate concepts into new forms and experiences. WORKac is an urban practice, for now is the time to re-address the city at all scales, building transdisciplinary networks of philosophers, scientists, artists, farmers to better confront structures of power, create alternative universes and produce work that resonates with the contemporary condition. Since 2003, Amale Andraos and Dan Wood have taught together at Princeton University's School of Architecture, where both studio and seminar are focused on the interaction between ecology and urbanism. Prior to forming WORKac, Dan Wood, formerly of Rhode Island, established an international reputation as Rem Koolhaas' partner in the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA). Amale Andraos was born in Beirut, Lebanon, and has lived in Saudi Arabia, France, and Canada. She studied with Rem Koolhaas and also worked for OMA after receiving her master's degree from Harvard's Graduate School of Design, where she later taught for several years.

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December 3, 2008 **CANCELED**

Alejandro Zaera-Polo
Foreign Office Architects, London

Lecture Title
ARK:FOA

Bio
Alejandro Zaera-Polo is a founding partner of Foreign Office Architects together with Farshid Moussavi, and occupies currently the Berlage Chair in the Technical University of Delft, The Netherlands. Prior to this current role at the TU in Delft, he has been for four years the Dean of the Berlage Institute in Rotterdam, until 2005. Previously he has been also Unit Master at the Architectural Association School of Architecture, and a Visiting Professor at the University of California in Los Angeles, Columbia University in New York, Princeton University, the School of Architecture in Madrid, and the Yokohama School of Architecture, where he currently has an advisory role. He has also been an advisor to several committees, such as the Quality Commission for Architecture in Barcelona City and the Advisory Committee for Urban Development of the City of Madrid and is a member of the Urban Age Think Tank of the London School of Economics. He has published extensively as a critic in professional magazines worldwide, El Croquis, Quaderns, A+U, Arch+ and Harvard Design Magazine amongst them, and contributed to numerous publications, such as The Endless City curated by Ricky Burdett and Dejan Sudjic.

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