I am in Los Angeles for the weekend for the screening of Visual Acoustics, the Modernism of Julius Shulman. I make an appearance in the film, discussing Julius’s work within the broader context of modernism. If you’ve got tickets already (the screening is sold out), I hope to see you there!
Climbed out of the sky to a warm evening in Houston. I am speaking at the University of Houston on Thursday at 3pm in the Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture. If you’re in town, I’d love to have you come for a listen.
Two blogs of note mentioned me recently. First, Régine at we-make-money-not-art had a two-part review of the panel that I moderated at the DLD conference.
I wish I had had more time to talk, but that’s the way conferences can be. For those of you who may be wondering what I said, here’s how I contextualized the panel:
Cities are communications systems. Media and urban environments impact each other and develop hand-in hand historically. When we began to live in cities, we deveolped writing to keep tabs of what went on in those cities. In the nineteenth century, the rapidly growing metropolis gave rise to the telephone and the telegraph, which allowed management at a distance, facilitating the business district, with its distinctive form of the skyscraper, the factory district, and the residential district. Could suburbs such as Levittown be conceivable without the substitute for urban culture provided by television? So if during the last two decades we are faced with an intense transition in media, what does that imply for architecture, for urbanism?
Speaking of urbanism, Bradley M. Swarts at East Coast Architecture Review kindly included varnelis.net on his list of top ten blogs on urbanism. It’s a great list and an honor to be included on it.
On another front, if you haven’t heard the news, Last.fm is now offering full-length albums on its site. This morning I’ve been listening to this one by Popul Vuh, Krautrock band founded by Florian Fricke (father of Johannes Fricke of DLD). It’s the soundtrack to Aguirre: The Wrath of God, one of my favorite movies. In my book, it’s the best soundtrack ever written.
I have a preliminary roster of appearances for the spring together. Many thanks to everyone who invited me!
Usually there will be a handful of last minute engagements as well that I’ll let you know about via the blog.
Digital Life Design 21 January
[my panel, Future city, includes Patrik Schumacher, Charles Renfro, Elizabeth Diller, Bjarke Ingels, Richard Wurman]
Clemson University 1 February
Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design 6 March
book launch for the Infrastructural City. Networked Ecologies in Los Angeles
University of Limerick sometime in March
University of Houston 10 April
The below image is courtesy of Mimi Zeiger, I’m at the end with head cocked, listening to Reinhold Martin.
I really have to stop trying to explain AUDC’s work in 15 or 20 minutes. It just isn’t possible. Other projects may work better as sound bytes, but you do what you can. So, you talk very, very fast.
We are planning a full-fledged launch party for Blue Monday in New York around 15 November. To get on the list, send an email to [email protected].
Speaking of urban models, Mimi also sent this link… To a very strange xBox commercial.
Posted Nov 28, 2005
Anything goes in this all out water balloon fight for the new Xbox 360.
On Monday at 6.30, I will be speaking at a Columbia event that looks at the role of urban models in three recent ACTAR publications.
The City Unplugged
Do urban models still exist? Three Columbia authors present three books on (urban) conditions, tales and trajectories that challenge what it means to talk about the "city" today.
Kadambari Baxi, Barnard + Reinhold Martin, GSAPP
Authors of: Multi-National City (ACTAR, 2007)
Daniela Fabricius (M.Arch 03), PennDesign/ Pratt
Author of: 100% Favela (ACTAR, 2007)
Kazys Varnelis, GSAPP
Author of: Blue Monday (ACTAR, 2007)
Moderated by: Michael Kubo, ACTAR
Along with Kadambari Baxi, Reinhold Martin, and Daniela Fabricius, I will be speaking at The City Unplugged, a book launch event at the Columbia GSAPP on October 15. (for Blue Monday, Multinational City, and Informal, all ACTAR publications). Michael Kubo, of ACTAR, will moderate. Together, we will be addressing the question "Do Urban Models Still Exist?" It’ll be a great privilege to share the stage with these authors, who I greatly admire.
I will be speaking next week and the week after at Harvard's Graduate School of Design.
My first talk, "Tourism of the Void," an analysis of Quartzsite, Arizona, is part of the Desert Tourism conference. I will be speaking in the Imagining the Desert Panel beginning at 2.15pm on April 4. According to the organizers,
This conference on desert tourism seeks to analyze the relationship between tourism and the sustainable development of the populations, architectures and landscapes of arid regions. Its main purpose is to provide a meeting platform for students, academics, researchers, and organizations, which have studied or implemented tourist projects that integrate the development of their surroundings and to discuss issues raise by desert tourism.
My second talk, "History of the Eye," on the formalism of the Cornell-Cooper schools in architectural education is part of Studioscope: Design and Pedagogy. I will be speaking in Session II, Histories of the Studio Form, 9-11am on April 13.
In this case,
This symposium and subsequent publication will bring together preeminent design teachers and scholars to examine the historical emergence, contemporary complexion, and future prospects of the design studio. Focusing on those technical, representational, and procedural aspects of the design studio that make it a distinct pedagogical model, the symposium will illuminate and critically rehearse the approaches and schools that are most fundamental to the studio today. Both the center and borders of the studio genre will be explored, including, respectively, what the structure and content of core studios should encompass and innovative models of studio instruction from analogous fields.
So bear with me if I don't post as often as I should in the next few weeks.