AAP News 04 by Cornell AAP

AAP CORNELL ARCHITE—— CTURE—ART —PLANNING NEWS04 SPRING2008 Turrell

A C A C — N S A

ALTERNATIVE CANTILEVER PLAN FOR PAUL MILSTEIN HALL ANNOUNCED Paul Milstein Hall continues to move toward approval for a 2008 groundbreaking, with a modified design. The college also has begun changing and updating its facilities in Sibley and Rand halls, which will be connected to the new building. In September, the City of Ithaca Planning Board voted its intention to be the lead agency for environmental review for the project, which has been modified to a cantilevered building design, eliminating ———As this the need for supporting columns on Unisemester draws to a close, I can versity Avenue. look back on this entire academic The planning board is reviewing the year with the assurance that AAP is updated design, which addresses prior maintaining the momentum it has concerns by city officials about the colbuilt over the last few years. The columns imposing limits on any future road widening. The cantilever design was lege continues to develop its academic programs, events and lecture among the original proposals for Milstein by project architect Rem Koolhaas and series, and building projects. We’re Hall his firm, the Office for Metropolitan Archiseeing a marked increase in the tecture (OMA)-New York. number of admissions applications In addition to the planning board, the as we continue to attract extraordi- project will be reviewed by the Ithaca Landmarks Preservation Commission since nary students to our programs. Sibley and the Foundry are historic Our beautiful new facility on Esty both buildings. Street in Ithaca, which you may have Paul Milstein Hall will be a state-of-theonly first read about in November, art facility—with an auditorium/lecture hall, exhibition space, classrooms, and stuhas increased its number of studios—that will enable the college to retain dents from 35 in its first semester key accreditations. It will also provide new of operation to 50 this spring, with opportunities for collaboration pedagogy yet more for the upcoming fall seas well as social spaces for AAP students. AAP

DEAN’S MESSAGE

mester. The college continues to invest in the space by providing the latest technology for student use, including sophisticated foam and laser cutters, new spray booth and plotters, an upgraded computer network, and wi-fi access points throughout the building. London-based Sudanese artist Ibrahim El Salahi, artist in residence for the fall semester, sponsored by the Africana Studies and Research Center and the Department of History of Art and Visual Studies, set up a studio in the Esty Street facility adjacent to our architecture students where he produced a large painting project. The result was stunning, and we were so privileged to have the opportunity to interact with this talented artist and gracious guest. A highlight of this semester has been the third annual Case Studies in Urban Development conference. This year’s conference, “Creating the Next San Francisco: From Conflict to Collaboration,” focused on the revitalization of the city’s South of Market Street district. Among the featured speakers was alumnus Matt Witte who continues to provide generous funding for this superb interdisciplinary series, which brings together faculty and students from the Department of City and Regional Planning, the Cornell Real Estate Program, and the Department of Architecture. I would like to thank Mohsen Mostafavi for his efforts during his time as AAP dean. His vision, initiative, and dedication will have a positive impact on this campus for years to come. The search for a new dean is well underway with participation from faculty, staff, and students and with the expert leadership of Vice Provost John Siliciano. While search committee business is confidential, early word from committee members has been positive and encouraging. We look forward to welcoming a new dean in the months to come. I wish you a wonderful spring and summer.

W F R S F A

AAP NEWS

is published twice yearly by the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning at Cornell University, through the Office of the Dean. College of Architecture, Art, and Planning Cornell University 129 East Sibley Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853 T 607 255.5317 aap_newsletter@cornell.edu Editor Aaron Goldweber Design Paul Soulellis (B.Arch. ’90), Soulellis Studio Copyeditor Laura Glenn © May 2008 Cornell University.

CLARIFICATION In AAP News 03, the unidentified person in the photo with O. M. Ungers (pages 16–17) was Richard Mauser (B.Arch. ’77).

Willard Stanley Taft Interim Dean COVER Roden Crater. © James Turrell, photo by Florian Holzherr.

AAP CORNELL ARCHITE—— CTURE—ART —PLANNING NEWS04 SPRING2008 AAPnews 2 WORK—6 FOLIO—11 REVIEW—19 STUDENTnews—20 FACULTY++STAFFnews—24 ALUMNInews—26

2—AAPNEWS————————— SUSTAINING ART——TURRELL —KAZAKHSTAN—HOLLIDAY—— SUSTAINING ART The TWENTY-NINE Post-Baccalaureate Thesis Award helps students graduate from school to the world at large KAZAKHSTANI The end of art school often draws a blank OFFICIALS ATTEND canvas. Most art students will set aside their tools for more mainstream ways of making a living, WEEKLONG WORK- and years may pass before they enter the studio again. SHOP AT CORNELL For Elisabeth Meyer, associate professor in The topic for a weeklong international workshop held at the Statler Hotel’s Marriott Executive Education Center at Cornell in early December was fairly straightforward: administrative reform. However, the audience was anything but ordinary, with its 29 high-ranking government officials from the Republic of Kazakhstan who attended lectures delivered via simultaneous translation in Russian. The Kazakh delegates included mayors of major cities, and governors and representatives from parliament, the president’s office, the Ministry of Finance, the Department of State, and the Ministry of Justice. The workshop was jointly designed and planned by the Cornell Institute for Public Affairs (CIPA) and the Cornell Department of City and Regional Planning (CRP). Administrative reform is a priority for Kazakhstan, the largest of the former Soviet republics— four times the size of Texas—and sandwiched between Russia and China. Kazakhstan’s president is advocating for a decentralized government and increased transparency. The workshop was designed to provide direct practical applications for general reforms. CIPA and CRP professors—including Dick Booth, Pete Loucks, Robert Schwarting, Norman Uphoff, and Jerome Ziegler—presented workshop sessions augmented by presentations from outside experts. “What we did here was special,” said Kieran Donaghy, professor of CRP, who assisted CIPA director David Lewis in coordinating the conference. “We had experts on finance, governance, natural resources, the distribution of power, and government organization. We also had an expert in e-government... who talked about taking people from a paper-based to a digital-based system, while increasing efficiency and transparency.” Two Russian-language interpreters served as the official translators throughout the visit to Cornell. Although Kazakh is the official language of Kazakhstan, Russian receives equal usage in the government and media. “This workshop was very useful, very productive for us,” said Anatoly Sergeyevich Pepenin, head of human resources in Kazakhstan’s Office of the Prime Minister. “The topic was extremely relevant. The things we have seen and learned here we will take back with us and try to use in our day-to-day jobs.” Second-year CIPA fellow Dalida Davlyatshina, here at Cornell on a presidential scholarship from Kazakhstan, assisted with the workshop from its inception. “One of the things that the delegates were very impressed with,” she said, “was the presentation done by students from David Lewis’s CRP 675 course, Project Planning in Developing Countries. They were amazed that these students spent their entire semester studying Kazakhstan.” Student representatives from CRP 675 presented their 200-page document, “Planning Phase Proposal for Kazakhstan’s Transport Strategy.” The proposal analyzes two major projects in Kazakhstan: the Eurasia Canal, which would connect the Caspian and Black Seas, and the Northwest Transport Corridor, a major highway linking China with Russia. “We enjoyed the opportunity to link the coursework that our students were doing here in the classroom at Cornell with real-world needs,” Lewis said. Five Russian-speaking graduate students from the Ukraine, Russia, Moldova, Kazakhstan, and Bulgaria served as group facilitators during workshop breakout sessions. “We tried to see the real America—to get submersed in the local environment,” said Pepenin. “We saw a choir singing on the Commons—the young people had such energy and were willing to convey their mood to the audience. The lifestyle here [in Ithaca] is very different from big cities, based on what we’ve seen on the streets. We didn’t see harried people.” The conference ended on December 7, with a recognition luncheon filled with laughter, toasts, and much picture-taking. Kazakhstan delegates received a certificate of completion from Lewis, and Lewis received a traditional Kazakhstani costume, replete with hat.AAP

the Department of Art, the critical period after art school need not be so uncertain. Last spring, she initiated the Post-Baccalaureate Thesis Award, making it possible for recent graduates to exhibit at the AAP Center in New York City. Through this award, students with the most challenging and accomplished thesis exhibits are rewarded with an opportunity to display new work in the following season. “The idea behind the award is to help students transition from the academic environment into the art world of New York,” she said. “We aim to broaden their exposure so they can get greater response for their work and promote a continuation of their practice.” For the inauguration of the award, the art faculty culled through works submitted by graduating seniors to determine the most deserving recipient. In the future, decisions will be based solely on the final thesis show. Only one student is to be awarded, but last spring two artists—Kathleen Hawkes (M.F.A. ’07) and Nora Chase (M.F.A. ’07)—stood out equally. Their exhibit featured new work and ran from December 17 to 21. Titled “Shared Space,” the show signaled the artists’ joint endeavor and emphasized the purpose of the AAP Center as a venue that promotes all the best of the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning. For Kathleen Hawkes, this confluence of the various disciplines is what drew her to Cornell in the first place. “I enjoy letting the ideas behind the work steer the choice of media or process,” she said. “I graduated with a dual concentration in photography and printmaking, but I was encouraged to never limit my work or define it by discipline.” In the exhibit, Hawkes used photographs and drawings to elaborate on a single idea. Predominant in the collection was a series of C-prints titled “Burned Items,” which display heat-damaged household items, evoking both a sense of loss from a fire and a feeling of liberation from the weight of accrued possessions. Her works share the same exact squared dimensions and, when considered as parts of a whole, they connect to the very grid of living—dramatizing the fragility of our belongings and our sense of belonging itself. For Nora Chase, the award allowed her to continue her exploration of surfaces. A painting and printmaking major, Chase exhibited shaped and layered paper constructions for her “Wunderkammer” series. Based on human tissue specimens, Chase’s works straddle the line between visual abstraction and representation. The pieces attract viewers with their elaborate, elegant shapes, while also repelling them by the fact that they are magnified models of pores, cells, scabs, bone plates, and blood vessels. The works manifest the pressures that act on the skin from inside and outside, making it a zone of conflict between externally imposed ideas of beauty and the inner workings of an organism that ages. “My work is meant to draw attention to the invisible aspects of the body while concealing the literal subject of skin through abstraction,” Chase said. With the superb quality and complexity of the pilot exhibit in New York, the Post-Baccalaureate Thesis Award only promises to bring more important work to a larger metropolitan audience. As Meyer emphasized: “Students have just spent four years at Cornell and it becomes its own world. To reach out and suddenly be a part of the real world is a great opportunity. We can do more to make art exhibits a more common occurrence in New York and make them an integral part of our program.”AAP

words better, if not always correctly,” recalled Sherman Clarke, AAP alumnus. Clarke, who joined the AAP library staff in the 1980s and is now with New York University Libraries, said: “Judith’s fine example as librarian played a part in my evolution from art history grad student to library school student.” Holliday also was outspoken, and sometimes influential, in her views. At a professional society meeting of art and architecture librarians in the late 1970s, Clarke remembered: “Judith stood up and asked a representative from [art book publisher Harry N.] Abrams why the firm didn’t put dates in their books.” His response, to make the books appear new on bookstore shelves, didn’t past muster with her. “As far as I know, Abrams has put the date in all their books since then,” reported Clarke. A “consummate” architecture bibliographer, Holliday compiled the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (JSAH) booklist for many years, Clarke noted. AAP Professor Michael Tomlan, director of the college’s graduate program in historic preservation, added: “Judith’s long service to the JSAH is to be remembered, to say nothing of her warm companionship, keen eye, and ready wit.” Jeffrey Weidman, senior librarian at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art’s reference library, who worked under Holliday at Cornell from 1969–71 and also was inspired to pursue a career as an art librarian under her influence, said: “She was a wonderful boss. I fondly remember her sense of humor—she named her Volkswagen after a character in one of Wagner’s operas—and her joie de vivre as well as her sense of social responsibility and caring for others.” And Victoria Romanoff (M.F.A. ’64), an artist, restoration and design consultant in Ithaca, and longtime friend of Holliday’s, who restored more than one of her residences, said: “We built her a beautiful library and music room with endless bookcases for her collection of musical theater and opera records and cassettes. And she and I argued for more than 30 years over how many roles [Elisabeth] Schwarzkopf played in ‘Der Rosenkavalier.’” After her retirement, Holliday volunteered as a hostess at Trattoria Tre Stelle, an Italian restaurant in downtown Ithaca that Romanoff and her partner, Sarah Adams, owned. In addition, Holliday was a crossword puzzle buff who could whip through the Sunday New York Times puzzle in record time as well as an animal lover who adopted the cat of former dean and Professor J. O. Mahoney after his death, Romanoff reported. It was Romanoff’s habit of chronically returning books late to the library, “which Judith took to be a sign of interest in the books,” that first introduced her to Holliday. “She will be missed by many,” Romanoff said. “We all need a librarian in our lives, to bring us down to earth.”AAP

IN MEMORIAM— JUDITH HOLLIDAY Former Fine Arts Librarian Judith E. Holliday, who was associated with Cornell University’s College of Architecture, Art, and Planning and the Fine Arts Library for nearly 40 years, died February 8, following a long battle with cancer. She was 69. Holliday joined the Cornell library staff in the late 1960s, after completing a bachelor’s degree from the College of Wooster in Ohio and a master’s degree in library science from Columbia University. An expert on books about Italian art and architecture, she was a lover of most things Italian—opera, food, and wine included—and spoke the language fluently. She retired from her librarianship in 1996. “Judith was a dear friend and valued colleague of faculty and staff in our college for many years, and a generous and dedicated mentor to generations of students,” said Stan Taft, interim AAP dean, in a message to faculty, staff, students, and friends of the college. “She and I had a zillion conversations about architecture, and she taught me how to say Italian 01

01 Judith Holliday, fall 1987, celebrating early results of Ithaca mayoral primary elections. Credit: Drew Perine/ Ithaca Journal. 02 Kathleen Hawkes. Suburban Disaster Site Map. (2007). 43" x 66" Graphite on paper. 03 Nora Chase. Tattoo Scab. (2007). 11-1/2" x 11-1/2". Hand-cut laminated gampi paper and black steel entomology pins on board. 04 James Turrell. Credit: Jason Koski/University Photography. 05 James Turrell meets with undergraduate and graduate students. Credit: Jason Koski/University Photography.

“When you stare at light, you’re not thinking in words. It’s something else. The feeling, the power, comes from an overall claimed artist James Turrell came to Cornell’s Ithaca campus as the sense,” he said. “And when you first guest of the newly established Cooper Visiting Artist Program. find the right balance between During his visit, Turrell met with undergraduate and graduate students the amount and quality of light and gave a public lecture where he discussed his career working with and the volume of space, the light unusual media: light and space. takes on a physicality almost like “This is a very special evening and a true Cornell event demona fog or a ‘glassing up.’” strating how this is a place where things happen through collaboraOver the years, Turrell has tion and the support and friendship given to the institution,” said honed this so well, that what is Mohsen Mostafavi, former Gale and Ira Drukier Dean of Architeca solid object and what is simply ture, Art, and Planning. “James Turrell focuses on the ephemeral light that looks like a solid object dimension of the relationship between architecture and art. He is a has become less obvious. In fact, master in the role of the magical relationship of light and space and a few years ago he was sued by a its influence on our perceptions.” museum patron who fell into one The Cooper Visiting Artist Program is sponsored by John Cooper of his exhibits. (B.F.A. ’97). Cooper is committed to bringing in the very best of con“Her testimony was that I had temporary artists each semester and raising the standards of sponcreated a blue wall, but when sored visitors to campus, said Mostafavi. she leaned against the blue wall, During his lecture and slideshow in a full Alice Statler Auditorium, it wasn’t there. It was made of Turrell described his artistic trajectory—from becoming “preoccupied light,” he said with a laugh. with light” at the age of two to spending the last 30 years transformTurrell explained that through ing an extinct volcano into a work of art. his creations he’s looking to capTurrell said that as a young art student he started to work with ture the feeling of the world that light as a material and began to realize how subtly and dramatically a is “just beyond” and one that physical space could be changed by manipulating the light. you need to “look into” and not just “at.” A physical space can take on many dimensions, he said. Overall, his vision is to add an extension to reality that will help people see that “this is not a rational world, but a rationalizing world.” His move to creating “skyspaces”—freestanding enclosed pieces that focus a visitor’s attention on light from the sky, thereby enhancing the human experience within nature—led to a move out of galleries and into architecture and construction. “I wanted to harness the light directly from the sky, and museums and galleries aren’t usually too happy with you when you cut

RENOWNED ARTIST JAMES TURRELL COMES TO CAMPUS FOR LECTURE, MEETING WITH STUDENTS Internationally ac-

15-foot holes into their ceilings,” he joked. So, he designed complete observatories in various forms—a Japanese bathhouse, Quaker meeting halls, a stone oval in the English countryside. And, since 1972, he’s been working on the ultimate skyspace at the Roden Crater in the Painted Desert in Arizona. The “Roden Crater” project has been described as one of the most important cultural undertakings of our generation, if not of several generations. Slated for completion in 2011, the massive project includes thousands of feet of tunnels that burrow under the cinder cone. Visitors will take the tunnels to the heart of the cone, where an observatory modeled from the eyes carved into Greek statues will direct their attention skyward. Also during his visit to campus, Turrell spent two hours with 16 undergraduate, graduate, and alumni art students in a “conversation with James Turrell.” “It was a successful—and memorable—dialogue,” said Patricia Phillips, chair of the Department of Art. “James spoke informally and thoughtfully about being an artist, his practice, the ideas and issues that drive his work, the consequences of decisions made at different points in this career. The students were deeply appreciative of this opportunity and had great respect for his openness, honesty, and striking intelligence.” Turrell’s visit was also made possible with help from Richard Baker (Hotel ’88).AAP

CORNELL architecture/art/planning NEWS 04—spring2008

4—AAPNEWS— —NEW FACES ——ROME 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08

Stephan Schmidt. Credit: University Photography. Arturo Sanchez. Credit: William Staffeld. Richard Kiely. Credit: University Photography. Ann Forsyth. Photo provided. Jeffrey Chusid. Credit: William Staffeld. Kieran Donaghy. Credit: University Photography. Jeremy Foster. Photo provided. Clement Lai. Credit: William Staffeld.

NEW FACES IN CRP—A note from Bill Goldsmith, professor and chair

The Department of City and Regional Planning has added eight new faculty members in the last two to three years. Although a set of prominent professors have retired over the last decade, replacements had already been recruited for most of the opening positions. This latest spate of additions brings new vigor to the department, allows for courses in new areas, and has significantly expanded the largest research group in the three-department college. Two new full professors were recruited—Kieran Donaghy from the University of Illinois and Ann Forsyth from the University of Minnesota. Donaghy, a regional scientist, was director of the Illinois European Union Center. Much of his recent research has concerned the design of large-scale economic models for estimating regional impacts of climate change. He’s recently coedited two books: Regional Climate Change and Variability and Globalization and Regional Economic Modeling. Forsyth, a planner and urban designer, was director of the Metropolitan Design Center at the University of Minnesota. Two recent books of hers are Reforming Suburbia: The Planned Communities of Irvine, Columbia, and the Woodlands and a popular practical volume, coauthored with Laura Musacchio, Designing Small Parks: A Manual Addressing Social and Ecological Concerns.

Three new faculty members strengthen the department’s already notable focus on problems of poverty and racism in US cities: Clement Lai, Arturo Sanchez, and Richard Kiely. Clement Lai, with a recent Ph.D. in ethnic studies from the University of California at Berkeley, holds a joint appointment with Cornell’s Asian American Studies Program. Lai’s research focuses on the theoretical and political connections of race and space with particular emphasis on development and property. He teaches courses on spatial and racial theory, property and displacement, and Asian-American studies. Arturo Sanchez, with a recent Ph.D. from Columbia University in city and regional planning, holds a joint appointment with Latino Studies. He has taught at New York University, the Pratt Institute School of Architecture, and Columbia University. His research is focused on ethnic entrepreneurship and the challenges of migration for citizenship and national policy. Visiting assistant professor Richard Kiely brings strength in service-learning, directing the Urban Scholars Program (CUSP) and the new Urban Mentors Initiative (CUMI) in New York City. Kiely earned his Ph.D. in education at Cornell, and has returned after some years on the faculty at the University of Georgia. For innovative teaching and research in service-learning, Kiely received the John Glenn Scholar in Service-Learning award. In the crucial areas of land use and environment, urban design, and historic preservation we have added much-needed teaching strength, with the addition of three faculty members: Stephan Schmidt, Jeffrey Chusid, and Jeremy Foster.

Stephan Schmidt, with a Ph.D. from Rutgers University, offers courses in land-use planning, environmental studies, and geographic information systems. Associate professor Jeffrey Chusid specializes in design, preservation, and related issues. An architect who previously taught at the University of Southern California, Harvard, and the University of Texas at Austin, Chusid brings new research agendas and experiences to the department’s program in Historic Preservation Planning, even as he coteaches a studio in the Department of Architecture. Visiting critic and assistant professor Jeremy Foster holds degrees in architecture and landscape architecture from the University of Cape Town and the University of Pennsylvania, and practiced in both fields before obtaining a Ph.D. in cultural geography from the University of London. Appointed jointly with architecture, he has taught at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Virginia, and Virginia Tech. His teaching focuses on urban design, landscapes of the city, the history of urbanism, and the role of sociospatial practices and cultural representations in shaping urban space. His book, Washed with Sun: Landscape and the Making of White South Africa, is forthcoming from the University of Pittsburgh Press.AAP

ROME In the fall, the Modern Rome Architecture and Art studio, along with Ithaca studio faculty and local Rome faculty, took a tour of modern Rome, including the EUR (Esposizione Universale di Roma) known for its urban design and architecture of the fascist period.

09 Palazzo dei Congressi (architect: Adalberto Libera) also in the EUR district. Photo by architecture student James Ferullo. 10 Garden of Villa Lante (Vignola, 1568) in Bagnaia taken on a day field trip in November to 16th century villas in the northern Lazio region on the outskirts of Rome. The trip was led by Prof. Jeffrey Blanchard and studio architecture and art faculty Vince Mulcahy and Roberto Bertoia. Photo by architecture student Asdren Matoshi. 11 The “Colloseo Quadrato” (square coliseum) officially known as Palazzo della Cività del Lavoro (architects: Guerini, La Padula, Romano). Photo by architecture student James Ferullo.

NICOLE MILITELLO (B.F.A. ’09)———— Suture. (2007). Cyanotype. Produced in Wilka Roig’s Photo Processes class.

CORNELL architecture/art/planning NEWS 04—spring2008

6—WORK— Component Arcologies—Historic Preservation—AAP/OMANYC 04

In the fall, Jason Long, Troy Shaum, and Shohei Shigematsu of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA)-New York taught the M.Arch. I studio, Core Design 5: Integrative Design, at the AAP New York City Center. Here, Shaum and Shigematsu discuss a United Nations building project with architecture students Victor Yu-Juei Tzen, Katharine Meagher, Jung Guee Um, along with guest critics.

HISTORIC PRESERVATION PLANNING PROGRAM GOES TO DC In mid-February, 19 students and

faculty in the Historic Preservation Planning Program participated in a five-day-long field trip to Washington DC, organized by HPP Professor Jeffrey Chusid, with the help of graduate student Erin O’Grady. Despite bringing a blast of winter weather along with them, the Cornell group received a warm welcome in meetings with representatives from numerous federal and district agencies, nonprofit organizations, and preservation firms practicing in the city. The group also walked for miles around the district visiting historic sites and important construction projects. 02

Upon arrival in DC on Saturday the Historic Preservation Planning Alumni and the program hosted an alumni reception at the Jurys Washington Hotel on Dupont Circle, where an assortment of urban and regional studies, historic preservation planning, and master of regional planning alums joined them. Sunday began with a lecture on DC history. Afterward, the consort spent several hours at the offices of Shalom Baranes, a large architecture firm with an extensive preservation portfolio. According to HPP student Natalie Walter, “The office visit came at the perfect time… because it introduced major preservation projects in downtown DC, which we later saw on our walking tour.” The Cornell group walked around Georgetown and then down to the Mall (as winds gusted to 50 miles per hour), and ended the day with the traditional birthday dinner for HPP program director, Michael Tomlan, at a nontraditional venue: an Ethiopian restaurant on U Street. The group spent Monday morning with Martine Combal (B.S. ’01 URS), at the offices of the Deputy Mayor for Planning, learning about the city’s Home Again and Inclusionary Zoning programs. Then they visited the amazing Anderson House, home to the Society of the Cincinnati (formed from American and French veterans of the Revolutionary War), sped down to Chinatown for lunch, and met with city preservation planner Steve Callcott (M.A. ’89 HPP) for a walking tour of new infill and preservation projects along the F Street Corridor. Afterward, they were off to the Congressional Cemetery where Alec Bennett (M.A. ’05 HPP) and directors of the volunteer organization involved with the cemetery’s restoration led a tour of this little-known but fascinating site, filled with cenotaphs of congresspersons and other political figures. For most of Tuesday, they were the guests of Connie Ramirez (Ph.D. ’75 CRP), director of the Federal Preservation Institute for the National Park Service (NPS), as well as a member of AAP’s advisory council. Representatives of NPS, U.S.D.A., the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, and other organizations spoke about myriad programs, both in special sessions arranged for the Cornell students, and during the monthly

meeting of the Federal Preservation Institute (which provides historic preservation training and information to all federal agencies and preservation officers). The Cornell group had lunch with representatives of US/ICOMOS, the National Council of State Historic Preservation Officers, and Preservation Action. Later that afternoon, they toured the Pension Building (home of the National Building Museum), and then walked over to the DC Court of Appeals, which is currently undergoing a $100 million restoration. There, architects Jim Shepherd and Chris Wiley of Beyer Blinder and Belle led an extensive twohour tour of the project. HPP student Ashima Krishna found the tour of the Court of Appeals construction site especially noteworthy: “While we have seen various preservation and restoration projects on paper and on film, watching a project like that firsthand, and of that scale, was a wonderful experience, especially given the unique engineering feat they achieved in propping the temple portico columns while adding the basement spaces.” Wednesday began with a class on Section 106 given by Don Klima, the director of Federal Agency Programs for the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, at their offices in the Old Post Office Building. (Section 106 requires those receiving federal funds or permissions to evaluate and then take into account the affect their projects will have on historic resources.) Many of the students found this to be a high point of the trip because the important material, which all preservation students have to know, was delivered in an accessible and interesting way. The “official” DC adventures ended with a fun and informative lunch with Arnold Berke, the editor of Preservation Magazine for the National Trust for Historic Preservation. “What was especially great about the trip,” said HPP Student Maya Haptas, “was the variety of experiences…. From building tours to economic development to an architectural firm—this trip really gave me an idea about what it would be like to live and work in Washington and to be involved in preservation at the federal level.”AAP

01 Core Design 5 studio taught by OMA at AAP NYC. Credit: William Staffeld. 02 HPP in DC. Photo provided. 03 Nick Maione (B.F.A. ’08). All “Untitled.” 11-1/2" x 15-3/4". Mixed media. 04 Photo by Mollie Miller (B.F.A. ’10). 05 Julio Torres (B.Arch. ’10). Portable homeless shelter. 06 Maiko Muranaka (M.Arch. II ’08). Model for a new city in Google Earth.

TOWARDS AN ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE The “Com-

ponent Arcologies” studio equips students with concepts and cutting-edge techniques for designing sustainable structures Under the long shadow

of modernism, architects give primary consideration to the internal logic of the built structure, its form and its function—a concept of architecture that treats the environment as a blank slate on which buildings are installed, as though thrown down directly from the mind of the architect. This concept of the tabula rasa is an idea that assistant professor Kevin Pratt and visiting critic Dana Cupkova are attempting to dispel. In the fall, they taught a studio called “Component Arcologies” where they espoused site-specific architectural design that is sensitive to environmental as well as performative concerns—an architecture that is built from various cell-like parts and, in a significant sense, grows from the ground up. Essential to the studio was the knowledge of sustainable passive techniques and the application of Generative Components and ECOTECT, two cutting-edge parametric design and analysis software packages the students used to create complex modular structures. “We create an analytical feedback loop between proposing a design and understanding how it will actually perform. We can then start predicting certain behav-

iors like how much energy the structure uses,” Cupkova explains. The software allows designs to be iterated and modified rapidly, facilitating a process-driven perspective that deviates from older models of architectural design. “In a sense we don’t think of traditional architectural modeling with wood and paper or architectural modeling in a computer where objects are created,” Pratt says. “Instead, we are creating logical constructs which can have more than one material and/or geometric instantiation.” Pratt draws an analogy between this type of design and naturally occurring structures: “In different plants you will see essentially the same elements—like the stomata and the chloroplast—but with different distributions and variations of essentially the same structure which is coded by DNA. Similarly our design components can be coded through the software and be shaped and distributed differently depending on the environment.” The harsh environmental conditions found in Dubai were the focus of the studio. Located where the Arabian desert meets the Persian Gulf, Dubai posed a formidable challenge in sustainability, made even more acute in the shadow of an ever escalating urban development scheme that is raising massive artificial islands and skyscrapers at the edges of the sea. “How do you look at the concept of sustainability on a different level in a place where you’re actually going against the natural environment in order to sustain life and culture?” Cupkova asks. “It’s a contradictory place for developing such an enormously intensive urban system.” The solution that Pratt, Cupkova, and their students posed was the design of an urban environment around the seawater inlet known as Dubai Creek. The design responds not only to ecological demands but also meets the social need for more public spaces in Dubai—seamlessly integrating a desalination plant with a public bath,

market, park, and cinema. Cupkova describes it as a “self-sustaining system that deals with the environmental and social relationships of the site, making it a part of the urban fabric.” Pratt explains the intertwining of the desalination plant and public space that does not rely on government-controlled water lines as “both architecture and infrastructure at the same time.” He adds, “This combination creates a certain degree of self-reliance within the project which is to say that it is plugged into larger networks but its connections to those larger networks might be looser, creating a different level of social and political control.” Water, as a vital and yet guarded commodity in the desert, underscores the political significance of the design. “Everything which has to do with survival has to do with water on a basic human and sustainable level,” Cupkova explains. “And yet it becomes a political project because anything that has to do with water is government owned.” The studio’s research culminated with a crucial midsemester trip to Dubai, where the class visited various material manufacturing centers such as concrete-batching plants that feed Dubai’s intense urbanization development. The visit allowed the students to confront first-hand the looming specter of an urbanism that is antithetical to their ideas of sustainable design. “We can say it’s crazy, but it’s happening. They’re building 140-story buildings there,” Pratt says. “The questions we should ask are ‘why?’ and ‘how do we propose an alternative model?’ If we don’t, then people are going to keep doing the same thing and it will continue to be a problem. Within academia we need to think out of the box towards the next generation of sustainability.”AAP

JUSTIN CHU (B.Arch. ’09)——

Rendering of a Dubai spa developed in the “Comonpent Arcologies” studio. Dubai, United Arab Emirates is located in one of the most extreme climates in the world, where solar radiation is the main source of energy. Chu’s team designed a series of components in the form of structural lightwells, photovoltaic panels, parabolic tube troughs, and light diffusers which were then placed on a roof surface according to the sun’s location in the sky. Through use of the parametric software, Generative Components, the environmental data analyzer, Ecotect, and other CAD software, Chu’s team was able to create a spa which used these components in conjunction with the sun’s energy to heat water and create different environments and spaces within the project.

CORNELL architecture/art/planning NEWS 04â&#x20AC;&#x201D;spring2008

ALIKA HERRESHOFF (M.F.A. ’08)——Rod, Knee, Danger Field (2008). 8˝ x 10˝. Collage on cardboard. Herreshoff says that he has been “working closely with these excellent Cornell professors: Carl Ostendarp, Stan Taft, and Michael Ashkin.”

11—folio

Portugal Now Portugal Now was part of a series of ongoing conferences and publication events organized by Cornell University’s College of Architecture, Art, and Planning. Portugal Now examined examples of emerging contemporary Portuguese architecture, relating developments in the country’s architectonic culture over the last two decades to local and global economic, political, and social realities. The event was curated by Carla Leitão and consisted of an exhibition in Ithaca and conferences that took place in the AAP programs in Ithaca and New York City. The present Folio looks back on the event by revisiting its key moments, and looks forward by presenting different contemporary authors’ views on the everpresent past of contemporary Portuguese architecture culture: its refractions, omissions, projections, and other agents that contribute to projects and built work as we know them.

CORNELL architecture/art/planning NEWS 04—spring 2008

Portugal Now

Matter

SIMPLICITY? Mass-Watching and the Tectonics of Topographic Enchantment Carla Leitao folio guest editor

When you cut a section through the present, the future bleeds through. William Burroughs Law 6: Context What lies in the periphery of simplicity is deﬁnitely not peripheral. John Maeda, Laws of Simplicity

Contemporary Portuguese practice has felt the impact in the last decade of migratory flows of students and young practitioners, the overcrowding of the profession, and a settled status as a peripheral but well-connected participant in the European territory. These factors have created unique conditions for rethinking the discipline’s potential to negotiate historic urban territory as well as to develop inventive strategies that significantly impact the redefinition of the concept of locality as a foundation for a reconception of “global.” During the latter part of the 20th century, Portuguese architecture culture searched within itself for aspects of vernacular architecture that could be embraced as a way of critically addressing and resisting the homogenization of the Modernist movement and models imposed by the dictatorial regime that lasted until 1974. The economic, educational, and technological gap that Portugal experienced until 1974 was intensified by subsequent national efforts to support significant migratory movements from ex-colonies to the continent and from impoverished rural areas to cities. In addition, the country became the “sunshine periphery” to a centralizing Europe. Size, location, and social and economic conditions defined Portugal’s peripheral position in Europe’s scale-based economies. Portugal’s current constraint of an increasingly overcrowded architecture profession (15,000 architects to 11 million total population) and a truly global market that displaces sites and clients, creates new challenges for this culture’s potential to redefine “operative locality.” In the last decade, the already common migratory flows across Europe brought the expected crossbreeding of cultures in several disciplines with many young architects studying abroad, often returning with a new agility to operate in their home locality. On the other hand, many established Portuguese firms have experienced significant growth in international commissions and have more systematically engaged internal transnational teams, while developing their own

← CARRILHO DA GRAÇA www.jlcg.pt

João Luís Carrilho da Graça graduated from ESBAL in 1977 and lectured at the FAUTL between 1977 and 1992. Since 2001 he has been a guest professor at UAL, Lisbon, and from 2005, at the University of Évora. Carrilho da Graça received the international Art Critics Association Award in 1992 for the ensemble of his work; the Relação com o Sítio Honorable Mention award in 1993 for the Campo Maior municipal swimming pool; the Secil Prize in 1994 for the Polytechnic School of Journalism, the Valmor Prize in 1998, and the FAD prize in 1999 for the knowledge of the Seas Pavilion, Luzboa 2004, the prize of the ﬁrst Lisbon’s International Art Biennial; as well as several nominations for the Mies van der Rohe European architecture award, and recently he was considered a candidate by the Ordem dos Arquitectos for the Auguste Perret prize. His work has been published in several books and architecture magazines. He has several published monographs and received the the order for merit of the Portuguese Republic in 1999. Photos: Lisbon's School of Music

← ARX ARQUITECTOS

Brothers José Mateus and Nuno Mateus, from Castelo Branco, graduated from Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universida de Técnica de Lisboa (FAUTL) and founded ARX Portugal in 1990. José Mateus has been the vice president of the Southern Section of the Architect’s Guild (OA) since 2005, and was the director of the First Lisbon Architecture Triennale 2007. He took part of the jury of the Architecture Prize of São Paulo Biennial in 2003. Nuno Mateus worked with Peter Eisenman in New York and Daniel Libeskind in Berlin, among others, and has taught at various architecture schools. “Our architecture doesn’t follow a lexicon or a stabilized language. In every new project we try to find the means to express a specific language that translates to the new context. More than searching common points between each new project and the previous one, we focus on finding differences. Not having to work within rigid precepts, we explore an experimental path where we can test new concepts starting from what interests and fascinates us. White, simple, and abstract produces a fascination that in a conscientious or unconscientious mode occasionally appears in our work.” Photos: House in Ericeira (left); Ílhavo Maritime Museum, Ílhavo (right)

← CAMILO REBELO www.camilorebelo.com

Camilo Rebelo was established in 2000, in Porto. In 2004 it received ﬁrst prize for the Competition for the Museum of Art and Archaeology of the Coa Valley, Portugal (in association with Tiago Pimentel and GOP). In 2007 (in association with Susana Martins and GOP) it received an honorable mention in the competition for the architectural design concept of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw (MOMAW), Poland. MOMAW foresees programmatic diversity for the Palace of Culture and Science’s surroundings, promoting this area to become the new cultural hub of the city of Warsaw. The new museum will be one of several buildings envisioned for the area, as a museum structure, as well as the development of an outdoor area intended for a public cultural park. The result will be an ever-renewing, quadruple personality, providing the visitor with a contemplative experience; in its extreme, the exterior will range from the green mass (artiﬁcial shrub) to the white mass (abstract snow sculpture). Photos: Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, Poland

A.S.* ATELIER de SANTOS www.projects.as

a.s* atelier de santos was founded by Pedro Machado Costa and Célia Gomes in 1997. The Central Library at Azores University, which was the ﬁrst completed work by a.s*, was selected for the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture Mies van der Rohe award and for the FAD Prizes, both in 2004. a.s* work has been shown in several lectures, publications, and international exhibitions, such as the IX Architecture Biennale di Venezia, the IV Ibero-American Architecture Biennale, Tracing Portugal at the Architectural Association, and the collective exhibition Ander Kant, at Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum (Roterdam). Photos: DIY Carpark System, Lisbon (left); University's Central Library, Ponta Delgada, Azores (right)

← CVDB ARQUITECTOS www.cvdbarquitectos.com

CVDB ARQUITECTOS was founded by Cristina Veríssimo and Diogo Burnay in 1999. The studio has developed its work in architecture from urban design projects to new buildings, from rehabilitation of old buildings to interior architecture or ephemeral structures. The studio is committed to developing a professional practice, exploring current design practices, and building design methods that position architecture as part of a larger physical and cultural landscape and that considers the individual’s experience and perception of urban spaces. The practice has received several national and international design awards, and has been invited to lecture in Portugal, Spain, France, Argentina, and the United States. Its work has been published and exhibited in several countries, such as Portugal, France, Netherlands, Romania, Spain, Mexico, and China. Photos: Music and Dance School, Coimbra (left); Cartaxo Cultural Center (right)

Leitao 1. Arjun Appadurai, “Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization”, University of Minnesota Press, November 1996; Fredric Jameson, “The Geopolitical Aesthetic: Cinema and Space in the World System”, Indiana University Press, August 1995. 2. Andrea Branzi, “Weak and Diffuse Modernity: The World of Projects at the beginning of the 21st Century”, Skira, November 2006.

particular methodology and interests. Moreover, communication technologies have created a new possibility for a “comfortable periphery,” as described by authors such as Nuno Grande and Jorge Figueira: a place from which “critical internationalism” can be propagated into a global market, undisturbed by its distance from a supposed center. Throughout the 20th century, and until little more than a decade ago, Portuguese architecture culture catalyzed a recursive interest in craft and technical education as the focus of design education strongly centered in its own generation of models of understanding place, construction, and materiality. At first, resistance to following exterior models and trends while reframing a complex pragmatic set of individualistic responses nevertheless produced a cohesive image to the outside world. Portuguese culture became a good example for the application of the term critical regionalism, as defined first by Alexander Tzonis and Liane LeFaivre and later further developed by Kenneth Frampton in “Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points of an Architecture of Resistance.” Indeed, one could easily say that there is no unifying language of Portuguese architecture, but a common tendency in its educational practice to focus on testing of material practices and therefore a collective admiration for similar and/or complementary models of practice. Swiss architecture, for instance, as an influential model, has shown a predisposition for a time commitment in a practice that involves a close and almost constant individual scale of interaction, and is dismissive of forms of generalization and easy confrontation. Practices that engage nonfigurative abstraction become not only a figure but simultaneously a means of questioning the platforms in which bodies/minds and programs can still stand and mix without uttering a word. Playful abstractions within a physical and emotional territory slowly extend bridges to the society at large, while revealing sparkling new colors, subtle wit, and thought-provoking concepts to engage practitioners. Geometry and its play are a safe and potent measure of negotiation between topos and its double, the meaning-free body/mind. Portuguese architecture education, culture, and society have been clearly breeding a new

13—folio form of simplicity with contrasting differences—as affirmed and discussed by practitioners— legible only to the trained eye. Drawing a line in architecture, urbanism, landscape, and design in general, is a very different action now from what it once was. Indeed, lines are scarcely used as predefined boundaries of worlds to conquer or untouchable, uncrossable limits to knowledge of difference (like the divisory line of the Tordesillas Treaty, which divided the world into two conquerable territories). Lines are becoming the spaces, directions, and characters they invent as geometric entities: vehicles through which new knowledge is produced. Lines are weaving centers. Through Appadurai and Jameson’s new concepts for locality1 we have the opportunity to discover where the discussion of space and the space of practice can be relocated in architecture, when spatial landscapes are not only defined by geography but by new socioeconomic environments. As Branzi has claimed:…architecture [can be] capable of inserting itself in the processes of the territory’s transformation without using external figurative codes, but internal environmental qualities…a traversable architecture that guarantees the penetration of territory and space, no longer marked by closed confines, but by open-filters like a three-dimensional agriculture…where the variable of time is a structural, dynamic element.2 The territories that Portuguese firms engage today—through new forms of the sunshine periphery, now extended globally—allow the direct manipulation of topography and urban and artistic practices to reach into contemporary discussions on sustainability, urban geography, and aesthetics. In this way the culture brings a refreshing and multifaceted approach to the contemporary and urgent debate on architecture’s role in the new definition of global and local.

← GONÇALO BYRNE/GB Arquitectos www.byrnearq.com

← AIRES MATEUS e associados www.airesmateus.com

Gonçalo Byrne’s work has been particularly relevant within the heritage and cultural panorama of Portugal. He has been awarded many national and international prizes. As a university professor, Byrne was invited to teach in Portugal and abroad, and he received, in 2005, the title of doctor honoris causa from the Faculty of Architecture of Lisbon Technical University. He was also awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of Infante D. Henrique and the Grand Cross of the Order of Santiago de Espada by the president of the Republic. His work includes museum, institutional, residential, and commercial structures, as well as urban planning projects. He is currently developing projects in Portugal, such as the Estoril Inn & Charm Hotel, in the Algarve, the Viseu Inn, the Estoril-Sol Building Complex, the “Jade” Building Complex in Lisbon, the New Central Laboratory for Lisbon Water Distribution Company (EPAL), and several single-family villas in the Bom Sucesso Resort in Óbidos. Photo: Port of Lisbon Trafﬁc Control Tower, Lisbon

Manuel Rocha de Aires Mateus and Francisco Xavier Rocha de Aires Mateus, brothers hailing from Lisbon, graduated from the architecture faculty of the Universidade Técnica, Lisbon, in 1986 and 1987, respectively. They both worked with Gonçalo Byrne studio, prior to setting up Aires Mateus e Associados in 1988. Manuel and Francisco have been lecturers and professors at different institutions, including Harvard University; Accademia di Archittetura in Mendrisio, Switzerland; Lisbon’s Universidade Lusiada; and at the Universidade Autonoma, Portugal. They have participated in numerous exhibitions, conferences, and seminars in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Slovenia, Spain, the United States, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland. Photos: Sines Cultural Center

← PEDRO GADANHO/NUNO GRANDE

← CONTEMPORANEA MGD+EJV www.contemporanea.com.pt

Pedro Gadanho is an architect, critic, curator, and teacher. His works concern the relationship between architecture and contemporary culture. He holds a Master in Art and Architecture and a Ph.D. in Architecture and Mass Media. Teacher at FAUP and was a chief curator of Experimenta Design. Curated “PostRotterdam,” Porto2001, “Space Invaders,” British Council, “Metaﬂux,” Venice Bienale and Pacho Guedes, SAM Basel. Nuno Grande graduated in architecture from University of Oporto and has been an assistant lecturer at University of Coimbra since 1993. Responsible for the Cultural Program on Architecture and City, in Porto 2001, and collaborated on the Culture in the Architectural Order, North Section from 1999 to 2004. He curated the Portuguese Exhibition at the 2007 Lisbon Architecture Triennale and at the 2007 São Paulo Architecture Biennale. He is a member of the Association Internationale des Critiques d’Art (Portugal) and of the editorial board of Jornal dos Arquitectos. Photo: Weekend Retreat in Carreço, Viana do Castelo

← JOSÉ ADRIÃO ARCHITECTS www.joseadriao.com

CONTEMPORÂNEA, in Lisbon, was founded by Manuel Graça Dias and Egas José Vieira. MGD is an architect (ESBAL, 1977) and former assistant professor at FA/UTL. Currently he’s an invited professor at FAUP and at DA/UAL. EJV is an architect (FAUTL, 1985), was invited professor at the ESTGAD and is currently an invited professor at DA/UAL. The firm has completed several projects in Lisbon, Porto, Chaves, Almada, Guimarães, Macau, Madrid, and Seville, which had been published in various architecture publications. The firm has shown in numerous exhibitions and was awarded the first place in the competition for the Portuguese Pavilion in Expo´92, Seville, as well as in the competition for the new branch of A.A.P. (Portuguese Architects Association / Banhos de S. Paulo), Lisbon (1991). They also won the AICA/Ministry of Culture Award (Architecture), 1999, for their built work. Teatro Azul by MGD+EJV with Gonçalo Afonso Dias. Photos: Teatro Azul, Almada

← EMBAIXADA www.embaixada.net

Born in Lisbon, José Adrião earned a degree in architecture from the University of Architecture of Oporto, after working as a trainee with Josep Llinàs in Barcelona under the guidance of Eduardo Souto de Moura. He then received a master’s degree from the U.P.C./CCCB in Barcelona, part of the Metropolis program, coordinated by Ignasi Solla-Moralles. Currently, he is an assistant-teacher of ﬁfth-year degree students for the Design Studio at the Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa. Since 2005 he has been cosupervisor of the editorial team for JA Jornal Arquitectos, the journal of the Portuguese Architects Association. Photo: Sta Clara, Portugal

EMBAIXADA is a young office of young architects that was established in 2002 in Lisbon, Portugal, with the aim of producing works capable of meeting the requirements of contemporary life in exquisite and innovative ways. As a firm it refuses to be limited in specialization, constantly searching for new and different challenges. The work includes areas such as urbanism, architecture, new media, arts, and design. The firm is currently comprised of seven associates with degrees in architecture. Adding a creative twist to the definition, the firm’s name—translated as “embassy”—to mean: an entity representing a collective of individuals and ideas that enable the creation of a unique representation of space in search of excellence. Photos: Algarve Regional Office of the Portuguese Architectural Association, Faro (left); Tomar Environmental Monitoring and Interpretation Offices, (right)

← RICARDO JACINTO www.parque.biz

← DIDIER FIUZA FAUSTINO www.mesarchitecture.com

← CANNATÀ & FERNANDES ARQUITECTOS www.cannatafernandes.com

← BERNARDO RODRIGUES www.bernardo-rodrigues.com

Born in Lisbon in 1975, Ricardo Jacinto graduated with a degree in architecture from the University of Lisbon-Faculty of Architecture, and in sculpture and advanced visual arts from Ar.Co. He was an exchange student at the School of Visual Arts in New York. He has studied music at the Hot Clube de Portugal and music composition at the Academia de Amadores de Musica. Since 1998 has presented his work at individual and group exhibitions, concerts and performances, in Portugal and abroad. He has worked in collaboration on a continuous basis with artists, musicians, architects, and performers. Some of his most recent works have been presented at Circulo de Belas Artes (Madrid), MUDAM (Louxembourg), Culturgest (Lisbon and Porto), Centre Culturel Gulbenkian (Paris), Casa da Música (Porto), and 10th Architecture Exhibition-Venice Bienal (Collaboration with Architect Pancho Guedes). He was the founder of the project PARK (2001-2008) where he has been directing a performance/ musical collective. Photo: Park Project

Cannatà & Fernandes was founded in 2000 by Fátima Fernandes and Michele Cannatà. They have been working together since 1984, developing professional activity in Portugal and Italy. Further, they have been scientiﬁc coordinators of the event Concreta-Exponor since 1999. Their work and projects were presented in various individual and collective exhibitions, among them, the Venice Biannual and the Milan Triennial. Their ﬁrm works toward the development of architecture projects, urban planning, design, graphic design, and engineering services with subcontract conditions directly related to architecture’s main activity. They also have developed an important editorial activity through publishing book editions and commissioning exhibitions and international seminar of architecture. Photo: Self-Sustained Module

Bureau des Mésarchitectures was founded by Didier Fiuza Faustino in 2002 in Paris and Lisbon. The ﬁrm includes Faustino, Mathieu Herbelin, and Cláudia Martinho. Faustino, born in Chennevières-sur-Marne, France, is a graduate of the Paris-Villemin School of Architecture, and a licensed architect. Herbelin, born in Besançon, France, graduated from the Paris la Défense School of Architecture, and is a licensed architect. Martinho, born in Porto, Portugal, graduated from the Porto University School of Architecture, and earned an M.S.c. in architectural acoustics from Pierre et Marie Curie University, Paris; she is also a licensed architect,. The ﬁrm has won the Nouveaux Albums de la Jeune Architecture award in 2002, the Prémio da Tabaqueira award in 2001, and the L’Envers des Villes award in 2000. Public buildings include the Musée National d’Art Moderne/Centre Georges Pompidou (MNAM) in Paris, the Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves (MACS) in Porto, Portugal, and the FRAC Centerre in Orléans, France. Photos: Ultimate Safety Resort, Housing Shigaki Island, Japan (left); Networkers Unit - Work Facility, Hygienapolis (right)

Bernardo Rodrigues is a licensed architect in Europe. He also has an M.S. in advanced architectural design from Columbia University. In 2006 he started a research project in cooperation with Harvard University, focused on sustainable architecture, and includes projects in China and the United States. Rodrigues has been lecturing and teaching in Europe as well as in the United States. His work engages processes of innovation and technology, and has been exhibited and published internationally. His ﬁrm was selected to represent Portugal in the 2004 Venice and Sao Paulo Biennale, the 2004 Milano Triennale, as well as the Lisbon Experimental Design Biennale in Lisbon in 2005. Invited to exhibit and lecture by Peter Cook and Toyo Ito as a representative of Portugal in Tokyo at “New Trends of Architecture in Europe and Asia-Paciﬁc 08-09.” Photos: The Arch and the Orchid, South China (left); Chapel of Eternal Light St. Michael Island, Azores (right)

CORNELL architecture/art/planning NEWS 04—spring 2008

Portugal Now

Matter

Lopes 1 Aldo Rossi, A Scientiﬁc Autobiography, Oppositions Books, postscript Vincent Scully, trans. Lawrence Venuti (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1981): p. 26. 2 Kenneth Frampton, “Poesis and transformation: the architecture of Álvaro Siza,” in Poetic profession, Lotus Documents, Álvaro Siza (Milan: Electa, 1986): p. 12. 3 Ibid., pp. 22-23. 4 Yehuda Safran, “Connoisseurs of Chaos, Notes on the emerging generation of architects in Portugal” in Inﬂux. Arquitectura portuguesa recente, eds. Pedro Gadanho and Luís Tavares Pereira (Porto: Civilização, 2003): pp. 12-14. Photo “Houses in Mira, northern Portugal, 1976” / Charters Monteiro

Looking Back Diogo Lopes

As a representation of time, history inevitably portrays the past from a standpoint. This depiction ransoms elapsed fragments from oblivion and shapes our perception of a thread that leads to the present. On these implications, it suffices to remind the intuition of Walter Benjamin on the empathy of historicism with the victor. History is thus instrumental in the figuration of a peripheral reality. Such is the case of Portugal and its architecture. Disowned from the collective experience of modernity, except in its succumbing to fascism, it builds an edifice on idiosyncrasy and plainness. With the instatement of democracy, more than three decades ago, the outer gaze still conveys what witnesses under the sign of otherness. Between 1976 and 1978 Aldo Rossi visited the Atlantic shores of Portugal, escorted by his disciple José Charters Monteiro. Just after, he named locations of these trips in A Scientific Autobiography, but only one is illustrated in the book. In what is now the sprawling conurbation of the littoral, three destitute figures clad in black lie stranded on the seaside. This spectral image renders this abandon but also the atmosphere of forsaken rituals, staged in space and time: the possibility of an interior. There, Rossi finds a vernacular analogue to his sense of architecture: the experience of an interior. In northern Portugal I have seen huge cabins that resemble houses of this type, the palheiros of Mira, which are made of the grayish-white wood of wrecks run aground with porch-like landings for boats. This wood of both boat and house has a gray skeletal color that everyone

recognizes: it is like the color of ships’ hulls abandoned by the sea on some beach for years or centuries.1 In 1986, Kenneth Frampton recalls the motto of Álvaro Siza, “to catch the precise moment of the flittering image in all its shades,” in a special edition of Lotus.2 Aptly titled Poetic profession, it is proof of the international accolade around Siza. That of his own country will come later, as the reconstruction of the Chiado quarters in Lisbon warrants public notoriety. These mercurial skills grant Siza creative freedom from any label, including that of Critical Regionalism. On this particular occasion, Frampton presciently stresses a matter of actuality: “With the demise of authorship and the eclipse of genius, a liberating but fragile future emerges on the horizon; the prospect of a poesis which is vital without having to suffer the burden of originality.”3 If the local—a decisive concept for Portugal—is to maintain a value beyond that of exchange, it must find an interstitial ground to take place. The strenuous path of younger generations led to unsuspected flights of form and new “connoisseurs of chaos,” as Yehuda Safran hailed them in amicable way.4 But it calls for the reassessment of history and committed knowledge to face the increasing turbulence of architectural practice in Portugal. Amid shortage of critical mass and rampaging commodification, a science of chaos can only arise with poetic incandescence and, once again, straightforward plainness.

← INÊS LOBO ARQUITECTOS LDA www.ilobo.pt

Inês Lobo of Lisbon, received her architect’s degree from the Lisbon Technical University in 1989. She worked in Carrilho da Graça’s ofﬁce between 1990 and 1996 and has given classes in project design at the Universidad Lusiada (since 1992) and the Autonomous University (since 1997). She has been a guest professor at the Universidade Lusiada, the Polytecnic University of Catalonia (1998), and in the Sintra Triennial (1998). Photos: Ajuda National Palace, D. Luís Art Gallery, Lisbon, Portugal

← PAULO DAVID

Paulo David has collaborated with Gonçalo Byrne and with João Luis Carrilho da Graça. In 1996 he established his own architecture ﬁrm, Paulo David Arquitectos in Funchal. He has been developing projects in a wide range of areas: equipment, housing, requaliﬁcation of buildings, and public spaces. His work includes the Art Center–Casa das Mudas in Calheta; Salinas Swimming Pools in Camara de Lobos; Volcanism Center in São Vicente; and the AJ99 apartment building. He has also developed a strategic plan of producing urban furniture in stone for the city capital of Madeira Islands, Funchal. Since 2001, Paulo David has taught at the University of Arte and Design and also in the Engineering University, in Madeira. He has participated in conferences in Lisbon, Porto, Coimbra, Barcelona, and Santiago Compostela. Photos: Arts Centre, Casa das Mudas, Calheta, Madeira

← S’A ARQUITECTOS www.sa-arquitectos.com

S’A Arquitectos is a young team coordinated by Carlos Pedro Sant’Ana and Isabella Rusconi, with professional and academic experience in Lisbon, São Paulo, and Barcelona. Their goal is to work with strategies that generate systems to propose new ways to complete the urban and natural landscape, trying to consolidate one hybrid system of occupation. Their research includes themes like flexibility, mobility, energy, and ecology. The firm is currently developing work focused on strategy and sustainability. Their activities include participation in Archilab in France (2001), HiperCatalunya in Spain (2003), and the Architecture Biennale in Venice, Italy (2004). The firm has been recognized by in several national and international competitions, such as EuropanDOM to Martinique and Europan7 in Tromso, Norway. Photos: SA23 Fata Morgana Tromso, Norway (left); SA26 Portas do Sol Vertical Car Parking System, Lisboa (right)

← MOOV/MOOVLAB www.moov.tk

MOOV was founded in 2003 by António Louro, João Calhau, and José Niza. The firm, a hybrid art and project studio, develops its activity, starting from the reciprocal interference of two overlapping entities that share the same space and base team but with different goals and ways of operating. MOOV has a working field based on project disciplines such as architecture, design, and planning. It is characterized by a pragmatic approach, looking for specific solutions to concrete problems. MOOVLAB is the experimental part of the firm and is organized as a laboratory of art and project; it is open to all kinds of multidisciplinary collaborations or innovative projects. It crosses projects in the fields of installation, sound design, image, and performance, with research on architecture and urban strategy and devices. Photos: Lab'09 Demo_Polis, Chiado, Lisbon (left); Pax Houses, Granturismo Exhibition, Silves (right)

← RED DESIGN www.re-d.com

ReD is an award-winning research and design studio in architecture and digital technology founded by architects Marta MaleAlemany and José Pedro Sousa in 2004. Operating internationally from Porto and Barcelona, ReD merges research and design endeavors both in academic and professional practice. Specializing in the implementation of advanced digital CAD/CAE/CAM technologies in architecture, the studio is committed to exploring the new design possibilities that emerge from the cultural and technological context of today’s digital era. ReD has built projects in Portugal, Spain, Italy, Austria and the US. Merging their uncommon experience, ReD principals have taught design studios, geometry, and building technology seminars in several prestigious universities in Europe and the US. ReD is the recipient of the 2005 FEIDAD Award (Taiwan), the 2006 OutrosMercadus Award (Portugal) and, in 2007, the studio was distinguished with a NEOTEC grant to develop an entrepreneurial project with the support of the Portuguese Agency for Innovation. Photos: M-City Exhibition, ConePLEX Installation, KunsthausGraz, Graz, Austria (left); FLUOScape Installation, KunsthausGraz, Graz, Austria (right)

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← PEDRO PACHECO (PORTUGAL)/MARIE CLÉMENT (FRANCE)

← ÁLVARO SIZA VIEIRA

← BARBAS E LOPES ARQUITECTOS www.barbaslopes.com

← EDUARDO SOUTO DE MOURA

← ALBERTO DE SOUZA OLIVEIRA

← NUNO BRANDÃO COSTA www.nunobrandaocosta.com

The Luz Museum was Pedro Pacheco and Marie Clément's ﬁrst major public work. The initial project proposal was a written document, mapping the territory and site contents without a single drawing. This unpremeditated method allowed the architects to concentrate on the main ideas, ideas that involved the strength to create both conceptual and formal imaginary for this complex theme: a village dislocation, the dramatic change of the landscape, and the activation of a memory process through the presence of a strong cultural territory tradition. The singularity of this project led Pacheco and Clément to an architectural approach that was deeply involved with relations between place, memory, and materiality. This design experience has created a common reference base that allows the architects to work separately, either from Portugal or France, and to develop common and individual projects. Photo: Luz Museum, Aldeia da Luz

Patrícia Barbas e Diogo Lopes Arquitectos is a Lisbon-based firm that aims to combine comprehensive building experience with scientific research background. The intent of these complementary resources is to contribute to a dialogue on architectonic culture, namely through collaborations with other practices such as Peter Märkli, Gonçalo Byrne, and Promontório. The office is presently involved in projects ranging from exhibition and interior design to single-family housing and public buildings. Photo: House in Benavente

Alberto Oliveira’s ﬁrm is a collaborative team of architects that conduct research in the ﬁeld of architecture. Their work includes several public building projects, private residential projects, urban projects, and urban furniture. Alberto Oliveira has an M.A. from University of Pennsylvania and was a student in Louis Kahn’s class. Photo: Cape House, Azoia

← AUGMENTED ARCHITECTURES www.augmented-architectures.com

Augmented Architectures was founded in 2003 by Nancy Diniz and César Branco as an architectural, design, and art practice. Diniz is a Ph.D. candidate at Bartlett Graduate School and a tutor at the Architecture Department of ISCTE, Lisbon. Branco is a Solutions Architect working for TATA Group in London. Photo: Life Speculatrix, Dislocate 2007, Tokyo and Yokohama, Japan

← PLANO B www.planob.com

Plan B means an alternative to the initial plan, to what is expected. It is supposed to be acted on once the main plan fails. Plano B arquitectura is an architecture ﬁrm that develops architectural designs and building prototypes made of both natural and industrial materials. Using wood, earth, or straw, along with asphalt, polycarbonate, or steel, stimulates the architects to reﬂect on the ethical, social, political, and economical aspects of architecture in an industrialized context. Architects at Plano B work with earthen architecture; they use traditional building techniques, though the goal is to create new approaches to problem solving. Photo: House in Arruda dos Vinhos

Álvaro Siza Vieira from Matosinhos, graduated from the School of Architecture at the University of Porto. He worked with Fernando Távora’s ﬁrm and taught at the School of Architecture (ESBAP) from 1966 to 1969 and was appointed professor of construction in 1976. Siza has been a visiting professor at the Ecole Polytéchnique of Lausanne, the University of Pennsylvania, Los Andes University of Bogotá, and the Graduate School of Design of Harvard University. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Science, Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, AIA/ American Institute of Architects, Académie d’Architecture de France, and European Academy of Sciences and Arts. Photos: Iberê Camargo Museum, Porto Alegre, Brazil

Eduardo Souto de Moura from Porto received his degree in architecture from the School of Fine Arts of the University of Porto, then went on to work with Álvaro Siza Vieira at his architectural practice. For many years Moura was a professor at the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto. He has been visiting professor at the architectural schools of Geneva, Paris-Belleville, Harvard, Dublin, ETH Zurich, and Lausanne, and has participated in numerous seminars and given many lectures both in Portugal and abroad. His work has appeared in various publications and exhibitions. He has been awarded many prizes, including the António de Almeida Foundation Prize; the Antero de Quental Foundation Prize; first prize in the Competition for the Restoration of Giraldo Square in Évora, Portugal; first prize in the Competition for the CIAC Pavilions; first prize in the Competition for a Hotel in Salzburg, Austria; first prize in the IN/ARCH 1990 for Sicily Competition; the Secil Prize for Architecture; second prize in the Architecture and Stone ideas competition; and honorable mention for his Miramar House in the Secil Architectural Prizes. Photos: Burgos Building, Oporto

Nuno Brandão Costa of Oporto earned a degree in architecture from the FAUP in 1994, the same year he became a member of the Order of the Portuguese Architects. He is a guest assistant teacher at the FAUP. He has worked with Herzog and de Meuron in Basel, Switzerland, and with the architects José Fernando Gonçalves and Paulo Providência in Oporto. He has received awards in several architecture competitions, namely: first prize in the public competition for the project for the Ramalde Market in Oporto (codesigned by João Paulo Loureiro); second prize in the international public competition for the chancery and residence of the Portuguese Embassy in Berlin; first prize in the international public competition for the Central Library of the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences of the New University of Lisbon; third prize in the public competition for the Law School of the University of Minho; second prize in the public competition for the Library of the Health Sciences pole at the University of Coimbra; and first prize in the public competition for new facilities of the Faculty of Letters of the University of Oporto. Photos: House in Afife

← PROMONTÓRIO ARQUITECTOS www.promontorio.net

PROMONTÓRIO was founded in Lisbon in 1988 by João Perloiro, João Luís Ferreira, Paulo Perloiro, and Paulo Martins Barata; they were since joined by Pedro Appleton. The firm is involved in complex urban projects: from schools, museums, and cultural institutions to housing, offices, hotels, and shopping centers. They have completed projects in Portugal, Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, Italy, Russia, Switzerland, Turkey, Germany, Bulgaria, Hungary, Georgia, and Spain, having in 2005 opened an office in Madrid with Adrian Belozo-Baker. The work of PROMONTÓRIO has often been identified with the pursuit of a system of robustness both in terms of representational meaning and technical research. They've been widely published in periodicals and books. The firm’s work has received awards and has been presented in conferences, lectures, and exhibitions in Portugal, Finland, Brazil, Austria, Italy, Holland, the United Kingdom, and the United States, and has been exhibited in the Ninth International Architecture Biennial in Venice, and more recently in La Triennale di Milano. Photos: River Aquarium, Mora (left); Carnide Housing Block (right)

← MENOS é MAIS www.menosemais.com

Menos é Mais was founded by Cristina Guedes of Macau, and Francisco Vieira de Campos of Porto, in 1992. Cristina Guedes holds a bachelor’s degree in architecture and a master’s degree in urban planning, both from Faculty of Architecture of Oporto. She has been a lecturer at UAL University in Lisbon and currently lectures at Lusíada University, in Oporto. Francisco de Campos graduated with a degree in architecture from the Faculty of Architecture of Oporto. He has worked with Eduardo Souto de Moura, before establishing his own practice. He currently lectures at the School of Architecture in Lusíada University, in Oporto. The ﬁrm’s work has been widely published. Photos: Bar Calem, Vila Nova de Gaia (left); Inapal Metal Industrial Unit Autoeuropa, Palmela (right)

CORNELL architecture/art/planning NEWS 04—spring 2008

Portugal Now

is for Fake and for Fotografia Pedro Bandeira

This year the well-known Porto School of Architecture (where Fernando Távora, Álvaro Siza, and Eduardo Souto de Moura taught) organized a competition of architectural photography. This competition had one rule: “Manipulated photographs will not be admitted: the only modifications allowed on photographs are adjustments of contrast, brightness, and saturation.” I confess I have a problem with accepting this rule. As we know, all kinds of photography (all kinds of representation) are manipulated views of reality, and I don’t even dare to question the notion of reality. This competition doesn’t allow the “association of several images; collages; erasing or addition of elements,” but in addition to accepting works with adjustments to contrast, brightness, or saturation, as well as different kinds of lenses (zoom, focus) and frames; it accepts black-andwhite photographs, ignoring that these options undoubtedly serve the purpose of manipulating reality. There is a clear contradiction in this competition brief about objectivity, as emphasized by a quotation from Gabriel Basilico on the competition objectives: “…the photographer has a critical vision that carefully selects (reality) filtering interferences, balancing

Untitled Daniel Malhão

What my architectural photography has in common with my artistic practice is the equipment and myself. Sometimes, when on an architectural assignment, I might notice something that, eventually, could result in an image that does not exist for its documentary value, but for the possibility of being experienced for itself. When this happens I do try to capture the image. Most of the times this results in a failed attempt. The only one that became a finished work was the one I made in the German Pavilion in Barcelona (/S/ Título (Barcelona)/, 2002, Ilfochrome Print, 60 x 70 cm), that I was photographing for my personal use—as a tourist. In short, it’s an image of a milky pane of glass in which it’s possible to see the reflection of a man looking at the pool. There is hardly anything—besides its location—that could be considered of architectural interest. The main difference between my architectural photography and my photography with architectural themes is that that in the first case my main concern is to produce a visual document, trying not to be too present, so the viewer can see the depicted object and not the one that made the picture; in the second one I use an architectural theme that, for some reason, I consider useful for the construction of a visual work. In this case, the architectural quality is not important; it’s the visual construction. In the work presented here I was caught by parallelism between the perfect symmetry of this library and the fact that in each corner there’s an attempt to represent the allness of the earth and the allness of the sky. Considering that a library could be understood as the world, it struck me as highly reverberant setting that I thought would be emphasized by being present dialectically as a diptych. A Lisbon native, Malhão graduated from Fine Arts University in Lisbon and the Center for Art and Visual Comunication in Lisbon. He participated in the Interchange Program with the Art Institute of Chicago in the filmaking department in 2000. In 2005, he studied creativity and artistic production at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. Parallel to his artistic work, Malhão has been developing professional photographic work in the areas of architecture and reproduction of art works. His collective exhibitions include Projecto Mnemosine, Coimbra (2000); LisboaPhoto, Lisbon (2003); L’île de Morel, Pontault-Combault, France (2007). Individual exhibitions include Project Room—Centro Cultural de Belém, Lisbon (2005); Agência de Arte Vera Cortês, Lisbon (2006); Instituto Camões and Galeria Nara Roesler, São Paulo, Brasil (2006); Galerie Anne Barrault, Paris, France (2007). Daniel Malhão is represented by Cristina Guerra at Contemporary Art, Lisbon.

Esfera Terrestre e Esfera Celeste na Biblioteca da Casa de Mateus. Mateus, Portugal. (2007). 58 x 73 cm (each image). Digital impression on photographic paper.

17—folio

Photos: Child Wood House (left); Resevoir (right)

tensions, trying to unfold the intelligible specific situation beyond the immediate form. The photographer looks as someone who constructs (reality).” If we don’t ask this type of “construction” of a photographer, then what would be the point of holding a competition? As is true with poetry, subjectivity contributes to the process of communication and constructing an artistic reality. There is no such thing as a “pure” or objective vehicle of representation, and the shooting of architecture is no exception. So please don’t believe Ezra Stoller—a good photograph doesn’t necessarily have to correspond to good architecture. We could speculate that the hopeless demand for “objectivity” and “truth” is a cultural heritage of Porto School of Architecture. This could be a reaction to digital culture’s emphasis on manipulation; a reaction to globalization and its subjectivity of place; a reaction to superficiality bounded to a subjectivity of materials; a reaction to fashion and seduction as representations of the times and of character; to summarize, it is an overreaction to even the slightest suggestion of fakeness. It is not by chance that architects from Porto seem to disregard photographs

and show a preference for drawings. As a student of Porto School, I have always heard that drawings were more reliable because they shorten the distance between idea and form. But are drawings necessarily more objective than photographs? Of course not; just think about Álvaro Siza’s architectural drawings where floating buildings share space with angels and horses. Even his monochromatic white or wood models disregard any idea of objectivity and hypothetical truth. Subjective images (drawings, photographs, models, etc.) demand imagination of the observer; that is to say, subjectivity stimulates participation (the main goal of representation). My own work as an architect as also evidenced in “Specific Projects…” is focused on images and their subjectivity as a possible construction of architecture; it is concerned with all the possibilities that architectural images can explore. In this sense I demand of images of architecture more than what is possible from actual architecture. I believe that images can go much further than buildings, although I also demand from architectural images a kind of plausibility so that they don’t become too distant or far-fetched. My images are not utopias, they are just

subjective representations caught between two realities: the reality of buildings and the reality of designing. They exist in the subjective realm between what is real and what is fake; between architecture and politics; between metaphor and irony. Ultimately, I hope that I can contribute to expanding what is possible within a cultural production of space. Pedro Bandeira has a degree in architecture from the School of Architecture at the University of Porto and a metropolis master’s degree from the UPC/CCCB in Barcelona. Since 1998, he has been teaching in the architecture department at the University of Minho, where he recently was awarded a doctoral degree with his thesis on “subjectivity of architectural images.” In 2004 and 2005, he represented Portugal at the Architecture Biennale of Venezia and São Paulo. Part of his professional activity is devoted to the development of “Specific Projects for Generic Clients”—which involves a theoretical approach to architecture, image, and society.

FG+SG Fotografia de Arquitectura/ Architecture Photography Fernando Guerra

On the mission of an architecture photographer Photography has become one of the ever-present aspects of communicated life—the photographer is a messenger. FG+SG is responsible for preserving the memory of objects and made things. The documental character, the register of something, is of primordial importance—it provides evidence. Architecture photography needs to be able to serve as an efficient path to communication. To succeed at this it takes many years of learning, discovering, and developing new techniques and tools that allow one to, above all, best communicate. FG+SG started a website that presents articles on specific works and displays galleries that enhance understanding. In response to demands for more descriptions of these works and the documentation of them, other developments have unfolded. FG+SG has also started a small collection of pocket books about photography and image, and several slide shows with real sounds from the photographed spaces. The power of an image to light up an aspect of reality to everyone’s knowledge is enormous. A good photographer of architecture can create the bridge to communicate a new body of work, to reveal a work to the world in an unfounded way; our online magazine article about Álvaro Siza’s Adega Mayor had 27,000 visits all around the world in 30 days. In the public domain, the recognition of exceptionality of a built work is often associated with its image register. This is an incredibly interesting responsibility for the photographer. Contemporarily, FG+SG is at the edge of a new revolution for the image: new digital formats and supports, and techniques, serve a “now” society marked by the desire of instant gratification. The future is an arm’s-length away, but the way there should be as enjoyable as the arrival. Together with his brother Sérgio, Fernando Guerra (www.fernandoguerra.com) founded the firm FG+SG, as well as a publishing house: FG+SG Livros de Imagem. FG+FS’s work is regularly published in several architecture magazines (e.g., Casabella, a+u, and Domus) and monograph publications like Dwell Icon. FG+SG collaborates with several Portuguese architects, including, Álvaro Siza, Gonçalo Byrne, Manuel Salgado, Graça Dias, Antonio Belém Lima), and other architecture firms, such as ARX Portugal and Promontório Arquitectos. Its website, www.ultimasreportagens.com, is a starting point for researching contemporary Portuguese architecture online, and hosts more than 200 photographic galleries online, as well as several special articles and publications. Casa das Mudas by Paulo David.

CORNELL architecture/art/planning NEWS 04—spring 2008

Portugal Now

Portugal Today Yehuda Emmanuel Safran

Flying over Portugal one is struck by the pattern of settlement on the edge of the old world. Unlike Italy, Spain, or France, where there are distinct and concentrated clusters of urban centers and country sites, habitation in Portugal is marked by great spread and diffusion—in an arabesque of meandering lines. Indeed, it is as if the topography were followed, waterlike, flowing in and along the lines traced by the pressure of the water on the earth: as if the people of this land have made a pact of obedience to gravity. It is into this age-old nexus of relations between these people and their land that we have to imagine the most recent architectural interventions. Over the years I have accompanied many visiting architects in Manhattan, but nobody has noticed (or at least commented) on the fact that Broadway is not only a diagonal avenue but also a watershed. João Luís Carrilho da Graça made this observation as we walked back to his hotel late one night. It is, I think, not par hasard that this observation was made by a Portuguese architect. Nowhere else is architecture predicated on the pressure of light from above and the resistance of the earth below as it is observed and practiced in Portugal. We could hardly speculate on the origin of this sensibility. Certainly, the constant proximity of the mountains to the sea must be part of this common and unique experience. The mountains and rivers that offer so much of the land to be cultivated, no doubt demand this kind of vigilance and constant attention to the flow of water and the resistance of the earth. The terraces are strictly conceived in alliance with these parameters. However, I do believe in the apriority of the subject. Deep subjectivity takes every given fact in order to reconstitute it. Without repeating life in the imagination you can never be fully alive; without imagining your act in advance, how could you act at all? It is commonly said that reality is that which exists, or that only what exists is real. In fact, precisely the contrary is the case: true reality is that which we know and which has never existed. The ideal is the only thing we know with any certainty, and it surely has never existed. It is only thanks to the ideal that we can know anything at all; and that is why the ideal alone can guide us in our lives either individually or collectively. And where, if not in the imaginary reality of architecture, can the rehearsal take place? If Leibniz said of music that it is counting, but unconsciously, then the relationship between counting and telling explains the pattern that emerges, suggesting that a national language exerts a “gravitational pull” on the structure of every conceivable human activity from music to architecture. In many languages, telling a story also involves the sense of counting, as in the words “to tell.” There is no doubt that the memory of the Homeric lore was preserved thanks to dance and song as well as to the navigation logs of the South Sea islanders. Indeed, the imagined sound of rhythm may be as potent neurally as actually hearing it. The rhythmic movement of the body intimately determines the use of language as much as practically everything else. It is just as rare as it is difficult to articulate a new concept of space. Architecture, with its pride, defeats gravity and embodies the will to power. It is the slant, or the style, of resisting gravity that determines so much of the quality of architectural intervention. Of course, there is an ongoing conversation with other cultures and languages. On the Iberian Peninsula we have not only Roman occupation but Arab culture, which was highly sophisticated in its use of water and its way of imagining the elements—water, fire, earth, and air. Listening to Siza describe the lay of the land in Santiago De Compostela—the way in which the ground was modeled to channel streams and master irrigation—left an indelible trace that makes us sharply aware of this heritage. In the same lecture, Siza spoke eloquently of the Incan practice of building in stone, as in the Cyclops stone wall in Machu Picchu, which impressed the Iberian invaders so profoundly that they brought home some of their impressions. Today, the conversation is not only wide open but has the character of great traffic. Much is being assimilated from far away; much of Portuguese achievement is widely known. For this we are grateful, for it makes the result that much richer everywhere and for everyone.

Sines Cultural Center by Aires Mateus e Associados.

19—REVIEW ——Conferences —Lectures—Exhibits ——Fall2007———

WILLIAM LIM, “BACK+FORTH”

Alumnus and advisory council member William Lim (’80, B.Arch. ’81, M.Arch. ’82), exhibited his recent mixed-media works in an exhibit titled “Back + Forth” at Hartell Gallery during the advsiory council meetings in September. Lim’s work deals with issues of traversing cultures and From the sixth floor of the Johnson Mucrossing between art and architecture. seum overlooking Cayuga Lake, Okwui For Lim his crossing back and forth is Enwezor gave his talk, “(Un)Civil Engineernot just physical but also philosophical ing: William Kentridge’s Allegorical Landin reconciliation between tradition and Noted architectural theorist K. Michael scapes,” on November 14. Okwui, whose modernism, fantasy and reality, art and Hays lectured at Cornell on October 2, as lecture was part of the Dean’s Lecture part of the Edgar A. Tafel Architecture Lec- architecture. The centerpiece of the exhibit, Series, is dean of academic affairs and ture Series. Hays, the Eliot Noyes Professor Journey, consisted of nine paintings that senior vice president at San Francisco Art placed Hartell Gallery and the Herbert F. of Architecture Theory at Harvard UniverInstitute. He has curated numerous exhibiJohnson Museum of Art as the portal from tions in some of the most distinguished sity and adjunct curator of architecture at which the viewer looked out to the horizon. museums around the world. As a writer, the Whitney Museum, gave a lecture titled Lim says, “Cornell has always been dear to critic, and editor, Enwezor has been a “Desire Called Architecture: Interpreting the Neo-Avant-Garde.” Hays has played a me as the cradle of my intellectual world, regular contributor to numerous exhibition pivotal role in the development of architec- the place where my journey began.” catalogs, anthologies, and journals. He is Lim is the managing director and owner founder and editor of the critical art jourtural theory in North America, and his work of CL3 Architects Ltd., in Hong Kong. Fol- nal Nka: Journal of Contemporary African is internationally known. His research and lowing graduation from Cornell, he worked Art, published by the Africana Studies and scholarship have focused on the areas of in Boston for five years before returning European modernism and critical theory Research Center, Cornell University. This as well as on theoretical issues in contem- to Hong Kong in 1987, at which time he lecture was co-sponsored by AAP, the worked for a Hong Kong developer. In porary architectural practice. Hays was Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, and the 1993, he established CL3 Architects, Ltd., the founder of the scholarly journal AsAfricana Studies and Research Center at and the company has grown from a tiny semblage, which was a leading forum of Cornell University.AAP Hong Kong studio to an award-winning discussion of architectural theory in North design firm with liaison offices in Beijing America and Europe.AAP and Shanghai. The company has focused In the fall of 2006, Tafel graciously enon providing professional architecture, dowed a lecture series with the intent of interior design, sourcing, 3-D visualization, bringing a preeminent architect to Cornell and project management services to the each year. hospitality, corporate, and retail markets in Hong Kong and China. It has completed numerous architecture and interior design John Hanhardt, who spoke at Cornell on projects, including the Bright China Chang November 8, is one of the most influential An Building and Pacific Century Place. In American curators in video. Hanhardt’s 2005, CL3 was honored with an Award of lecture, titled “Media Matters: Cinephilia Merit from the Northwest and Pacific Reand Installation Art,” reflected on the hisgion of AIA for the design of the Evian Spa. tory of artists’ interest in the materials Lim’s wife, Lavina Y. Lim ’80 graduated and histories of the cinema. This included from Human Ecology and is executive dithe fascination that media installation rector, general services for Goldman Sachs artists since the 1990s have had with the Asia LLC. The Lims’ two sons both curhistory, genres, and styles of the world’s rently are enrolled at AAP. The Lims hosted cinema. Hanhardt showed scenes from a collegewide reception for the exhibition’s films by Alfred Hitchcock and Buster opening following alumnus Chad OppenKeaton alongside the work of such artists heim’s (B.Arch. ’94) lecture “In Search of as Douglas Gordon, Pierre Huyghe, and Essence.”AAP Steve McQueen. In his long career, first as curator of Christopher Miles, associate professor film and video at the Whitney Museum of of art theory and criticism and associate chair of art at California State University-Long American Art and then as senior curator Beach, spoke at Cornell on September 10, as part of the art department’s lecture series. of film and media arts at the Guggenheim Miles’s lecture, “Form and Context: The Discourse of Art in a Shifting World,” considered Museum, Hanhardt was responsible for developing both museums’ collections and the possibility of a critical approach that melds both formalist and contextualist approaches in an effort to deal with broader contexts, including changing social, political, for establishing internationally acclaimed critical, market, and institutional factors. exhibiting programs for film and media Miles also has taught at Art Center College of Design, the Claremont Graduate arts. Among the exhibitions he has curated University, UCLA, University of California-Santa Barbara, and the University of Southern are the major retrospective, “The Worlds California. He is the recipient of a 2004 Penny McCall Award for his work as a writer/ of Nam June Paik” and “Bill Viola: Going Forth by Day.” Hanhardt has also collabo- curator, and presently writes for Artforum, Art in America, Flash Art, Flaunt, Frieze, and the Los Angeles Times. In 2005, he collaborated with the curatorial staff of the Hammer rated on a variety of outside projects and Museum in Los Angeles as one of three curators of the survey exhibition “Thing: New publications with such institutions as the Bohen Foundation, the American Center in Sculpture from Los Angeles,” which received a 2005 award for “Best Thematic Exhibition Paris, and the Fundacio Antoni Tapies. He Nationally” from AICA/USA, the United States chapter of the International Association of Art Critics. In 2006, he was one in a group of curators for “New Territories: Cityscapes,” is the editor of the book Video Culture: A an international presentation of work by emerging artists at the ARCO International ConCritical Investigation and currently serves on the board of directors of Electronic Arts temporary Art Fair in Madrid. He also curated “OMAGE: Artists, Designers and Writers of Otis College of Art and Design,” at Track 16 Gallery, Santa Monica, CA; and “Bay Area Intermix.AAP Currents,” a survey of work by emerging artists in the area, at the not-for-profit Oakland Hanhardt’s lecture was cosponsored by Art Gallery.AAP the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art.

OKWUI ENWEZOR

K. MICHAEL HAYS

JOHN HANHARDT

CHRISTOPHER MILES

K. Michael Hays Toshiko Mori Okwui Enwezor Hitoshi Abe Thomas Sugrue Chad Oppenheim Susan Buck-Morss Jeffrey Krichmar Beatriz Colomina Helene Furjan Simon Allford Stanley Saitowitz Jeffrey Inaba Christopher Miles John Hanhardt James Turrell Aristide Zolberg Raymond Gradus Larry Orman John D. Landis Saskia Sassen Christine L. Saum Alessandro Del Piano Ronald Grzywinski Mary Houghton Bill Myers Bart Lambregts Mae M. Ngai Cino Zucchi Luca Galofaro Lorenzo Romito Jean-François Lejeune Annie Han Daniel Mihalyo Michela Rosso Luca Molinari Giovanni Leoni Giovanni Vaccarini Davide Croft Carsten Nicolai Nunzio di Stefano

SASKIA SASSEN Saskia Sassen, a leading theorist of globalization, immigration, and global cities, spoke at Cornell on Ocotober 12, as part of City and Regional Planning’s fall colloquium on immigration and citizenship. Sassen is a professor of sociology at Columbia University and Centennial Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics. Her talk, “Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages,” touched on the themes in her most recent book of the same title. Sassen’s talk traced how the concept of the nation-state made today’s global era possible. She also examined how the notions of territory, authority, and rights have changed over time and across the three major assemblages—the medieval, the national, and the global.AAP

01 K. Michael Hays. Credit: Robert Stuart. 02 Okui Enwezor. Credit: Robert Stuart. 03 At the James Turrell lecture. Credit: Jason Koski/University Photography.

CORNELL architecture/art/planning NEWS 04—spring 2008

SOLAR DECATHLON: A VALUABLE LEARNING EXPERIENCE FOR STUDENT TEAM Even before the 2007 Solar Decathlon competition ended, stu-

20—REVIEW ——— NEWS Edson Cabalfin, Ph.D. candidate in the History of Architecture and Urban-

TOSHIKO MORI, the Robert P. Hubbard Professor in the Practice of Architecture and the chair of architecture at Harvard University Graduate School of Design since 2002, gave a talk at Cornell on November 5, as part of the Dean’s Lecture Series. Mori spoke to the overflowing crowd about the work of her firm, Toshiko Mori Architect, which she established in 1981 in New York City. The work of Mori’s firm has been widely published and has received awards and prizes internationally. Mori’s work is included in the exhibition “Design Life Now: National Design Triennial 2006,” displayed at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum through July 2007, and on view at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston beginning in October. In 2005, she received the Academy Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as the Medal of Honor from the New York City chapter of the AIA. AAP Toshiko Mori. Credit: Robert Stuart.

ism Program, presented his paper “Nation as Spectacle: Identity Politics of Philippine Pavilions at International Expositions, 1958–1992” at the Fifth International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS5) held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, last July 2007. He has also contributed an article to the exhibition catalog of the “You Are Not a Tourist” exhibit at the Curating Lab Art Show in Singapore held last September 2007. In addition to academic work, last August Cabalfin completed the exhibition/graphic design for the “Layon: Money as Vision” exhibit at the Money Museum of the Central Bank of the Philippines in Manila. Lawrence Chua, Ph.D. student in the History of Architecture, was awarded a Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship (FLAS) for the third consecutive year. The fellowship covers full tuition and a stipend. In addition, the Department of Architecture awarded him the Richmond Harold Shreve award for originality and excellence in his 2007 master’s thesis. He also presented at two international conferences last academic year, the Society of Architectural Historians annual conference in Pittsburgh and the Sarasatr Conference at the Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. In 2006–2007, for the second consecutive year, Chua was awarded a Foreign Language and Area Studies fellowship for the study of Thai. He also received an Einaudi Summer Travel Research Grant and a grant from the Milton L. Barnett Fellowship to research his master’s thesis, “Ambivalent Modernity: Instabilities of the Imperial Project in the Empire Stadium at Wembley during the Early 20th Century.” In February 2006 he presented “All Tomorrow’s Parties: the Parallel Structures and Peripheral Orbits of Rirkrit Tiravanija” to Cornell’s Southeast Asia Program Brown Bag Lecture series. Funding from the Graduate School, the Southeast Asia Program, and the Henry Detweiler Fund, allowed the paper to also be given at “Sarasatr 10: Situationist Spaces” conference at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. Also at Cornell, he spoke on “The White Horse and the Spotted Dog: Sports, Public Space, and Stadia” at “Under Construction: Works in Progress on Architecture and the Built Environment.” In April 2007 Chua gave a talk at the Society of Architectural Historians annual conference in Pittsburgh titled “You Can Stick Your England Up Your Arse: Wembley Stadium and Instabilities of the British Imperial Project in the 1920s.” Lisa Hanley, a doctoral candidate in the Department of City and Regional Planning, was named a Fulbright US Student award recipient for the 2007–08 academic year for her project “Urban Heritage Management: Integrating Social, Economic, and Democratic Strategies” in Ecuador. Thanks to the grant, Hanley is in Quito, Ecuador for the year conducting fieldwork on the rehabilitation of the colonial center. Her dissertation topic deals with the integration of economic, social, and democratic planning in historic districts and is directed by Professor Lourdes Beneria. Hanley’s research primarily deals with municipal and Inter-American Development Bank interventions for a sustained renovation of the colonial district of Quito. She spends her time interviewing local government officials, leaders of neighborhood and local economic development associations, and conducting an archival review of urban development plans for the historic district. Prior to returning to graduate school at Cornell University, Hanley coordinated a project on comparative urban studies at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC. She is a graduate of the George Washington University and the University of Texas at Austin. Josh Kirshner, Ph.D. candidate in the Department of City and Regional Planning, wrote a chapter for a book that will be published in 2008 by the Harvard University Press, David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies Series. The book is titled Becoming Brazuca: Brazilian Immigration to the United States, and is edited by Clémence Jouët-Pastré and Leticia Braga. The chapter is called, “A Uniao Tem Forca: Three Unions Reach Out to Brazilian Immigrants in Boston.” Yujin Lee, a junior in the Department of Art, studied abroad in Shanghai, China in 2007, where she took a class about contemporary art in China, including an exploration of the current art scene through visiting galleries and meeting artists and curators. At the end of the semester, she exhibited two sets of T-shirts she designed and produced at the High Noon Art and Culture Gallery in Pudong, Shanghai. Julio F. Torres-Santana is working on a design for a portable shelter for homeless people for a competition taking place during the College of Science and Technology Entry Program (CSTEP) conference. When the presentation is over, he plans on trying out the shelter himself for awhile before giving it to a homeless person.AAP

dents on Cornell’s team suspected they would not be second best for a second time. Cornell’s team, which placed second in 2005, came in 19th out of 20 at the biennial Solar Decathlon competition held on the National Mall last week. “We knew we had a good house and a good system—it’s just a shame that it’s not acknowledged,” said a disappointed Joanna Krzyspiak ’08, a bioengineering major who worked on the house’s heating and ventilation systems. “But you have to hold your head high. Ultimately, Solar Decathlon is about you within the team. The competition matters least in all of that.” A team from Germany’s Technische Universität Darmstadt was announced the winner on October 19, by US Secretary of Energy Samuel W. Bodman ’61. The University of Maryland was second, and Santa Clara (CA) University came in third. A group of experts judged the teams and their houses in 10 categories, including engineering, hot water, lighting, energy balance, architecture, and market viability. Cornell’s best individual finish was seventh place in communication, which judges teams’ websites and public presentations. “Everyone seems to like us but the judges,” said Bryan Wolin ’08, a communication major, on October 18, the night before the competition ended. The Cornell team had slipped from 9th place to 15th on October 17, and then to 19th place by the morning of October 19. In tours of its house, Cornell team members touted the energy-efficient appliances, gray-water recycling system, sustainably harvested cork flooring, adaptable external “light canopy” supporting the house’s solar panels, and the extensive landscape of edible plants. “What I really liked was the fact that it had a lot of open space and vegetation outside, and… people who could communicate [the house’s features] in layman’s terms,” said Stacy Buchler Holstein ’79 of Potomac, MD, who toured the house with her children. The decathlon and Cornell’s team also received media coverage ranging from local news to visits by crews from CBS Sunday Morning and the Sundance Channel. The Cornell team hosted a “Homemade.Local.Sustainable” six-course dinner for members of three other teams on October 16, using herbs and vegetables grown in planters around the Cornell house. The dinner was prepared and presented by Taverna Banfi staff-chef Ryan Beard of the School of Hotel Administration ’08; line cook and Solar Decathlon landscape architecture team member Bonnie Kirn ’08; and adviser and chef d’Cuisine Anthony Jordan. The menu included pumpkin ravioli, chilled broccoli soup, roasted eggplant with sweet bell peppers, mixed salad with marigolds and fresh herb dressing, and Cornell house-made mozzarella and spinach-stuffed radicchio. The dinner was one of the many examples of teamwork and applying individual students’ talents to the decathlon effort. “The major thing for me was learning team dynamics,” Krzyspiak said. “We kind of functioned as a small company. [We were] learning to communicate with different majors in different fields. This has been a huge learning experience for everyone.” The 2007 event, the third such competition since 2002, was the largest ever, with 20 teams from the United States, Canada, Spain, and Germany. Thousands of visitors flocked to the mall from October 11–20 to witness the houses. “The technology you see here on display works,” Bodman said during closing ceremonies, noting the continued use of houses entered in the decathlon in 2002 and 2005. “The focus on moving technologies from the lab to the marketplace doesn’t end with this competition. The next group of solar decathletes have their work cut out for them.” The Cornell Solar Decathlon team has been accepted to compete in the 2009 competition.AAP

21—Student News—Cabalfin ———Chau—Glover—Hanley— Herreshoff——Kirchner—Lee—— ————————Torres-Santana 02

CORNELL CHAPTER OF NATIONAL ORGANIZATION OF MINORITY ARCHITECTURE STUDENTS WINS STUDENT DESIGN COMPETITION The Cornell chapter of the National Organization of Minority Architecture Students (NOMAS) won a student design competition, “Embracing Commitment, Community, Change: Designing the New Urban School (K–12) in Parramore (Orlando, FL).” Winners were announced at the Annual National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA) Conference held October 25–27 at Contemporary Resort Hotel, Disneyworld, Orlando, FL. Of the students who contributed, 12 attended the conference, and three were selected by their peers to present Cornell’s entry: Max Davis, Gary He, and Oscar Hernandez-Gomez. Associate Professor Arthur Ovaska was faculty adviser to the students. About the Competition NOMA aims to work with local, state, and national governments on issues affecting the physical development of neighborhoods and communities. Orlando is one of many United States cities facing a large change in demographics, with an increasing mix of Caucasian, African American, Latino, and Asian cultures. Architects and designers are being challenged to respond to the issues that face diversifying populations in ways that promote community—as they encourage growth in new directions and strive to improve quality of life. The 2007 Student Design Competition invited architecture students to carefully consider issues of urban renewal in historically African-American communities. The design focuses specifically on Parramore, an urban enclave located in downtown Orlando on the cusp of transition. The city has developed a strategy through “Pathways for Parramore” to improve the depressed aspects of this neighborhood, education being one key area. Students were asked to submit a design proposal for the New Urban School (K–12) that would provide residents access to a local education base and opportunities for afterschool programs, sporting activities, and community events. Designs needed to address the community’s history and present innovative ideas for the New Urban School experience. Students were asked to examine the following issues in their design proposals: • How can the school take an active role in promoting positive change in Parramore while still including its African-American community members? • How can the design proposal help the school to reach beyond itself and become involved in the concerns of the community, society, and educational realm? • How much does the design need to reflect Florida’s architectural vernacular in order to integrate? • How will the design deal with tectonics? Students were asked to demonstrate their understanding of appropriate technology. • How will local climate affect the design? Students were encouraged to consider issues of sustainability and green design. 2007 Participants The 2007 winners of the Parramore School Design Competition and the award amounts are as follows: • 1st Place: Cornell University, $1,500 • 2nd Place: Florida University, $1,000 • 3rd Place: Kansas State University, $750 • 4th Place: Howard University, $250 and Georgia Institute of Technology, $250 Additional Participants were • Mississippi State University • California College of the Arts • Virginia Tech AAP

ART STUDENTS NAMED RECIPIENTS OF 2007 JOHN HARTELL GRADUATE AWARD The Department of Art announced the recipients of the 2007 John Hartell Graduate Award, M.F.A. students Alika Herreshoff ’08 and Lindsey Glover ’08. Chosen from entries submitted by graduate students in the Department of Art, the award’s recipients are decided on by department faculty in recognition of excellence in a studio practice. A graduate of Tufts University and Boston’s School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Herreshoff’s work consists of “drawings and prints that employ a comic-abstract language and are related to animation and comic books, as well as Color Field and Pop painting.” In describing the appeal of his own work, Herreshoff points to “humor that pragmatically points back to things which ‘shouldn’t be funny’ and which at the very least puts them ‘on the table,’ or in the tableaux, for discussion.” According to the artist, Glover’s large-format digital print series, “Hollowed Out,” “focuses on the complexity of a first, momentary glimpse, where fragments of sightings, derived from the actual and tangible, coexist with the ephemeral and the assumed.” “The private space of backyard is the subject of this series,” she says. “The yard is the middle ground between the private interior of a house and the land beyond the property lines. It is owned, secluded, and segmented.” A graduate of Alfred University, Glover’s work also includes video and video installation pieces. The John Hartell Graduate Award was established in memory of John Hartell by members of his family, friends, and former students after his death in October 1995 at the age of 93. Hartell joined the architecture faculty in 1930 and the art faculty in 1940 and served as chair of the art department from 1940 until 1959. AAP 06

05 01 Poster promoting Yujin Lee’s group show in Pudong, Shanghai. 02 At the 2007 National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA) Design Awards Banquet, Cornell University design competition winners (l–r): Diana Lin, Gary He, Max Davis, Clayton Henry, Wilma Lam, Oscar Hernandez-Gomez, Andreka Watlington, Justin Chu, Alice Lin, Maketa Mabane, Andrew Nahmias, and Marvine Pierre. (Missing) core team members: Brandon Bailey, Jeremy Siegel, Andrew Kim, and Henryck Hernandez; production assistants: Mengni Zhang, Sebastian Hernandez, David Temidara, Julianna Valle-Vellez, Julio Torres, Deimte Dem Princewill, Imani Day, Patricia Ciras, Davis Temidara, and Marco Andrade. 03 Lindsey Glover’s Hallowed Out (no. 3). (2007). C-print. 04 Associate Professor of Architecture Andrea Simitch provides critiques of student architects’ designs in the master’s program studio at AAP’s Esty Street facility in Ithaca. The designs are based on plans for the 2010 World Cup in Johannesburg. Credit: William Staffeld. 05 Alika Herreshoff’s Watermelon Poker. (2007). 6'x 8'. Acrylic on canvas. 06 Part of the winning designs submitted by the Cornell chapter of NOMAS.

CORNELL architecture/art/planning NEWS 04—spring 2008

Credit: Jason Koski/University Photography

CORNELL architecture/art/planning NEWS 04â&#x20AC;&#x201D;spring2008

24—Faculty & Staff News ——Azis—Baugher—— Christopherson—Clark——Esten— —Trigg—Ferro————Forsyth— Ochshorn——Ostendarp—— Park——Perry—Pratt—Roig—— Ross———Spector——Trancik—— —————— 01

Dee Gallery in New York, titled “Carl Ostendarp, 1989–2007.” In addition, Ostendarp participated During the summer of 2007, in the “Lust for Life” exhibition at the KunstmuseIwan Azis of City and Regional Planning conducted his yearly research and consulting work in um Liechtenstein in Vaduz and in benefit exhibitions for the Neuberger Museum and the Drawing several countries in Asia. Sponsored partially by Center in New York. Cornell’s Southeast Asia Program, his research Maria Park, assistant professor in the focused on regional financial cooperation in East Department of Art, had a solo painting exhibition Asia. Two of his papers based on his findings have been published in the International Journal of titled “Crystal Leisure” at Toomey Tourell Fine Art in San Francisco, from December 18, 2007 to Organizational Analysis and in a joint-publication January 31, 2008. with the Asian Development Bank. Azis was inChris Perry, visiting critic in the Department vited by the Asian Development Bank Institute to conduct research and do consulting work in Tokyo of Architecture, has the work of his design practice, servo, featured in an essay by Christopher on the link between financial macro-policy and social issues in Asian developing countries. While Hight in the book Network Practices, published by Princeton Architectural Press in late 2007. In in Tokyo, he also attended a gathering organized the fall of 2008, servo will have a new full-scale by the Cornell Alumni Association of Japan to interactive installation project featured in the welcome Cornell’s President David Skorton and Seville Biennial. In addition, a forthcoming monohis entourage during their trip to Asia. Further, in collaboration with Professor Thomas Saaty of the graph of servo’s work will be published in 2008 by the Korean publisher Damdi Press. The book University of Pittsburgh, Azis coorganized the IX is part of a monograph series called DD. In 2007 International Symposium on Decision Making in Perry coedited with Christopher Hight an issue of Viña del Mar Chile. Architectural Design (AD) titled Collective IntelSherene Baugher, associate professor of ligence in Design. The book features the work of landscape architecture, coedited (with John H. Jameson, Jr.) Past Meets Present: Archaeologists servo as well as the Responsive Systems Group, a university-based design research practice Perry Partnering with Museum Curators, Teachers, and codirects with Ezra Ardolino at AAP. Studio work Community Groups; the book was published last by undergraduate as well as graduate students at summer by Springer. Baugher wrote two chapCornell was featured in the Responsive Systems ters in the book: “Service-Learning: Partnering Group section of the publication. with the Public as a Component of Archaeology Kevin Pratt, assistant professor in the DeCourses” and “Public Interpretation, Outreach, partment of Architecture gave a talk titled “Techand Partnering: An Introduction” (the latter coaunology, Design, and the Limits of Architecture” thored by Jameson, Jr.). In addition, she received the Meritorious Service Award from the New York at the University of California-Irvine “Focus the Nation” event highlighting global warming issues State Archaeological Association in April 2007. on January 31. Susan Christopherson, professor of City Wilka Roig, visiting assistant professor of and Regional Planning, and Jennifer Clark photography in the Department of Art, and Tarrah (Ph.D. ’04 CRP) recently published the book Remaking Regional Economies. This book, published Krajnak, who teaches photography at the University of Vermont, were keynote lecturers at the 14th by Routledge, is both a critique of the “new regionalism” and a return to the “regional question.” Annual Julia Reinstein Women Studies Symposium at Elmira College, on March 12, 2008. The David Estes, visiting assistant professor of lecture, titled “Women Artists in Collaboration: art and Sarah Trigg (B.F.A. ’95), exhibited at the Representing Women in Contemporary PhotograScope Miami Art Fair opening last December. phy,” was given in conjunction with a photography Renate Ferro, visiting assistant professhow at Elmira College’s George Waters Gallery. sor in art, had her two-channel video installation The exhibit, titled “(untitled # ),” was based on the Facing Panic included in a curated show at the collaborative works of Roig and Krajnak. “(untitled Chicago City Arts Gallery in February. The show, # )” is also one of 10 projects represented in the curated by Debra and David Tolchinsky, incorporated painting, video, sound, interactive sculpture, National Museum of Women in the Arts biennial, Women to Watch, in Washington DC, which will photography, and new media and is entitled “The Horror Show.” The Tolchinskys explained that the run from March 14 to June 15, 2008. In addition, Roig, who received a Cornell Council for the Arts work is less “about eliciting a scream than about Individual Artist Grant in 2003 and a Project Grant inducing anxiety by presenting horror from the in 2006 for her work with Krajnak, was representinside out.” Professor Ann Forsyth of the Department of ed in “The Spitting Image,” curated by Terri WhitCity and Regional Planning recently published “In- lock of SFMOMA, and featured in Camerawork: A novation in Urban Design: Does Research Help?” Journal of Photographic Arts, vol. 34, no. 2. Her independent work was on exhibit last fall as part in the Journal of Urban Design (12, 3:461–473); “The Rise of the Nerds? Interdisciplinary Research of “Beyond/In Western NY” 2007 at the AlbrightKnox Art Gallery biennial in Buffalo, NY. and Architecture” in the International Journal of Douglas Ross, visiting assistant professor in Architectural Research (1, 3:177–182); and “The the Department of Art, has recently been chosen Effect of Neighborhood Density and Street Confor a Smithsonian Award Fellowship to conduct nectivity on Walking Behavior: The Twin Cities research at the institution’s museums and reWalking Study” (with J. Michael Oakes and Kathsearch facilities in Washington DC. During the ryn H. Schmitz) in Epidemiologic Perspectives & fellowship he will focus on the historical represenInnovations (4, 16). tations, definitions, and delineations of territory in Jonathan Ochshorn, associate professor American history. of architecture, presented a paper titled “What Buzz Spector, professor of art, showed his Sustainability Sustains,” at the “Hawaii Conferlarge-format Polaroid photographs at the Zollaence on Arts and Humanities,” Honolulu, Hawaii, in January 2008. The full text can be found online Lieberman Gallery in Chicago from December 14, 2007 through February 2, 2008. Other works of at: people.cornell.edu/pages/jo24/writings/sus his have or will appear in several group exhibitions tain.html. around the country, including at the Craft Alliance Carl Ostendarp, assistant visiting profesGallery in St. Louis, MO; Sala Diaz in San Antonio, sor in the Department of Art has a mural titled Sayin’ it and Doin’ it at the Peter Ludwig Museum TX; and Yale University’s Beinecke Library. He is serving as one of three jurors for the New Glass in Cologne, Germany (to remain up for three years), accompanied by an exhibition of 40 paper Review 29, the annual international publication of the Corning Museum of Glass. In addition, he was works installed in the Pop collection galleries. He invited to give a talk about his art on April 30, at also has a solo survey exhibition at the Elizabeth

NEWS

the Phillips Collection in Washington DC, as part of their ongoing “Conversations with Artists” series. In January, landscape architecture and planning professor Roger Trancik retired after 38 years of teaching and was appointed professor emeritus. To mark this, Robert Campbell, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, writer, and architecture/planning critic for the Boston Globe will deliver an on-campus public lecture on the future of designing on September 12, 2008. Event details will be posted on the AAP website, or contact Beth Kunz, AAP events manager, at egk7@cornell.edu.AAP

25 UPCOMING FILM IS AN OPEN BOOK ON SPECTOR’S ART The artwork and teaching of pro-

fessor of art Buzz Spector, who uses books—often altered, arranged, or otherwise recontextualized—as both subject and object, is the focus of a new documentary in progress, The Rise and Fall of Books. A Cornell audience had an advance glimpse of the film on November 15, in Willard Straight Theatre. It is scheduled for completion in 2008. Produced by University Communications, the film documents Spector and his students’ work on the Humanities Book Art Project earlier this year. With more than 800 volumes on loan from Cornell authors and University Library holdings, the Book Art Project was incorporated into “From Inspiration to Exhibition,” the section of a winter session course Spector taught at the AAP New York City Center. (Another 2,000 or more books were borrowed from the New York Public Library annex for other sculptural forms produced in the class.) The finished sculpture, Big Red C, was reassembled for an exhibit in Kroch Library last spring. Spector and filmmaker Jake Gorst were on hand to introduce the film and speak with the audience at the screening. In classroom scenes and in filmed interviews, Spector talks about the history of the book, growing up in a family of readers, the tactile pleasures and other aspects of the act of reading, and his art, in which he has methodically torn pages in books to create cascading patterns of paper and text inside. He speaks with wonderment about Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are and, in a moving sequence near the end of the film, about an exhibition he created from his mother’s lifetime of reading. “The notion that a son of hers would tear pages out of books and call it art was extremely distressing to her,” Spector says in the film. Spector’s students and a longtime friend, art dealer, and critic Reagan Upshaw, also are interviewed in the film. “It must have been difficult to tear that first book,” Upshaw says. The film also addresses technology in visual media, as the class and book project were documented with a massive 20" x 24" Polaroid camera and with digital time-lapse photography. The Polaroid camera’s possible obsolescence and the fate of printed books also are discussed. “What’s our responsibility to preserve our cultural heritage?” Spector asks. The film uses music by rock group the dB’s. When initially contacted by Gorst about the film, songwriters Chris Stamey and Peter Holsapple were surprised to hear Spector’s name. “By uncanny coincidence,” Spector said, he had designed record covers for an earlier incarnation of the band, Sneakers, more than two decades ago. After filming interviews over the summer, Gorst had more than 13 hours of footage to work with, “enough to do a feature film,” Gorst said. He conducted additional interviews this month on campus. Gorst is an Emmy Award–winning filmmaker whose projects include Liesurama, about 1950s culture, and Farmboy. He said he is seeking underwriters for about $40,000 in completion funds. He plans to submit the finished product to film festivals and arrange for a national broadcast on PBS. Audience members at Cornell were given short questionnaires and invited to give their comments. “This is a rough cut,” Gorst explained, “what you say will help to shape what this film becomes.”AAP

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01 Maria Park’s CL(a). (2007). 30" x 36". Acrylic and letraset on polycarbonate. 02 From Wilk Roig and Tarrah Krajnak’s “(untitled #)” exhibit. 03 Humanities Book Art Project installation by Buzz Spector in the Kroch Library. Credit: Jason Koski/University Photography. 04 Carl Ostendarp. Sayin’ it and Doin’ it. Mural at the Peter Ludwig Museum in Cologne, Germany. 05 Renate Ferro’s two-channel video installation Facing Panic. 06 Todd McGrain’s Passenger Pigeon at Rochester’s Memorial Art Gallery. Photo provided.

WORK BY MCGRAIN INSTALLED ON MEMORIAL ART GALLERY FRONT LAWN Passersby on University Avenue in Rochester’s Neighborhood of the Arts can now

see a new addition to the Memorial Art Gallery’s sculpture collection—a work in bronze by Associate Professor Todd McGrain that memorializes the now-extinct Passenger Pigeon. The sculpture is part of a series by McGrain called “Lost Birds” that immortalizes five North American birds driven to extinction: the Passenger Pigeon, the Carolina Parakeet, the Labrador Duck, the Great Auk, and the Heath Hen. “The smooth surface, like a stone polished from touch, conjures the effect of memory and time,” says McGrain. “It compels us to recognize the finality of our loss, it asks us not to forget it, and it reminds us of our duty to prevent further extinction.” McGrain is one of only six artists invited to participate in next summer’s Third Rochester Biennial at the Memorial Art Gallery. Passenger Pigeon isn’t the gallery’s only new outdoor public art this year; this summer, Memorial Art Gallery was the site of a Rochester Transit System bus shelter ARTWalk redesign. The new bus shelter, designed by Ed Stringham, is next to Passenger Pigeon on the gallery’s front lawn. Funds for the purchase of Passenger Pigeon came from Andrew and Melissa Stern and the Maurice R. and Maxine B. Forman Fund.AAP

COMMUNITY PLANNING IS EFFECTIVE On November 10, the Ithaca Journal ran a syndicated guest column by Randal O’Toole, a well-known critic of planning. Without evidence or a clear method of analysis, O’Toole contends that “government plans simply don’t work” and blames special interest groups and professional planners for the putative failures of planning. His hit piece is one-sided, dangerous, antidemocratic, and wrong. Local plans in American communities aren’t dreamed up and imposed by planners and special interest groups playing with places as if they were SimCities. American plans are created by citizens and their elected officials—sometimes with help from professionals—in processes that usually reflect and reinforce community values. Local residents in about half the states get to decide whether to have a plan at all. The vast majority of communities adopt plans even when they don’t have to. This isn’t because professional planners make them do so but because their citizens demand it and because their elected officials know they’re better off with a plan than without one. Community plans aren’t just the result of democracy. They can, and do, work. For just one example, communities in states with “growth management,” which O’Toole excoriates, suffer substantially less loss from natural disasters than those in states where planning is weak. Louisiana doesn’t require planning; pre-Katrina New Orleans didn’t have a good plan. Florida requires planning; pre–Hurricane Andrew Dade County did have a good plan. People were better prepared, less destruction occurred, and recovery has happened more thoroughly and quickly in Dade County than in New Orleans. This isn’t an isolated example; community planning saves lives and money all the time. A look at the two ends of the planning spectrum shows the strong connection between democracy and planning in America. In the state with the most active planning in the United States, California, communities with the very strongest controls on growth are those where citizens use ballot initiatives to plan. In Texas, at the other end of the spectrum, many communities lack even zoning, not to mention more aggressive regulations, because the developer-controlled state legislature won’t let citizens act to protect local environments or even ensure adequate infrastructure investment. Why do citizens and officials plan? Local government in America builds infrastructure, preserves habitat and heritage, protects citizens against natural disasters, and negotiates conflicts among neighbors. We do these things more effectively if we have a community plan than if we don’t. This is even truer considering enormous social changes that are already happening. In 2030 the United States will have many more seniors than it does today. In places with weak community plans, developers now produce overwhelmingly low-density, auto-dependent, single-use neighborhoods far from commercial services and hospitals, and neighborhoods that serve nondrivers well either deteriorate or gentrify. Where planning is stronger, neighborhoods look different already and will serve the future population much more effectively. We also know that right now, citizens want to protect farms, forests, and historic sites from rapid change. These are just some of the reasons why citizens and their representatives decide to plan; it allows them to prepare for the future and provide for the present, in an open process. Unfortunately, some local communities—responding to the desire of the majority of their residents—use their plans and resources to shut out low-income residents and important but unpleasant facilities like landfills and industrial sites, while increasing their own property values by purchasing open space and boosting their tax bases by encouraging office parks. As more communities do this, low-income people and unappealing land uses increasingly concentrate in limited numbers of cities and neighborhoods. City tax bases and quality of life declines, and anyone who can flee to the suburbs does so. This is not, however, the story of Oregon, whose growth-management system O’Toole targets. In Portland, wealth and poverty are more evenly distributed across the region than in most other regions because its democratically elected regional government requires all local communities to zone to accommodate market housing and industrial demands. Portland’s economy is thriving, thanks in large part to its growth-management system. The deregulated choice, by contrast, is unplanned Houston, where people drive more than in any other major urban area; air quality is almost as bad as Los Angeles’s; and low-income people and people of color live in neighborhoods and attend schools next to toxic chemical production sites. Don’t take my word for which region is more attractive; look for O’Toole’s mailing address, and you’ll see he lives in Oregon.AAP A guest column by CRP Associate Professor Rolf Pendall, originally published in the Ithaca Journal, November 17, 2007.

CORNELL architecture/art/planning NEWS 04—spring 2008

26—Alumni News—Campanella—— Daile——Gerkakaris—Holmes——— ————North—Pendleton-Jullian— Podlesnik—Strauss————Sutro— Howeler—Zver——————— 01

NEWS Thomas Campanella’s (M.L.A. ’91) new book, The Concrete Dragon: China’s Urban Revolution and What It Means for the World, is being published this summer by Princeton Architectural Press. The book examines the driving forces behind China’s urban revolution and traces both the historical precedents and increasingly globalized flow of ideas, trends, and information that have combined to create a new Chinese cityscape. It provides a critical overview in light of both China’s past as well as previous experiences of rapid urbanization elsewhere in the world—especially in the United States, a nation that once set global records for the speed and scale of its urban ambitions. Stuart Cohen (B.Arch. ’65, M.Arch. ’67) (FAIA) and Julie Hacker (AIA), Chicago-area residents, are the recipients of Residential Architect magazine’s annual Hall of Fame Leadership Award for outstanding contribution to residential architectural practice. Previous winners have included Peter Bohlin, Sarah Susanka, and Sim Van Der Ryhn. The award was presented in early December at the magazine’s “Reinvention Symposium” in Charleston, SC. Cohen and Hacker presented their work to the 300 architects who attended the conference from across the country. Cohen’s second book for Acanthus Press, Great Houses of Chicago: 1871–1921 is due out this spring. Zabriskie Gallery in New York recently exhibited new paintings by Robert Cronin (M.F.A. ‘62). Cronin’s still lifes feature arrangements of fictional objects giving them a comic feel that seem ready to “drift away.” Eric Dahl (B.S. ’90), manager of Community Realty in Albany, NY, was interviewed in the Albany-area newspaper the Times Union in a piece called “Hopes, Dreams, and Homes: Nonprofit Realty Manager Finds Houses for First-time Buyers.” Allison MacNeil Dailey’s (B.Arch. ’06) watercolor illustrations are featured in Glassigator, a children’s book she collaborated on with her father, glass artist Dan Dailey. The book was published by the Toledo Museum of Art. The drawings of Peter D. Gerkakaris (B.F.A. ’03) were shown in a group exhibit at Kathleen Cullen Fine Arts in New York City in November, as well as the Bridge Art Fair in Miami in December. Calvin L. Holmes (M.R.P. ’93) was honored with the Monsignor Jack Egan Community Service Award from faith-based community developer Genesis Housing Development Corporation at the Friends of Genesis 11th Annual Awards Reception, “Building Green for the Future.” Holmes is the executive director of the Chicago Community Loan Fund (CCLF), a nonprofit lender that finances affordable housing and community development activities benefiting low- and moderate-income communities in Chicago. CCLF works throughout metropolitan Chicagoland. Peter Marino (B.Arch. ’70) was awarded the AIA New York State Award of Excellence for his design of the Palazzo Fendi boutique in Rome, Italy. The 7,500-square-foot store juxtaposes tradition and modernity, mirroring both Rome and Fendi’s history and present. Through the materials, shapes, and movements, the store reflects a scenario of contrasts: light and dark, curved and linear, rough and smooth, white and black, modern and antique, light and heavy, baroque and renaissance. Diane Matyas’s (B.F.A. ’84, M.F.A. ’89) new children’s book, The Terrible Captain Jack Visits the Museum or A Guide to Museum Manners for Incorrigle Pirates and the Like, was recently published by the Noble Maritime Collection. Matyas wrote and illustrated the book that features a mean and dangerous pirate who’s curious enough to visit a museum, but doesn’t quite know how to act in one. His friend Steve, a monkey, is there to give him some tips. Muse Architects was named the 2007 Top Firm National Award from Residential Architect magazine. The award recognizes the body of work created during the firms twenty-three year history. Stephen Muse (M.Arch. ’76) is the senior principal of the Bethesda, Maryland-based firm. Hilary North (B.F.A. ’84) had a solo show at Manhattan Graphics Center in October called “Missing the Sky: Remembering and Recovering,” which included five mixed-media prints created to commemorate the fifth anniversary of 9/11. All five prints have been accepted into the permanent collection of the National September 11 Memorial and Museum at the World Trade Center.

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Ann Pendleton-Jullian (B.Arch. ’79) started in September as the new director of Ohio State University’s Knowlton School of Architecture after teaching for 14 years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. New bronze sculpture from New York-based Joel Perlman (B.F.A. ’65) was on display at Chicago’s Roy Boyd Gallery this winter. Sidney Piburn (M.F.A. ’69) was featured in “Books Link Tibetan Buddhism to Ithaca,” published in Syracuse’s Post-Standard. The article describes Piburn’s first meeting with the Dalai Lama in India in 1974, his subsequent trips to Ithaca, and Snow Lion Press—the Buddhist publishing house where Piburn is vice president and editor-in-chief. Joseph Podlesnik (M.F.A. ’92) was recently hired as a full-time faculty member in the foundations department of the Art Institute of Pittsburgh’s online division. Architect, planner, and urban designer Mark Strauss (B.Arch. ’75) has been honored by the New York State American Institute of Architects as the first recipient of the Fellows Award. Established in 2006, the purpose of the award is to recognize a fellow of the AIA who has exemplified the philosophy of mentorship within the profession. Sarah Sutro (B.F.A. ’72) recently exhibited paitings in the group show “Natural Processes” at the Unocal Theater Gallery in the International School of Bankok. A portion of the proceeds from the show were donated to the Lopburi AIDS Temple. Sculptor Rebecca Thompson (M.F.A. ’03) recently completed The Phoenix, a 28-foot-tall freestanding structure of rammed earth at a traditional gateway and western entrance to Phoenix, AZ. According to Thompson, “The monument draws on the mythical story of the Phoenix Bird which rises anew from its own burning ashes. The Phoenix sculpture seeks to rediscover our

city’s history and the pioneering spirit of the Southwest.” Rammed earth sculpture involves a construction process of compressing a damp mixture of earth that has suitable proportions of sand, gravel, and clay into an external supported frame that molds the shape of a wall section; later, the frame is removed, leaving a solid wall of earth. Janine Wong (B.Arch. ’80) exhibited “Quotidian Practice” at the Artists Foundation Gallery in Boston in November and December. The exhibit explored the spirit and language of image making in 122 collages presented as a site-installation project. Wong teaches design and typography at the University of Massachusetts–Dartmouth. Höweler + Yoon Architecture’s Meejin Yoon (B.Arch. ’95) and Eric Höweler (B.Arch. ’94, M.Arch. ’96) won the Architectural Record Design Vanguard award for 2007. The award highlights “the world’s top emerging designers” who “are committed to making architecture count.” Jim Zver (M.F.A. ’69) and other members of the Silver Lake Art Collective participated in the inaugural exhibit of the Alegria Gallery in Los Angeles. Zver showed a summer series collage, Summer #11, from a group of collages using the insides of safety envelopes as the primary element. Zver also participated in Art for Shelter’s first exhibition at the Salvation Army Alegria in Los Angeles. The mission of Art for Shelter is to enhance the social services environment through the exhibition of original artwork, and to provide local artists with additional exhibition opportunities. Gallery commissions supports HIV/AIDS housing and child development programs at the Salvation Army Alegria. In addition, in West Palm Beach, FL, Zver was one of five gallery artists exhibiting in “Rock Paper Scissors” at Mulry Fine Art.AAP

IN MEMORIAM William Buckhout (B.Arch. ’37) February 18, 2008 Edwin John Mullens III (B.Arch. ’44) December 12, 2007 Jerrold Richard Voss (B.Arch. ’54) November 20, 2007 Michael McDougall (M.R.P. ’59) April 8, 2007 Peter Nobles (B.Arch. ’85) November 11, 2007

—Cohen———Cronin—Dahl— —Marino—Matyas—Muse—— ————Perlman—Pibum— —Thompson—Wong—Yoon—

HENEGHAN PENG ARCHITECTS WINS DESIGN COMPETITION FOR LONDON OLYMPICS FOOTBRIDGE Dublin-based architect Shih-Fu Peng (B.Arch. ’89) and Roisin

ROBERTO EINAUDI CARRIES ON FAMILY LEGACY FROM CU TO ROME From the classrooms of Ithaca to the historic streets of Rome, Roberto Einaudi has remained close to the university where he

trained as an architect and where his father taught for many years. The Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies at Cornell, established in 1961, bears his father’s name. Einaudi (B.Arch. ’61) was a founder of the Cornell in Rome Program and was its first director from 1986 to 1995. He also found the program its first base of operations in the Palazzo Massimo alle Colonne, belonging to one of Italy’s princely families. “At the very beginning, one of the primary needs of the college was trying to make the whole thing work,” he said during a 20th-anniversary celebration and reunion of program alumni held last March in Rome. “We hired a young woman, Anna Rita Flati, who had worked with me since she was 18 years Heneghan of Heneghan Peng Architects (HParc), old at the architectural firm of Brown, Daltas, and Associates.” along with Adams Kara Taylor Engineers, won the That hire is part of Einaudi’s legacy to the Rome program—Flati has been a mainstay throughout competition to design a footbridge at the heart its history and serves as its administrative director. of Olympic Park for the London, England games Einaudi is a member of a prominent family in Italy whose influence extends from agriculture and in 2012. The team beat out a field of 46 overall publishing to economics, banking, and national and international politics. His grandfather, Luigi Einaudi competitors and then a shortlist of six designers (1874–1961), was an economist and the second president of the Italian Republic from 1948 to 1955. and engineers. His father, Mario, was an educator and antifascist who emigrated to the United States in the 1930s and The bridge—which will have a total width of first came to Cornell during World War II. more than 180 feet—will span the River Lea and “My father was a professor of political science at Messina University in the 1930s,” Einaudi said in will be centrally located near the Olympic stadium, an interview conducted earlier this year at his home next to Campo di Fiore in Rome. “When the Fasaquatics center, and basketball arena. cist Party made it obligatory to pledge allegiance to the Fascists, my father refused to do so and came The jury praised HParc’s concept designs to the United States.” which made the bridge a spectacle in games Roberto was born in New York City in 1938, while his father was teaching at Fordham University. mode by using the landscape for color and “In the middle of the Second World War, he was called to Cornell to teach the US officers who were activity. After the games, the structure can be going to the campaign in Italy, so they would know something about the country they were going to, in transformed to leave two footbridges linked by a 05 order to be able to relate to the Italians as a liberation force.” central blade-like walkway, offering views over the While his father taught government, Einaudi joined Cornell as an architecture student in 1956. “It was a return to Ithaca,” he explained, “because I had river and Carpenters Lock, a unique 1930s historic left Ithaca for three years to go to Phillips Exeter Academy.” structure on the River Lea waterway. “I was, as a young boy, very good in mathematics, and I loved to draw,” he said. “So when I discussed with my parents what my future was, I said, ‘I Director of infrastructure and utilities for the might become an artist.’ And they replied, “Since you have the virtue of being good both in drawing and in the technical fields, why don’t you try architecOlympic Delivery Authority Simon Wright said, “The winning team impressed the design jury with ture?’ It was a very good suggestion.” Einaudi’s first job in an architecture firm came in 1957, when he worked with Louis I. Kahn in Philadelphia. He has lived and worked in Rome since their understanding of the need to plan games 1962. Today he is a partner and architect in Studio Einaudi in Rome, which he founded in 1977. The studio specializes in design and supervision of museand legacy together. Their designs will help us ums and exhibits, restoration of historic buildings, and urban projects in historic and archaeological centers including Rome and Naples. lock-in legacy now by designing a bridge that Significant projects by the studio have included La Sapienza/the Museum of Classical Art, the museum at Casa di Goethe, the Capitoline Museums, meets games-time needs but which also leaves and renovations of Palazzo Massimo alla Colonne and the American Academy in Rome’s Villa Aurelia and main building. behind a striking structure in the heart of the He has also been a visiting lecturer and critic at institutions in the United States, Australia, and Europe. Olympic Park for future generations to enjoy.” Currently, Studio Einaudi is responsible for the excavation, restoration, and reuse of an ancient Roman theater buried under the modern city of NaPeng and Heneghan said, “We are thrilled to have won this competition, particularly after being ples—“unveiling the stratifications of history in a manner that the visitor will be able to experience the site as if on a time machine,” Einaudi said. His work in preserving the past also extends to his own family history. “I’m writing a book looking into the family back to the 1600s, and going through faced by such incredible opposition. We hope that the time when modern Italy was slowly being formed,” he said. our design will form an important element within A farm near Dogliani, which his grandfather established, is part of the legacy. “The house and land bought by my grandfather in 1897 [is] where we still the spectacle of the London 2012 Games and as make the family wine, where we have the family home,” he added. a striking element of the enhanced connections Einaudi is organizing an exhibit in Rome to commemorate the 60th anniversary next year of his grandfather’s election to the presidency, concurrent the Olympic Park will create in legacy.” AAP with a project “to translate Luigi Einaudi’s writings into English to make them available in the Anglo-Saxon world,” he said. 01 Jim Zver. Summer #11. (2003). 9-5/8" x 16-1/2". Collage. In early 2007, Einaudi was nominated president of Fondazione Luigi Einaudi di Roma. “[It was] first set up in 1962, immediately after the death of my 02 Cover of Diane’s Matyas’s recently published children’s grandfather,” he said. Another foundation, the Fondazione Luigi Einaudi in Turin, maintains a research library of more than 225,000 volumes, formed around the donation by book. 03 From Rebecca Thompson’s The Phoenix in Phoenix, AZ. the Einaudi family of his grandfather’s library of 70,000 books, Einaudi said. His family also remains involved with the Einaudi Center at Cornell. The center and the Institute for European Studies receive support from Einaudi’s Photos provided. brother, Luigi, through the San Giacomo Charitable Foundation. The resources are being used by the Einaudi Center for its Foreign Policy Initiative. Luigi 04 Heneghan Peng Architects. Olympic Park footbridge Einaudi has been a Bartels World Affairs Lecturer at Cornell and is a former US Ambassador to the Organization of American States.AAP design for 2012 London, England games. 05 Robert Einaudi. Photo provided.

CORNELL architecture/art/planning NEWS 04—spring 2008

Yana Gincheva Rachovska (B.Arch. â&#x20AC;&#x2122;10 ). Credit: William Staffeld

CORNELL architecture/art/planning NEWS 04â&#x20AC;&#x201D;spring2008

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