11 minute read
Keynote lectures
Ws 2019› november 2019›
07.11.19›
DORTE MANDRUP
Dorte Mandrup A/S [Copenhagen, Denmark] Conditions and Beyond 05.12.19›
GUY NORDENSON
Guy Nordenson and Associates [New York, USA] Working Structures 16.01.20›
SARAH SPIEKERMANN
Vienna University of Economics and Business [Vienna, Austria] Digital Ethics in the Knowledge Society 30.01.20›
MICHEL DESVIGNE
MDP Michel Desvigne Paysagiste [Paris, France] Transforming Landscapes
02.07.20›
HARALD WELZER
FUTURZWEI. Stiftung Zukunftsfähigkeit [Berlin, Germany] Future Images of Sustainability 09.07.20›
THOMAS RAU
Turntoo [Amsterdam, Netherlands] Material Matters Videos of the lectures are available on ovmf.de
‹ss 2020 ‹july 2020
Greenland › Icefjord information centre for glacier experts and climate researchers
7 ›
NOVEMBER 2019
Conditions and Beyond
DORTE MANDRUP DORTE MANDRUP A/S | COPENHAGEN
As founder and creative director of her Copenhagen-based firm, architect Dorte Mandrup inspires a highly committed international team of 70 every day. In addition, she is vice president of the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, member of the Historic Buildings Council, adjunct professor at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and regularly takes on guest professorships. Her work won numerous awards, including the Green Good Design Award of the Chicago Athenaeum, the Bauwelt Award, the C.F. Hansen-Medaille, the Finn Juhl Design Prize and recently the lifelong Honorary Grant of the Danish Arts Foundation. Her powerful light and sound installation – an artistic interpretation of her cultural project in Greenland, the Icefjord Information Centre – took centre stage at the Venice Biennale of Architecture.
CONDITIONS AND BEYOND
› Dorte Mandrup Dorte Mandrup’s lecture focused on her landmark projects that were, or are currently being created at UNESCO World Heritage sites. The Icefjord Centre is located 250 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle and the Wadden Sea Centre, a thatched exhibition centre, on Denmark’s rough West coast. The architect gave an emphatic account of her approach to construction projects in such sensitive environments. The starting point of the process is to understand and investigate the prevailing conditions. What it takes is a comprehensive interpretation of all accessible facts and feelings, far beyond the mere level of observation.
DENMARK
Wadden Sea Centre
Dorte Mandrup pointed out, "Embedding a building into a landscape gives us the opportunity to emphasize the uniqueness of the place. The relationship between the physicality of a building and the vastness of a landscape brings the potential to work at countless different scales. We can bring out the drama and splendour of a great natural landscape through the arrangement, shape and types of materials we use in a building"
Houston, Texas › Menil Drawing Institute
5 ›
DECEMBER 2019
Working Structures
Guy Nordenson established Arup’s New York office in 1987 and founded Guy Nordenson and Associates (GNA) in 1997. In addition, he is a professor at Princeton University and was the seventh structural engineer to be awarded the AIA’s Institute Honors for Collaborative Achievement Award, and the first practicing structural engineer to be elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Since 2007, Guy Nordenson and Associates have been active in developing strategies for climate change and coastal adaptation and storm surge mitigation through research initiatives, publications, exhibitions, and in consultation with stakeholders at the local and national level.
WASHINGTON
National Museum of African American History and Culture
WORKING STRUCTURES
› Guy Nordenson Guy Nordenson put the emphasis of his lecture on “Working Structures” – in allusion to his recently published book Reading Structures. The book presents around 40 structures and buildings, organized around three thematic sections: “Simply Supported,” “Building History” and “Engineering Ephemera.”
“Working Structures” complemented the considerations included in the book, highlighting projects that have been dealing with questions both of social and climate change in New York City and on the North Atlantic coast since 11 September 2001 with a view to tropical storms and rising sea levels.
Guy Nordenson talking with scholarship holders Cathrin Merscher and Eva Schneuwly (from right to left).
The New York-based firm has established itself as an effective partner of renowned architectural firms worldwide. Guy Nordenson presented recently completed projects such as the Menil Drawing Institute in Houston, Texas, with Johnston Marklee, the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. with Freelon Adjaye Bond/SmithGroup and the Kimbell Art Museum Expansion in Fort Worth, Texas, with Renzo Piano Building Workshop.
Vision and application › What values are important to us?
16 ›
JANUARY 2020
Digital Ethics in the Knowledge Society
Dr. Sarah Spiekermann has been chair of the Institute for Information Systems and Society at the Vienna University of Economics and Business since 2009. She is author of several books, including Digitale Ethik – ein Wertesystem für das 21. Jahrhundert (2019) and the textbook Ethical IT Innovation. Since 2016, she has co-led the development of the first ethical standard for IT design to be published in 2020 by the IEEE (the world’s largest organization of engineers). Sarah Spiekermann regularly works as an expert and advisor to companies and governmental institutions, including the EU Commission and the OECD.
DIGITAL ETHICS IN THE KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY
› Sarah Spiekermann The central questions Sarah Spiekermann addresses in her work are questions related to values, data protection and ethics in the context of digitalisation.
Ever since Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge, it has been clear that knowledge has an ethical dimension. “Knowledge is power,” wrote Francis Bacon. But what is knowledge in the first place? Are our digital systems actually able to know? Or are they just able to make assumptions based on AI and Big Data that are then transformed into knowledge by selected individuals?
In her lecture, Sarah Spiekermann brought these central questions of our knowledge society to the fore and encouraged the audience to reflect and discuss. At the same time, she highlighted measures we can take – both in technological and social terms – to achieve a little more transparency and data quality as well as practical knowledge-building. The overall aim should be to make our society more knowledgeable.
» We should humbly acknowledge that we’re at the very beginning of a true knowledge society.
SARAH SPIEKERMANN
Detroit › Plan for the redevelopment of the historic East Riverfront District
30 ›
JANUARY 2020
Transforming Landscapes
Michel Desvigne is a landscape architect internationally renowned for his rigorous and contemporary designs and for the originality and relevance of his research work. He has provided landscape designs in collaboration with major world architectural studios such as Herzog & de Meuron, Foster + Partners and Richard Rogers and Rem Koolhaas. Among Michel Desvigne’s most renowned awards are the 2019 AIA Honor Award for the Detroit East Riverfront Framework Plan (US), the 2014 European Prize for Urban Public Space and France’s 2011 Grand Prize for Urbanism for his continual contribution to and reflection upon the city and surroundings.
I consider myself to be an explorer rather than an exporter. I help people see the landscapes, understand the mechanisms at work giving them form, and act upon these mechanisms in order to transform the landscapes.
MICHEL DESVIGNE
TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPES
› Michel Desvigne Michel Desvigne’s work characteristically aims at highlighting landscapes and rendering them visible. His lecture gave a vivid account of this, presenting numerous projects, such as the Detroit East Riverfront in the United States or the Old Harbour and other public spaces in Marseille.
In addition, Michel Desvigne described how the landscape architect’s profession is changing and how its challenges today – unlike earlier times – are no longer related only to aesthetic aspects, but increasingly to climate and ecological issues. Today, most landscaping projects are about transforming spaces. Frequent objectives include densification, land use conversion and embellishment. These transformation processes take time, regardless of whether they involve extensive landscapes or urban subdistricts. Michel Desvigne emphasized that any initial vision we have should prove sufficiently adaptable to respond to economic challenges and changing requirements.
BORDEAUX | PARC AUX ANGELIQUES
Reintroduction of 45,000 indigenous plants on the banks of the Garonne
PARIS | SACLAY
Establishment of a 7kilometre park
Evolving societies › A spirit of change
02 ›
JULY 2020
Future Images of Sustainability
Sociologist and social psychologist Prof. Dr. Harald Welzer is co-founder and director of the foundation FUTURZWEI. Stiftung Zukunftsfähigkeit, director of the Norbert Elias Center for Transformation Design at the University of Flensburg (Europa-Universität Flensburg) and a permanent guest professor of social psychology at the University of Sankt Gallen. He is the author of numerous books about sociopolitical topics and sustainability, including Climate Wars: What People Will Be Killed For in the 21st Century, Selbst denken. Eine Anleitung zum Widerstand, Die smarte Diktatur. Der Angriff auf unsere Freiheit, and most recently Alles könnte anders sein. Eine Gesellschaftsutopie für freie Menschen. All were published by S. Fischer Verlag. Harald Welzer is also the editor of the magazine for future and politics taz.FUTURZWEI. Magazin für Zukunft und Politik.
FUTURE IMAGES OF SUSTAINABILITY
› Harald Welzer
In his lecture, Harald Welzer made it plain that the coronavirus crisis brings to light the shortfalls of our society. While society is locked down in a deep slumber, a particularly clear image becomes visible, as if frozen in a still image. It discloses the scandalous workings of the meat industry, the impact of long supply chains and the fact that our society is all about “more and more” and “bigger and bigger.”
Harald Welzer emphasized that change is essential, but that it does not necessarily involve sacrifice. All people benefit from car-free cities and sustainable food production. That is why a modern democracy needs images of a better future.
Civil society has many laboratories that develop a novel culture of living and doing business. The FUTURZWEI foundation – with its co-founder and director Harald Welzer – is committed to increasing the public visibility and political empowerment of such laboratories by telling the success stories of novel approaches and sharing them with civil society as a message in a bottle in cooperation with established media.
Harald Welzer talking with scholarship holders Marius Hümmer and Anca Bara (from left to right).
» With no images of the future, there is only consumption.
HARALD WELZER
SOCIOLOGIST
Sustainable architecture made of wood › Watching birds in a nature reserve
Material Matters
THOMAS RAU TURNTOO | AMSTERDAM 9 ›
JULY 2020
Thomas Rau founded the first two companies in the Netherlands specialized in circular economy. In 2010, he co-founded Turntoo, a consultancy for the architecture of a new economy. His architectural firm RAU pioneered the implementation of innovative climate-neutral buildings with a 100 % circulation potential. Thomas Rau won various awards: in 2013 he was elected Architect of the Year in the Netherlands. In addition, he won the ARC13 Oeuvre Award, honouring his substantial contribution to promoting and implementing sustainable architecture and circular building. His book Material Matters (Uhlstein Verlag), written together with his wife Sabine Oberhuber, is a bestselling book about Circular Economy.
MATERIAL MATTERS
› Thomas Rau
STELLENDAM, NETHERLANDS
Bird observatory In the view of Thomas Rau, our current way of doing business is a oneway street. He made it very clear that a system based on “extracting, processing, using and discarding resources” has become disconnected from the fundamental law of life and earth.
According to Thomas Rau, the circular economy is the imperative new economic model. Consumers are no longer owners but users, waste is history and materials are vested with rights, while their identities are registered in an online library.
Thomas Rau discussing with scholarship holders Paula Giauque and Jakob Deffner
The fact that the circular economy is not a utopia but in fact works is shown by the projects of architect Thomas Rau. His architectural firm pioneered the implementation of innovative climate-neutral buildings with a 100 % circulation potential. The Triodos Bank’s recently completed, fully reconstructible office building is built entirely of timber and was elected the most sustainable and innovative building of the year 2019/20.
