RE RE VIEW VIEW PRINCETON- school of ARCHITECTURE rumor- SPRING 2010 ---------------------------------------------
Hard, Soft, Fast, Slow: Access and Mobility in 21st Century Cities
SPRING 2010 LECTURE SERIES recap: envelope conversations
10 feb — Borders — Richard Sennett, Professor, Department of Sociology, New York University and London School of Economics — Eyal Weizman, Architect; Director, Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths, University of London — Teddy Cruz, Professor in Public Culture, Visual Arts Department, UC San Diego — Gerald E. Frug, Louis D. Brandeis Professor of Law, Harvard University
25 feb — Attachments — Bruno Latour, Professor and Vice-President for Research, Sciences Po, Paris — Greg Lynn, Principal of Greg Lynn FORM; o.Univ. Prof. Arch., University of Applied Arts, Vienna; Professor, UCLA — Axel Kilian, Assistant Professor, Princeton School of Architecture — Dr. Albena Yaneva, Manchester Architecture Research Centre, University of Manchester
24 mar — Global Technologies — Matthias Schuler, Engineer and CEO, Transsolar, Stuttgart; Adjunct Professor of Environmental Technologies, GSD, Harvard University — Saskia Sassen, Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology, Columbia University — Marc Simmons, Partner, Front, Inc. New York; Lecturer, Princeton School of Architecture — Ulrich Knaack, Engineer, Co-founder, Imagine Envelope, The Hague
29 mar — ENVELOPES — Jeffrey Kipnis, Professor, Knowlton School of Architecture, Ohio State; Visiting Professor, Princeton School of Architecture — Ben van Berkel, Principal, UNStudio, Amsterdam — Jesse Reiser, Associate Professor, Princeton School of Architecture; Principal, Reiser + Umemoto RUR Architecture P.C., New York — Alejandro Zaera-Polo, Visiting Professor, Princeton University School of Architecture; Partner, Foreign Office Architects, London
Zaera-polo: Rather than thinking of buildings as objects, the Princeton Envelope Group is interested in seeing buildings as “things” in the sense that they are attached to a much wider set of processes, or controversies. The envelope is the limit between public and private, inside and outside; these are limiting these milieus but at the same time they draw these attachments to them. What we are going to address today is the set of tools that enable architects to draw these attachments to the envelopes as “things,” points of convergence of different processes and points of debate and discussion between different forces and milieus.
Allen: Alejandro’s argument is double: on the one hand, he calls into question the naïve assumption that architects can make political boundaries disappear simply by wishing them away. He reminds us that the politics of the boundary and the architecture of the boundary never perfectly coincide. But it’s also a reassertion of a very specific aspect of architectural expertise: the suggestion here is that if architects are expert at anything, they are experts at limits and boundaries.
Latour: Networks have made the notion of the impenetrability of anything disputable. Networks allow redistribution of actions that were self-contained before and distribute their attributes around. When we are talking about the envelope we are not at all talking about a set of contained entities. On the contrary, we are talking about something that has largely been redistributed throughout different types of entities.
Sassen: How do we make the envelope more sustainable? Can we use the complexity of the city? What would it mean to bridge it with the multiple ecologies of nature? Rather than doing remediation and recycling, to really try to use all of the variety, all of those complexities, and then connect them with the multi-scalar capabilities of nature. The notion for me is bridging. Not reducing to some sort of common denominator where we can go at it with a concerted effort. No. Multiplying the bridges, re-deploying and opening up.
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28 apr — Faciality — Jeff Koons, Artist, New York — Sylvia Lavin, Director of Critical Studies and MA/PhD Programs and Professor of Architectural History and Theory at UCLA — Elizabeth Diller, Architect, Diller, Scofidio + Renfro, New York; Professor, Princeton School of Architecture
Above: Alejandro Zaera-Polo; left: Jeff Koons; below: lecture notes, “Global Technologies,” Marc Simmons; bottom: Sylvia Lavin, surprise guest Frank Gehry, Jeff Koons, and Liz Diller.
van berkel: I believe that is important to use the envelope as an apparatus, as a tool, whereby we can use it as instrumental for the way we can produce an architecture. Maybe in that sense, I wish I could go much deeper into the term apparatus.... Maybe the apparatus is the best description of the way we have approached the idea of the surface and spatial organization.
Koons: The envelope is about power. It’s about wanting to exercise power and at the same time it’s about giving up power. The envelope is about serving or being served. It’s about control—having control and giving up control.
The Center for Architecture Urbanism and Infrastructure has invited leading scholars, researchers, and thinkers to present and discuss ideas about the changing infrastructural needs of urban mega-regions in the coming decades. Led by Tom Wright, Executive Director of the Regional Plan Association and Visiting Professor at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School, and CAUI Director Mario Gandelsonas, this workshop will consider the possibilities opened up by the growing trends of regional commuting and personal digital technology. The themes of the workshop will be addressed broadly in order to reconsider the effects of an urban monoculture of highways amidst the increasing influence of mobile communications technology. How do soft systems of communication— smart phones, social media, GPS—change our understanding of existing, hard systems of transportation—roads, rails, airplanes? How can a slow infrastructure respond to the immediacy of tele-media communications and encourage variety, diversity, and new patterns of use that enhance the urban environment? The attendees of the workshop represent a broad field of expertise. With our combined perspective, we can re-imagine urban futures that leverage technologies to generate new configurations of urban space and form. On April 9th and 10th, the Center for Architecture, Infrastructure, and Urbanism held a workshop that brought together scholars, designers, and policy experts. Organized by Tom Wright (Regional Plan Association and Woodrow Wilson School) and Mario Gandelsonas, the workshop focused on issues of transportation planning facing cities in the near future. The Friday evening keynote speech was given by Chris Ward, the Executive Director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, who assessed his department’s challenges with the World Trade Center Site and reflected on the issues surrounding unglamorous problems like the Port Authority Bus Terminal. Ward’s respondents, Prof. Kenneth Jackson (Columbia), Dean Marilyn Taylor (University of Pennsylvania), and Dean Stan Allen, focused respectively on history, planning, and architecture. In Saturday’s first panel, Tom Wright moderated a discussion on automobile transportation. Aaron Woolf presented his documentary film on Detroit’s auto industry describing the effects of car-focused urban planning. Prof. Owen Gutfreund (Hunter College) offered a historical perspective on highway planning in the U.S., and illustrated the importance of transportation policy in a world that separates work, leisure, and living spaces. Jon Zeitler (Zipcar) discussed Zipcar’s model for auto transport that benefits from existing infrastructure while decreasing auto use. Representing a perspective from architecture, Paul Lewis presented speculative design projects from his office, Lewis Tsurumaki Lewis,
Keynote speaker Christopher O. Ward, Executive Director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
that addressed the interaction between cars and cities. The second panel looked at rail infrastructure and its impacts on urban and regional planning. The panel’s moderator, Petra Todorovich (Regional Plan Association), began the session by presenting the Regional Plan Association’s America 2050 plan. Frederik Pretorius (University of Hong Kong) discussed the special case of Hong Kong’s high urban density and how the government manages rail line expansions. Ariella Masboungi (state architect/ planner, France) discussed how sprawling cities in Europe are responding with new modes of transportation like light rail and dedicated bus lines to reinforce density. Wu Jiang (Tongji University, Shanghai) described China’s network of high speed rail lines as a compliment to their highway planning program. Dana Cuff (UCLA cityLAB) explained her idea for postsuburban mobilities in Southern California, and described the challenge creating ‘smart growth’ in post-suburban landscapes. Cuff also suggested that a strong vision for design is what drives good policy, linking two of the main themes of the workshop. The third panel on digital technologies’ overlaps with transportation, moderated by Mario Gandelsonas, offered new ways to consider transportation questions. Joanna Berzowska (Concordia University, XS Labs) presented her work with new technologies embedded in wearable items that encourage more sensual interaction with the digital. Kristen Purcell (Pew Research Center) described her
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Partial prototype of concept car design— Axel Kilian, Peter Schmitt, Patrik Kuenzler, Enrique Garcia, MIT Media Lab 2005.
research on teens’ internet and cell phone use. Axel Kilian reframed how we think about technologies of mobility, from shoes to sedan chairs to eliminating the idea of waiting. Prof. Christine Boyer was skeptical about the newness of new media, and suggested that what might be new was the invisible layer of information that overlays space today. Overall, the workshop brought together many interesting presentations from different fields that found common points for discussion, and highlighted the challenges facing design and planning disciplines in the future. —Sara Stevens
9 april keynote
— Christopher O. Ward, Executive Director, Port Authority of New York and New Jersey — Stan Allen, Dean and Professor, Princeton University School of Architecture — Kenneth Jackson, Professor in History and the Social Sciences, Columbia University — Marilyn Taylor, Dean and Professor, University of Pennsylvania School of Design
10 april Interfacing with Existing Hard Infrastructure
— Tom Wright, (moderator) Executive Director, Regional Plan Association; Visiting Lecturer, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University
— Aaron Woolf, filmmaker — Owen Gutfreund, Associate Professor of Urban Affairs and Planning, Hunter College — Jon Zeitler, Executive Vice President for Corporate Development, Zipcar — Paul Lewis, Assistant Professor, Princeton School of Architecture; principal, LTL Architects, New York New Life for Hard and Fast Infrastructure
— Petra Todorovich, (moderator) Director of America 2050, Regional Plan Association — Frederik Pretorius, Associate Professor, Department of Real Estate and Construction, University of Hong Kong — Ariella Masboungi, State Architect-Planner , France — Wu Jiang, Vice President, Tongji University, Shanghai — Dana Cuff, Professor of Architecture and Urban Design, UCLA; Founding Director, cityLAB Soft Infrastructure & The Digital
— Mario Gandelsonas, (moderator) Professor, Princeton School of Architecture; Director, CAUI
— Joanna Berzowska, Associate Professor of Design and Computation Arts, Concordia University; Research Director, XS Labs — Kristen Purcell, Associate Director for Research, Pew Research Center — Axel Kilian, Assistant Professor, Princeton School of Architecture — Christine Boyer, Professor of Architecture and Urbanism, Princeton School of Architecture