Beaver is an Interior Design Best of Year Finalist

Posted on November 30th, 2018 by Nicole Sakr

Posted under: _BEAVER R+D Center, Awards

Beaver Country Day School Research + Design Center has been named a 2018 Best of Year Awards finalist in the Education: Primary and High Schools category! See you at the awards event Friday! Tickets available HERE.

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TOMMOROW AT COOPER: SYMPOSIUM: THESIS NOW

Posted on November 30th, 2018 by Hannah Wang

Posted under: The Cooper Union

Laurie Hawkinson, “Cinetrain,” Thesis 1982-83. Faculty John Hedjuk, Anthony Candido, Peter Eisenman, Donald Wall, and Regi Weile.

Organized to address the agency, relevance, and history of the thesis studio in architecture curricula, Thesis Now is divided in three sessions moderated by Hayley Eber, Nader Tehrani and Eva Franch Gilabert:

  • Session 1 | 9:30 AM | Agency and Legacy will examine the value thesis carries both in and beyond the academic experience.
    Participants include: Andrew Kovacs, Caroline O’Donnell, Bryan Young, Deborah Garcia, Zenia Koreitem.
  • Session 2 | 11:30 AM | Research will focus on the various forms and roles played in structuring a thesis. This session asks each participant to explore the newly available Digital Access Project, a digital database of theses completed at The Cooper Union between 1966–2003. The presentations will center on topics or findings derived from researching the archive, and will be limited to 10 minutes each, followed by a moderated discussion.
    Participants include: Jimenez Lai, Bryony Roberts, Farzin Lotfi-Jam and Arindam Dutta.
  • Session 3 | 1:45 PM | Pedagogy will integrate and expand on the material presented in a moderated discussion addressing shifting ideas shaping thesis curricula and pedagogy today.
    Participants include: Joan Ockman, Scott Colman, Stan Allen, Cristina Goberna, and Andrew Holder.
  • A reception will follow the symposium in the Gelman Foyer.

This symposium is organized by Michael Young and Igor Bragado.

Saturday, December 1st from 9:30am -5:00pm at the Frederick P. Rose Auditorium, at 41 Cooper Square. The event is free and open to the public. General public should reserve a space. More info and registration HERE.

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HASHIM SARKIS: CYANOMETRICS AT COOPER TOMORROW

Posted on November 29th, 2018 by Hannah Wang

Posted under: Lectures, The Cooper Union

Hashim Sarkis will lecture tomorrow, Friday Nov. 30th, at The Cooper Union. The lecture will be held at 6:30pm in the Frederick P. Rose Auditorium, at 41 Cooper Square (on Third Avenue between 6th and 7th Streets). More info HERE.

Byblos Blue Installation, Valparaiso Biennale, 2017. Photo by Daniella Samira Maamari.

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TONIGHT AT COOPER: CECIL BALMOND: SOFT LOGIC, SERIAL OUTCOMES

Posted on November 29th, 2018 by Nicole Sakr

Posted under: Lectures, The Cooper Union

“An internationally renowned artist, architect and engineer, Cecil Balmond OBE, is widely considered to be one of the most significant creators of his generation. Balmond transcends the conventional boundaries of discipline, working in the crossover between art and science. In this dynamic area, he has re-invented the very concept of space, transforming the meaning of geometry, form and structure.”

Tonight from 6:30pm – 9:00pm Cecil Balmond with lecture in the Frederick P. Rose Auditorium, at 41 Cooper Square. The event is free and open to the public and is approved for 1.5 LU | HSW Continuing Education Credits. More info and registration HERE.

 

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Tanderrum wins Architecture MasterPrize

Posted on November 28th, 2018 by Nicole Sakr

Posted under: _Tanderrum Bridge, Awards

Tanderrum Pedestrian Bridge has won a 2018 Architecture MasterPrize for Urban Design! The Tanderrum Bridge was a collaboration with Melbourne-based John Wardle Architects. More about Tanderrum Bridge HERE. See all the 2018 MasterPrize winning projects HERE.

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NADER MODERATING THE THE WILLIAM COOPER MACK THESIS FELLOWSHIP LECTURE TONIGHT

Posted on November 27th, 2018 by Nicole Sakr

Posted under: Lectures, The Cooper Union

William Cooper Mack, Of Anisotropic Matrices – Thesis, 2005-06

The William Cooper Mack Thesis Fellowship Lecture: Digital Materiality in Architecture is being presented at The Cooper Union tonight with lecturers Meejin Yoon and Fabio Gramzio. Nader and Michael Young will moderate. The lecture will be held in The Great Hall in the Foundation Building at 7 East 7th Street. While you’re there, make sure to stop by the current exhibition,  Archive and Artifact: The Virtual and the Physical, currently on display in the Arthur A. Houghton Gallery!

The event is free and open to the public. RSVP HERE.

“The work of Fabio Gramazio and Meejin Yoon both draw on digital and computational intelligence through their research and built body of work,” notes Dean Nader Tehrani. “Gramazio’s work, under the banner of Gramazio Kohler Research at ETH has effectively defined the many ways in which formal, spatial, and material practices have been transformed by digital protocols, using their laboratory as a test bed for novel and unprecedented fabrication explorations, working with both traditional materials and invented composites. Meejin Yoon’s work, in contrast, was launched at MIT under the banner of MY studio, and subsequently in collaboration with Höweler Yoon studios, with a research focused on interactive technologies, imaging all the ways in which physical spaces can be augmented through sensory technologies that make for intelligent and responsive environments. Now after more than a decade of research, the two bodies of work converge as digital technologies come into conversation with other disciplines, among them physics, biology, and other sciences. In a dynamic and active field, as architects who share an intense commitment to practice and research, both also share an imagination about how our pedagogies will be impacted by technologies that stand to alter our understanding of both representational and generative thinking.”

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‘UNFINISHED’ BOOK LAUNCH AT CUNY

Posted on November 15th, 2018 by Nicole Sakr

Posted under: Events

Nader is taking part in a panel at the UNFINISHED book launch at CUNY’s Spitzer School of Architecture Monday at 6pm. UNFINISHED explores projects from the Spanish Pavilion at the 15th Venice Architecture Biennale, more info on UNFINISHED can be found HERE.

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NADAAA AT GEORGIA TECH: THE TECTONIC GRAIN

Posted on November 14th, 2018 by Hannah Wang

Posted under: Installations + Exhibitions, Lectures

photo by Shenjie Li

The Tectonic Grain is a textual and visual array which draws from this experience of designing space for design. The exhibit’s unique layout acts as both model and statement. A lecture given by Nader of the same name on October 24th opened the exhibit and serves as a supplement to the exhibit. To read the corresponding essay, click HERE. To learn more about The Tectonic Grain and the Stubbins Gallery at the Georgia Tech College of Design click HERE.

exhibition connection detail; photo by Shenjie Li

NADAAA approaches architecture with an understanding of a shared ability between academia and its own buildings to teach and challenge the conventions of built space. NADAAA’s work includes three schools of architecture and design: The Hinman Building at Georgia Tech, the University of Melbourne School of Design, and the Daniels Faculty of Architecture at the University of Toronto. Consequently, NADAAA integrates within its practice an extensive understanding of design schools and the structural and circulatory factors that impact learning about design.

photo by Shenjie Li

In the Atlanta and Melbourne projects, research on suspension became a transformative pedagogical tool. At Georgia Tech, we used the gantry crane above to delicately suspend an entire studio space – “the crib” – in order to maintain the flexibility of the ground level. In the Melbourne School of Design, where there is no budgetary allocation for dedicated studio space, 22 meter LVL beams spanned the atrium and formed the structure for a totemic suspended structure that served as the only dedicated series of studio spaces. The structure is massive and volumetric at its top, extending down to the studio walls in a kind of bas-relief, and eventually thinning out to plywood veneers at its base, where the surface of the cladding serves to create a coffered acoustic ceiling that hovers above the great hall.

Melbourne hanging studio elevation; photo by Nader Tehrani

For the Daniels Building in Toronto, while the idea of suspension was not a motivating force, the integrative mandates and lessons of Atlanta and Melbourne projects became instrumental in the transformation of the design. When the concrete shell roof structure was challenged, the project was virtually brought to its knees in a moment of truth, as it were, effectively on the verge of compromising the building’s most salient feature. The question, for us, was whether this roof was a materially driven idea, or rather just about the integration of structural illumination, environmental, and hydrological performance, as the latter became to dominate our thinking, we redesigned the structure more economically in steel, while keeping its essential figure and performance intact. Composed of a layered system of parts, the steel I-beams with corrugated steel deck, covered with light gauge structs, gypsum board sheets with radiant panels, and a coating of paint. Thus, the paint shows no grain, as such, the most characteristic feature of the building resides in the morphological grain of the roof itself.

Toronto roof section; photo by Nader Tehrani

Credits
Curation and design: Nader Tehrani, Lisa LaCharité & Hannah Wang
NADAAA Installation: Hannah Wang & Luisel Zayas
Georgia Tech School of Architecture students: Shenjie Li & Rachel Cloyd
Photographs: Nader Tehrani & Shenjie Li

photo by Shenjie Li

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Machado & Silvetti: A Selective Biography

Posted on November 7th, 2018 by Nicole Sakr

Posted under: Academic, Press

A new monograph of Machado & Silvetti’s work begins with an introduction by Nader, who studied under Jorge and Rodolfo at the GSD. Below are excerpts from Nader’s introduction, his full introduction can be read HERE. The print monograph can be purchased online HERE from Oro Editions.

“Interpreting architecture is a sufficiently complex task, but reading into a work that has so deeply biased one’s own education, practice, and pedagogy is altogether another challenge. Such is the Oedipal anxiety I confront in returning to the work of Machado and Silvetti. Thus, rather than claim neutrality here, I want to acknowledge a motivated project, even if I bring to it a different cultural backdrop, generational perspective, and personal viewpoint. Suffice it to say that while this book contains a vast retrospective of their designs, it by no means completes their story. If much remains for them to build on, there is even more that others, like myself, will be contributing to their project through our own speculations.”

above: Djerba House by Silvetti and the Country House by Machado

“Among the myriad writings on typology of this period, the significance of Machado and Silvetti’s contributions lay in the idea that architecture is a cultural practice, and therefore immersed in systems of representation and engagement with a larger public. As such, while they adopted types as a convention for establishing continuity, they did not idealize them. Types, for them, did not have the authority of propriety, but instead were cultural matter as mutable as they were meaningful in their ability to transmit change. In this regard, Machado and Silvetti’s work also explicitly challenged the avant-garde notion of the ‘new’, which is invariably and repeatedly absorbed, consumed, and normalized in the digestions of the cultural process.”

above: Asian Art Study Center at the Ringling Museum of Art

“The transformation of Machado and Silvetti as a firm into a builidng practice produced a meaningful shift from their academic work. With a small set of commisssion in the 1980s and early 1990s behind them, winning tje Getty Villa competition and embarking on the design of its expansion in 1994 enlarged the office tenfold. It also required the partners to translate their conceptual and theoretical priorities for a broader cohort. Their baggage of professional experiences would catapult them into new possibilities for materializing complex assemblies, in some instances; but it would also be a sober reminder of how the industry predetermines the vast set of questions and specifications that go into building processes. Balancing out the relationship between the customized and the generic, the theoretical premises of the figural and the configurative helped Machado and Silvetti to set certain priorities within each project.”

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Spectrum Celebrates the Future of Kendall Square

Posted on November 5th, 2018 by Jacob Hangen

Posted under: _MIT Site 4, Press

Spectrum, MIT’s publication for friends and supporters, recently provided an update on the future Kendall Square. Here, MIT President Rafael Reif explained that the boundaries between campus, community, education and entrepreneurship will blur. “Once the cranes leave town, we’ll be left with a Kendall Square full of possibility for the Institute, the region, the nation, and the world… If you haven’t been to Kendall Square recently, I hope you’ll stop by for a visit. You’ll be amazed by the progress we’re making.” Read the full article in Spectrum HERE. More info on NADAAA and Perkins+Will’s collaboration on the MIT Site 4 project at Kendall Square can be found HERE.

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