College of Architecture + Planning Fall 2009 Lecture Series

For a PDF document of the Lecture Series poster click here, 795KB.
Unless otherwise noted, all lectures take place in AAC 127.

Monday, September 14 at 5:30pm
Teddy Cruz
Radicalizing the Local: Post-Bubble Urban Strategies
The micro urbanisms that are emerging within small communities across the city in the form of non-conforming spatial and entrepreneurial practices suggest that new economies and social institutions will emerge from within neighborhoods. Besides buildings, can architects also design new political and economic processes, in the context of these conditions? And can new spatial systems, public infrastructures and modes of co-habitation emerge from the need to re-think the institutions of urban development?

Monday, September 21 at 5:30pm
Jacob Gines
Grabbing at Water: Making Tangible the Intangible
Great architecture, beautiful architecture, has at its core an essence that cannot be explained; for in the moment that it is, it vanishes from our sight yet lingers in our soul. Louis Kahn once taught that “the more deeply a thing is engaged in the immeasurable, the more deeply lasting is its value.” As the 2008 Bailey Traveling Fellow, Jacob Gines traveled to Northern India seeking the intangible qualities of a very tangible India. What resulted were revealing insights into the immeasurable qualities of architecture and the beauty that often lies beneath its surfaces. Joining Jacob will be a selection of past Bailey recipients to share their impressions of the "intangible".

Monday, September 21 thru Monday, October 5
Exhibit Curated by Jacob Gines
Intimations: 21 Years of the Roger Bailey Traveling Fellowship
Over the past 21 years, graduate students from the University of Utah's Graduate School of Architecture have traveled throughout the world as recipients of the prestigious Roger Bailey Traveling Fellowship. For the first time, Intimations: 21 Years of the Roger Bailey Traveling Fellowship brings together the varied and intriguing sketches of past recipients; revealing their intention, understanding and appreciation of architecture and the built environment.

Friday, September 25 at 8:45am
David W. Orr, PhD
David Orr is a renown environmental scholar, teacher, activist, writer, and entrepreneur. He is the recipient of four Honorary degrees and other awards including The Millennium Leadership Award from Global Green, the Bioneers Award, the National Wildlife Federation Leadership Award, a Lyndhurst Prize acknowledging "persons of exceptional moral character, vision, and energy." He has lectured at hundreds of colleges and universities throughout the U.S. and Europe. He has served a trustee and adviser to several organizations and foundations.
In Partnership with AIA UTAH
(Lecture will take place at AIA Utah Design Conference in the Salt Palace Convention Center)

Friday, September 25 at 11:00am
John Peterson, AIA
Founder, President, Spokesperson, and Strategist of Public Architecture, a firm devoted to identify and solve practical problems of human interaction in the built environment. Public Architecture seeks to make architectural resources available to the public good by means of design, education, and advocacy.
In Partnership with AIA UTAH
(Lecture will take place at AIA Utah Design Conference in the Salt Palace Convention Center)

Friday, September 25 at 2:00pm
James Timberlake, FAIA
Founding partner of KieranTimberlake, an award-winning and internationally published architecture firm noted for its research, and innovative design and planning services. The firm believes that great and wonderful architecture cannot be made without the clear vision and guidance of a provocative client working in critical unison with the aspiring architect. Employing a collective rather than singular intelligence in the making of architecture, the focus is on the creative selection, organization, integration and articulation of systems about the ideas, ideals and daily use of the inhabitant.
In Partnership with AIA Utah
(Lecture will take place at AIA Utah Design Conference in the Salt Palace Convention Center)

Monday October 5, at 5:30 PM
Julio Bermudez, Ph.D.
The Good in the Architectural Beautiful. Lessons from the Unsaid.
Our contemporary world suffers from a widespread negation or blindness toward beauty in all its splendor, depth, sublimity and transcendence. This is particularly problematic in architecture and the arts, disciplines historically aligned with the ethics and aesthetics of the experiential and perceptive. Our insensibility to the beautiful is caused by an over-emphasis of the intellectual, critical, political, superficial, and practical. This lecture offers reflections based on one person's long search for beauty in buildings as well as on a massive survey of extraordinary experiences of architecture. In the end, the beautiful will be recognized as one of the essential paths to re-sensitize ourselves with the world and life. Seeking, enjoying, and working for beauty will be therefore reframed as a radical practice geared to change the interior and exterior of our individual, social, and collective beings.

Monday, October 26 at 5:30
Bob Cox
George Nelson: The Creator of Beautiful and Practical Things
Over a 50-year career as a designer, teacher, artist, and architect, George Nelson experienced countless "zaps," moments of out-of-the-blue inspiration--including concepts for the first modular office storage system, the first L-shaped work desk, and the playful Marshmallow sofa, among other paradigm-shifting revelations. George Nelson & Associates worked with Herman Miller for over 25 years as they shepherded design into the era of American modernism. This presentation, featuring prerecorded conversations with the man himself, celebrates Nelson's legacy of modern, humane, and beautifully inspired design.
Sponsored by Henriksen Butler/Herman Miller

Monday, November 16 at 5:30pm
Michael Benedikt
Director Center for American Architecture and Design, U of Texas at Austin
Complexity, Simplicity, and Economic Evolution: The View From Architecture
"When it is said that we are too much occupied with the means of living to live, I answer that the chief worth of civilization is just that it makes the means of living more complex; that it calls for great and combined intellectual efforts, instead of simple, uncoordinated ones... Because more complex and intense intellectual efforts mean a fuller and richer life, they mean more life. Life is an end in itself, and the only question as to whether it is worth living is whether you have enough of it." Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. There is little doubt that biological and cultural evolution both generate complexity, and perhaps vice versa. So what is complexity? And how does it jibe with people's attraction to simplicity? Can one have both? In lifestyle and in architecture? Or does one have to pick? In architecture, there's minimalism and there's Minimalism. Only one of them is simple. Which sorts of complexity, then, are authentic, and which gratuitous? It's a question of values, of economics, and not the least, of the mindsets and skill sets of tomorrow's architects.

Monday, November 23 at 5:30pm
Mark and Peter Anderson
"How Can We Speak of Roses When Forests are Burning?"
This slogan represented a central issue of debate within CIAM (Congress Internationale d'Architecture Moderne) and the forefront of architecture culture prior to WWII, pitting extreme functionalist architects such as the Marxist Hannes Meyer against "aesthetically" interested architects such as Le Corbusier. This debate of pure functionalism, accompanied by its assumption of pure social responsibility, versus suspect interests of architects who included questions of beauty, form and meaning within their architectural concerns--alongside functionalism and social responsibility--has remained in varying forms a critical issue in architecture to our current time. In fact, this has always been a far more complex question than slogans and most polemical positions ever admit. In the past thirty years architecture has again swung dramatically between varying claims on this question, with every position attempting to assume the mantle of best representing the public interest. Like many political positions during this same time period, slogans and rhetoric often conform inaccurately to reality and genuine intent, at best creating confusion and often enough masking disingenuous effort to co-opt otherwise progressive cultural energy into narrowly self-serving reactionary conservatism. "How Can We Speak of Roses When Forests are Burning?" represents a still very significant question in our current age of stark environmental, social and geo-political danger. Mark and Peter Anderson will address this issue as a framework for discussion of their recent design work, which confronts some of the taboos of recent architecture theory, and contains both literal rose flowers as well as a deep interest in function and social responsibility.

Monday November 30 at 5:30 PM
Arthur C. Nelson, Ph.D., FAICP
America @ 1 Billion
America will have 1 billion people by the end of the 21st century. Barring global catastrophe, the drivers of growth are already on track to achieve this milestone, or millstone. Will 1 billion people be good for America? Will America's beauty be challenged? Few have dared to peer into the future as Arthur C. Nelson has. In this wide-ranging, expansive discussion, Dr. Nelson will explain why America @ 1 billion is inevitable, why it is good for the nation and the planet, and why America's built and natural landscapes will become more beautiful as a consequence, but only through sound planning and design.

Many Thanks to our Sponsors:
Friends and Alumni, College of Architecture + Planning
The Division of Occupational and Professional Licensing
Henriksen Butler/Herman Miller
AIA Utah