Events: The Latest Architecture and News

Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena will continue with The Architectural League NY lectures today in The Urban Center, at 7:00pm.

Aravena has been in practice since 1994 and since 2006 has also served as Executive Director of ELEMENTAL S.A., a “Do Tank” for the design and implementation of urban projects of social interest and public impact. His work includes the Mathematics Faculty, the Medical Faculty, the computer facility “Siamese Tower,” and the Architecture School at the Universidad Católica, Santiago, Chile; House for a Sculptor; House in the Pirehueico Lake; new residence and dining halls for St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas; children’s workshops and training facilities for Vitra in Weil am Rhein, Germany; a Villa in Ordos, Inner Mongolia; and social housing and urban projects for Elemental. In 2009, Aravena was appointed a member of the Pritzker Prize Jury.

He has received several awards, including Silver Lion at the XI Venice Biennale, 1st Prize in the XII and the XV Santiago Biennale, the Erich Schelling Architecture Medal 2006 (Germany), finalist in the Mies van der Rohe Award (2000), top 10 finalist in the Iakhov Chernikhov Prize 2008 (Moscow), and finalist in the Global Award for Sustainable Architecture 2008 (Paris).

Tickets are required for admission to League programs. Tickets are free for League members; $10 for non-members. Members may reserve a ticket by e-mailing: rsvp@archleague.org. Member tickets will be held at the check-in desk; unclaimed tickets will be released fifteen minutes after the start of the program. Non-members may purchase tickets online here.

For more information, click here. All the lectures after the break.

For those of you in LA (or nearby), ForYourArt has organized the 2nd Annual Los Angeles Art Weekend, a four-day event highlighting the city’s vast array of art, architecture, design and performance… which actually started yesterday but there are still lots of events to attend today, saturday and sunday:

What’s Your HistoricLA? Do you know a special story about a local building or the neighborhood you live in? Come join like-minded amateur historians and Los Angeles aficionados for the public kickoff of SurveyLA, Los Angeles’ first-ever citywide survey of its historic resources. A full day of activities will include opportunities to share your knowledge on L.A.‘s hidden gems, screenings of the SurveyLA video, and a panel discussion moderated by Larry Mantle, host of KPCC’s Air Talk.

What was the proposed population of Superstudio’s Continuous Monument? What would the density of Rem Koolhaas’ Exodus plan for London have been had it ever been realized? How would they compare in scale to Kenzo Tange’s Tokyo Bay project, or to Corbusier’s Ville Radieuse? Which of the three would have contained more green areas? 49 Cities sets out to crunch the numbers of several centuries of unrealized urbanism, all the way from the Roman city to the great utopian projects of the 20th century. Through plans, sections, diagrams, charts and scale drawings, 49 cities are observed statistically and presented in an unprecedented comparative study, the result of a research project conducted over several years. Despite the fact that they never actually existed, this history of utopian urbanism provides a remarkable insight into our understanding of the contemporary metropolis.

University of Southern California’s School of Architecture presents Border Architectures 2000-2008, a lecture by colombian architect Giancarlo Mazzanti.

The Goethe-Institut New York celebrates the opening of its downtown events space, in the Lower East Side’s Wyoming Building, with a Spring series of talks and performances by internationally acclaimed artists and architects, starting with OSA this Friday, March 27.

The success of green roofs has driven Landscape Architects and Architects to explore alternative exterior and interior applications of green planting technology, such as green walls, and green screens. Vertical planting presents challenges to proper irrigation and climate control, requiring innovative solutions. This panel of experts will discuss the relevance of green walls and how can we improve their applications.

EVENT 1: “Light-Light in Tokyo” Curiosity’s “Light-Light” installation for “Tokyo Wonder” exhibition in Milan last year was a huge success. The magical installation of 80 lights floating in the air was remembered by many as “one of best installations during the Milano Salone”. Now “Light-Light” will finally be introduced to Tokyo. A “sweet” performance “light-food” created especially for the Tokyo event will also be presented. Held from March 25 to April 5, at the Louis Vuitton Hall. More information, here.

Indian Architect & Builder’s biannual conference series: 361°- The Degree of Difference is back. In its third cycle it offers five tracks, over 3 days of the weekend, that aim to cover the relevant arguments which shape design and construction practices today. Adding significant value to the Conference venue will be the exhibition “Masterstrokes: The Architecture of Fumihiko Maki” which showcases some of the Pritzker laureate’s projects over his illustrious career since 1965.

Parsons The New School for Design presents AFTERTASTE 3: New Agendas for the Interior on Friday, April 3, and Saturday, April 4, at the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center. This annual international symposium is dedicated to the critical review of the interior, and was developed in conjunction with a new MFA program in Interior Design that Parsons will launch this fall. The groundbreaking program will play a leadership role in addressing the challenges and opportunities of contemporary interior design in the 21st century, and integrate history, theory, design, material experimentation and sustainable practice.

In recent years, the art world has played host to a number of lively explorations of architecture and the built environment. (In 2006, The New Yorker went so far as to snipe, “Painting about architecture has become popular to the point of excess, much the way seventies artists went overboard on the cube.”) By looking at architecture through the lenses of politics, psychology, humor, and more, artists have been helping to enrich the conversation about the field.

Last week I sat down with painter Sarah McKenzie, who was in New York for the opening of her new show, Building Code, to discuss her thoughts on art and architecture. McKenzie, who first came to public attention for her aerial views of suburban developments, currently uses images of construction sites as her source material.

The interview after the break.

On the occasion of the first edition of its Public Design Festival, esterni announces an international call for entries to search for ideas and projects for public spaces; among all submissions, 10 projects will be selected, carried out and presented during the festival, that will take place in Milan on April 18-26 2009. This unique opportunity to design a planned intervention on an urban parking area is open to different types of approaches, from community service to urban furniture.

Texas Tech University’s College of Architecture in conjunction with the American Institute of Architecture Students will host a symposium and workshop April 15-16 that will focus on making its campus more environmentally friendly.

With the exhibition “Yes is more”, the Danish Architecture Centre zooms in on BIG – Bjarke Ingels Group. Using unconventional approaches, humour, and international focus, BIG has contributed to the renewal of the Danish architectural tradition.

An exhibition on the works of German architect Juergen Mayer H., entitled “Patterns of Speculation”, just opened at the SF MoMA. Mayer joins two modes of exhibiting architecture in a gallery – installation and documentation – to present a unique, hybrid environment.

Postopolis! is an architecture blogging event that started in 2007, hosted by the Storefront for Art and Architecture, as a collaborative event by Inhabitat, Subtopia, City of Sound and BLDGBLOG.

The 11th Venice Biennaleis just around the corner, starting on Sept 14th with a preview on Sept 11th-13th. I´m eager to see the pavillions and installations on the Biennale, specially because the title for this version is “Out There: Architecture Beyond Building” on which Aaron Betsky, the curator, says ” “will point the way towards an architecture liberated from buildings to engage the central issues of our society; instead of the tombs of architecture, which is to say buildings, it will present site specific installations, visions and experiments that help us figure out, make sense of and feel at home in our modern world”.

One of this installations is “AirXY: From Inmaterial to Rematerial” by M-A-D, an interdisciplinary design firm with primary expertise in branding and visual communications. From their authors: he airXY screen is folded to seem as if it had burst out of the wall behind. as visitors approach they notice what appears to be a giant checkerboard with a vertical line scanning from left to right. suggesting the surface of an interface, a desktop and a machine simultaneously, on further observation, the visitors see that the composition is, in fact, charting the passing of time along an XY axis divided into 24×60 units. in addition to the vertical line and rectangular XY units, tiny green abstract icons are floating across the screen, looking like runes, contemporary urban signs or the graphic language of circuit diagrams”.

More pictures after the jump.