© AIAS

The annual AIAS FORUM meeting for 2011 will take a break from the snow of the past two years (2009 Minnesota, 2010 Toronto) and be held in sunny downtown Phoenix, Arizona. FORUM is the annual meeting of the AIAS and the premier global gathering of architecture and design students. The conference provides students with the opportunity to learn about important issues facing architectural education and the profession, to meet students, educators, and professionals with common interests, and to interact with some of today’s leading architects through keynote addresses, tours, workshops and seminars, last years FORUM was attended by over 1,000 young and ambitious architecture students and AIAS members. This years Keynote Speakers will be Jeffrey Inaba, founder of C-Lab and former project manager with Rem Koolhaas and OMA, Brad Lancaster, author of www.harvestingrainwater.com, and University of Californa, San Diego architect and professor Teddy Cruz.

read more »

© Naho Kubota

C-Lab and Jeffrey Inaba recently collaborated with One Pot, with support from LIMN Architects and Design Compendium, to design a dinner table for 60 guests. This charity fund raising event was hosted in New York’s Park Avenue Armory, a rare Louis Comfort Tiffany interior.

The design required sixty linear feet of table surface in a slim thirty-five feet of available floor space. C-Lab creatively designed the Z-Top, not just fitting with in the spatial constraints, but also developing an immediate interaction among guests, prompting more informal discussion areas between courses, and cutting down the overall distance between diners.

We interviewed Jeffrey Inaba, and discussed C-Lab as an experimental research unit at Columbia University, his book “World of Giving” and research on altruism.

More following the break.

Architects: C-Lab
Location: New York City, New York, United States
Director: Jeffrey Inaba
Project Designer: Simon Battisti
Project Team: Justin Fowler, Nathalie Janson, Amanda Shin, Leah Whitman-Salkin, Jeffrey Yip
Photography: Naho Kubota

read more »

© Naho Kubota

Architects: INABA, C‐Lab
Location: New York, USA
Lantern Fabrication: Kreysler & Associates
Furniture Fabrication: Atta Inc
Upholstery: Greg Georgi
Lighting: Doug Russell, Lighting Workshop
Engineering: Arup, New York
Area: 2,200 SF
Project Year: 2010
Photographs: Naho Kubota

read more »

When we interviewed Jeffrey Inaba at the C-Lab last year, he told us about his research on altruism, which was the base for his new book “World of Giving”.

In place of the pursuit of personal wealth, World of Giving presents a mindset revolving around generosity. It paints a picture in which giving animates all levels of human interaction, acknowledging that each and every one of us gives. From helping out an acquaintance to donating to a valued cause, we all provide in acts big and small that benefit the immediate recipient and often others as well. In this important exploration of the sentiments of our time, the authors describe the basic motivations for why we give in reference to examples such as local volunteering, philanthropy and the flow of aid through foundations, governments, multinationals and NGOs. The book details the process of working toward a greater good and shows that a gift transforms at numerous junctures as it circulates from giver to receiver. Articulating these intricate relationships, World of Giving offers an understanding of the actions that build bridges between goodwill and need, intention and realization.

World of Giving is by Jeffrey Inaba and C-Lab in collaboration with Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation, New Museum and Lars Müller Publishers.

The book will be launched in a party at the New Museum on November 12th, from 630-830p, with Richard Flood (Chief Curator, New Museum), Mark Wigley (Dean, Columbia GSAPP), Lars Müller (Founder, Lars Müller Publishers) and Jeffrey Inaba ( author of World of Giving and Director of C-Lab).

X‐Initiative presents the premiere of Pool Noodle Rooftop by Jeffrey Inaba’s Los Angeles‐based practice, INABA. The rooftop space, which will be used for film screenings and special events, will be open to the public daily during selected visiting hours throughout the summer. Four separate seating areas cluster around a ‘X’ shaped carpet that covers the entire rooftop surface.

The furniture, which is also X‐shaped in plan, has been constructed from pool noodles - the long and cylindrical, foam water flotation toys. The pool noodles have been cut and bunched vertically into chaise lounge and ottoman units of varying heights that accommodate up to 150 people. When viewed from above, the arrangement of buoyant seating material spells out the word, ‘bububluooopppp’ - the sound of something either rising or sinking.

read more »