Eventos: The Latest Architecture and News

Informality, which was first categorized and described in the 1970s, is now pervasive — across cities, in the places we live, work, and move through the everyday. For many, the informal is no longer a discrete sector appended to the workings of the “formal” city, but an integral effect of the structuring of cities and landscapes by contemporary economic, political, and technological change. Self-built architectures and urban agglomerations, ambivalent landscapes, nomadic and temporal spatial manifestations of informalized are situationally specific, but globally ubiquitous. Design Tactics and the Informalized City symposium, being put on by Cornell University on April 13-14, brings a discussion of this reality to disciplines that work on the city in material and spatial terms: architecture, urban design, landscape architecture, engineering, media and product design. More information on the event after the break.

Portland State University’s Department of Architecture recently announced that architect and professor Gilles Saucier will deliver the third presentation in their inaugural lecture series, titled “Firsts,” given by the department. Saucier is currently a design partner of Saucier + Perrotte Architects in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and an invited professor and critic at a number of Canadian and American universities, most recently at MIT in 2011.Saucier will speak on Thursday, February 23, at 7pm, at Shattuck Hall Annex on the Portland State University campus. These lecture series, which are free to the public, explore the concepts of origins and beginnings, long a subject of interest among architects. More information on the event after the break.

Tonight, Studio-X Mumbai is hosting a free event with architect Dr. Balkrishna Doshi. The Mumbai gathering will explore the architects life and work on the release of his book “Paths Uncharted”. Described as an evening of storytelling, Doshi will also share his thoughts on the future of architecture. The conversation will be moderated and discussed with professor Neelkanth Chhaya, architect Rajeev Kathpalia and architect Sen Kapadia. Continue reading for more event information.

MY- AMI, A virtual and digital exhibit of architectural photography by Paul Clemence, has been extended to be on view until January 17th as part of the Design into Miami event, which started in November. A look at Miami’s unique urban landscape can be seen through Clemence’s refined eyes.

From the mundane to the exquisite, from “starchitects” to ” anonymous”, from glamourous Lapidus to cutting edge Herzog & de Meuron and contemporary Arquitectonica and Chad Oppenheim. From dyzzing glass atriums to swimming pools ( a most Miamian architectural “equipment” ), Clemence gives us his take on how he perceives the city. The photos selected for the show speaks of details, of moods and brings us a feel of what is to be in that constant evolving, cosmopolitan, creative and liberating city, its colors, its shapes and even a little splash.

The exhibit will be partially in display at the RS showroom and continuing online at here. More images after the break.

Through April 15th, the Museum of the City of New York is exhibiting The Greatest Grid: The Masterplan of Manhattan and The Unifinished Grid: Design Speculations for Manhattan. The two exihibits are in honor of the 200th anniversary of the Commissioners’ Plan of 1811 that transformed New York City into the city of endless streets and avenues we know it today, and speculations as to what the next 200 years will mean for the city.

More on the exhibits after the break.

AIA Seattle, the Seattle Chapter of American Institute of Architects, with partners BetterBricks, the City of Seattle, and Architecture 2030 present AIA+2030 Professional Series: Prepare for the New Energy Future at Seattle City Hall.

‘And then it became a city…’ is a film series featured at the 2011 Shenzhen & Hong Kong Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture. The Biennale is curated by Terence Riley and just opened last week – on view in Shenzhen through February 18, 2012. And then it became a city… shows the everyday life and activity of six planned cities under sixty years old. The cities featured include Gabarone, Chandigarh, Shenzhen, Almere, Las Vegas, and Brasilia. More trailers on the films about their corresponding cities can be viewed after the break.

To celebrate the festive period, the V&A has commissioned design duo Studio Roso to create a Christmas Tree for the Grand Entrance of the Museum until January 5th. The handmade ‘tree’ is made up of 3.3 miles of elastic cord and will reach over 4 meters high. A total of 1500 individual strands have been combined to create the outline of a traditional Christmas Tree. Within these cords Studio Roso has created a number of geometric shapes, referencing both traditional Christmas ornaments and the crystalline structure of snowflakes and icicles, providing a decorative garland throughout the installation. The design for the tree was inspired by the intricate craft of bobbin lacing, a technique often used in traditional Christmas decorations. More images after the break.

Taking place at the Vranken Pommery Monopole in Reims, France, La Fabrique Sonore combines ancient paper folding techniques with contemporary computer-aided-design and manufacturing processes. Curated by Charles Carcopino and Claire Staebler and designed by Hyoung-Gul Kook, Ali Momeni and Robin Meier, the form is inspired by mathematician and origami expert Taketoshi Nojima, especially his work reproducing organic forms from folded paper. More images and information on the exhibition after the break.

A new not-for-profit art and architecture organization called ASAP (Archive of Spatial Aesthetics and Praxis), founded by former MoMA Curator Tina di Carlo, launches Monday, December 12 at the top of The Standard, New York with Bjarke Ingels, Alex Schweder La and Jerszy Seymour. More information on the event after the break.

Woodbury School of Architecture and the Woodbury Hollywood Gallery (WUHO) are pleased to announce the opening of The Infrastructural Monument by Anna Neimark. The opening is on Thursday, December 8, 7 p.m. and runs until December 18th. Anna Neimark’s installation, constructed out of fifty-four three-foot cubes of EPS white foam, re-imagines a piece of infrastructure as a monument of a complex history when a canal from Moscow to St. Petersburg (formerly Leningrad) was built during the second Five Year Plan, under Josef Stalin. More information on the installation after the break.

The Masters of International Cooperation Sustainable Emergency Architecture at the ESARQ-UIC in Barcelona is excited to present this year’s open conference on December 12th titled, Rebuilding Japan: Lessons in architectural response, featuring talks and a roundtable discussion with Japanese architects involved in the reconstruction of Japan during its recent history of devastating earthquakes. How can architects respond in the aftermath of a natural disaster? What lessons can be learned from the last three major earthquakes in Japan? How does the context of a natural disaster affect the role of the architect and the reconstruction process? More information on the conference after the break.

From December 8th to February 12th at the OCT Contemporary Art Terminal, the cities of Shenzhen and Hong Kong are hosting the 7th Biennale of Urbanism and Architecture and this year, Finland will be participating in the biennale for the first time. Participants in the biennale include the Museum of Finnish Architecture, Design Forum Finland and the Newly Drawn project, which represents young Finnish architects.

The event takes a stand on modern phenomena in China, which is urbanising at an ever increasing pace. Running from December 2011 until February 2012, the biennale examines different aspects of urbanisation, including case studies of cities less than 60 years old, an exhibition on the development of urban public transport and current construction projects in Shenzhen. More information on the event after the break.

Frac Center

Located at the heart of the city of London, the Barbican will be featuring the upcoming screening of Mur Murs (1981) and Get Out of the Car (2010) as part of their Architecture on Film season on November 29th at 7pm. More information on the films after the break.

DesCours is a free, public, ten-night architecture and art event now in its fifth year, held December 2-December 11 in New Orleans.

This event invites internationally renowned architects and artists to create architecture installations within ‘hidden’ locations in the heart of New Orleans, including private courtyards, rooftops, abandoned buildings and walkways, all locations normally unseen, inaccessible or unused by the public.

More information on the event after the break.

The 17th International Conference on Urban Planning and Regional Development in the Information Society GeoMultimedia, hosted by CORP is part of their annual events which has been taking place since 1996 and are Europe’s major congresses on Urban Planning, Regional Development and Information Society. The events are extraordinarily interdisciplinary, whereby usually a lot of new ideas and projects are generated.

Just recently, the author of architectural videos blog shared with us a video on OMA’s founding partner Rem Koolhaas‘ lecture which he gave at Cornell University on October 20th. His lecture was given on the occasion of opening Milstein Hall, the new extension to the faculty of Architecture, Art and Planning designed by OMA.