Yale School of Architecture Announces Spring Semester Events

A symposium on city ports, a multi-media exhibition of large-scale environment-friendly architecture and a weekly lecture series featuring some of the world’s most celebrated architects, designers and planners are among the free and public offerings at the Yale School of Architecture (YSA) this term.

Following its critically acclaimed retrospective of the work of photographer and architect Robert Damora, the YSA Gallery will host an exhibition on “green” architecture. Titled “Big and Green: Toward Sustainable Architecture in the 21st Century,” the exhibition will focus on 50 large buildings and structures worldwide that exemplify advances in sustainable architecture. “Big and Green” will be at the Yale School of Architecture February 17 - May 7.

The impetus to make energy-conserving buildings that are safe for the health of occupants and friendly to the environment grew out of the “earth consciousness” movement of the late 1960s and 1970s. Recognizing the scarcity of non-renewable energy resources – particularly fossil fuels – and becoming aware of the hazards posed by many of the most common building materials, architects began to explore ways to apply “green” principles to small-scale structures like single-family homes. Recently designers and engineers have set their sights higher. Large apartment complexes, sports arenas, skyscrapers and factories are among the projects that have benefited from environmental innovations in the building industry. New standards to measure “sustainability” have also been developed.

“Big and Green” provides a glimpse of what is possible in sustainable architecture when creative individuals put their minds to it. The exhibition is divided into five sections: “Energy”; “Light and Air”; “Greenery, Water and Waste”; “Construction” and “Urbanism.”

In “Energy” the exhibition spotlights a multi-story office building that uses a wind-turbine for power, a skyscraper partly powered by the sun and other renewable resources and the Jets Stadium in New York, which will generate enough energy to share with the surrounding city power grid. “Light and Air” examines advances in natural illumination and ventilation, with an emphasis on reducing dependency on air conditioning. “Greenery, Water and Waste” looks at ways to cut down on water consumption, reuse waste-water and enlist natural organisms and plant materials into the effort. In “Construction” the exhibition focuses on renovation as opposed to new construction as a way to avoid using the most common modern building materials: glass, steel, wood, plastics and concrete. The headquarters of the National Audubon Society is offered as an example of reusing and refitting an existing building, and Lloyd’s of London Headquarters and the Esplanade condominium apartments in Massachusetts are presented for their use of prefabricated modules and renewable, non-toxic materials. The “Urbanism” section shows how cities are planned and how planning can impact the environment. “Urbanism” also spotlights inventive designs for future urban development. Cesar Pelli’s high-rise apartment 20 River Terrace is examined as a prime example of environmentalism working with city planning.

The exhibition, which opened at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., was made possible by lead gifts from Jeffrey and Rona Abramson and the Abramson Family Foundation, The Durst Organization, United States Department of Energy Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and United States General Services Administration Public Buildings Service. The installation for the exhibition at Yale was made possible in part by support from the Connecticut Architecture Foundation/AIA Connecticut Committee on the Environment.

A related symposium, “Numbers Count: Simulation and High Performance Building Design,” will take place at the School of Architecture, April 2-3. The symposium will feature well-known architects and their consultants who will demonstrate and discuss how computer simulation of air flow, acoustics, lighting and air quality are used in the design process of large-scale green buildings. Michelle Addington will deliver a keynote address at 6:30 p.m., on April 2. Addington teaches courses on energy/environmental systems, building technology and new materials at Harvard. Other participants include an array of internationally recognized innovators in the field of sustainable design and technology: Thomas Auer, Patrick Bellew, Stefan Benisch, Tim Christ, David Gissen, Laura Hartman, Ali Malkawi, Erin McConahey, Greg Otto, Rafael Pelli and Paul Stoller.

Another symposium examining a unique and critically important site of every major city-its ports-will take place March 26-27. In the symposium, titled “Enclave,” an international roster of scholars, artists and writers will discuss how ports and airports, essential hubs of commerce, are being reshaped by the global economy. Among the participants in the symposium are Arjun Appadurai, editor of “The Social Life of Things” and “Globalization” and author of “Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization”; sociologist Xiangming Chen, co-author of “The World of Cities: Places in Historical and Comparative Perspective” and author of the forthcoming “As Borders Crumble: Toward New Transnational Spaces on the Pacific Rim and Beyond”; urban theorist and prolific writer on the subject of urbanism Stephen Graham; artist and journalist Ingo Gunther; architect Rahul Mehrotra and author critic David Joselit. Allan Sekula will deliver the keynote address on March 26 at 6:30 p.m. Sekula is a photographer, artist and writer, and author of “Fish Story,” an anthology of photographs of and commentary on the great port cities of the world.

Also on the agenda of special events at the School of Architecture will be a screening on April 8 of the film “A Constructive Madness, wherein Frank Gehry and Peter Lewis spend a fortune and a decade, end up with nothing and change the world.” The film was written by Jeffrey Kipnis and directed by Thomas Ball and Brian Neff. The screening takes place at 6:30 p.m. in Hastings Hall of the Art & Architecture building.

The academic term at the School of Architecture will end with an exhibition in the Gallery of student work, May 21-July 30.

The following is the schedule of lectures:

February 9: Mark Goulthorpe, “On Variance.” Goulthorpe, professor at MIT where he divides his time between the architecture school and the Media Lab, has worked with some of the world’s most renowned architects including Richard Meier and Norman Foster. His practice, dECOi, is known for innovative work in computer-aided design.

February 12: Taining Cheng, “Start from the Time, the Place and from Myself: Architectural Thoughts and Works.” Designer of almost one hundred major projects in China and Ghana, Cheng is the Chief Architect of the China United Engineering Corporation, one of China’s largest private architectural consultancies, headquartered in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China.

February 16: Julie Eizenberg, “parenthesis.” Eizenberg is principal with partner Hank Koning of Koning Eizenberg. Recent projects of Koning Eizenberg include the design for the first single-room occupancy hotel on “Skid Row” and the Standard Hotel in Los Angeles as well as winning designs for the Pittsburgh Children’s Museum Expansion and the Chicago Public Schools competitions.

February 23: Stanley Saitowitz, “Expanded Architecture.” Saitowitz is a San Francisco-based architect and professor of architecture at the University of California, Berkeley. His projects include the California Museum of Photography, residences throughout California, the New England Holocaust Memorial in Boston and the Coffee Pavillion at Stanford University.

February 26: Ed Feiner, “Public Architecture: A Tradition Is Reborn.” Feiner is chief architect of the General Services Administration (GSA), the real estate arm of the federal government, providing national leadership in the design and construction of Federal courthouses, border stations and many other important public projects. He will deliver the annual Gordon H. Smith lecture.

March 22: Alessandra Ponte, “The Archives of the Planet: Type, Photography and Memory in French Human Geography.” Ponte, editor of “Architecture and the Sciences: Exchanging Metaphors,” is on the faculty of Pratt Institute. Ponte will deliver the annual Timothy Egan Lenahan Memorial lecture, a series devoted to landscape architecture.

March 29: Daniel Solomon, “Cloth from Threads.” Solomon is professor of architecture at the University of California, Berkeley. Projects of his firm include the Fine Arts Building in Berkeley, mixed-use apartment complexes, residences in California and the acclaimed Beth Israel Memorial Chapel and Cemetery in Houston.

April 1: Frank Gehry, “Current Work.” The Pritzker Prize winner’s most recent masterworks are the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College. He was the winner last year of a commission to design an arts center at the University of Connecticut. Gehry is the Louis I. Kahn Visiting Professor of Architectural Design at the Yale School of Architecture this term.

April 5: Zaha Hadid, “Current Work.” The London-based architect and designer counts among her celebrated projects a visitor center for the garden festival in Weil-am- Rhein, Germany and a parking facility and tram station in Strasbourg, France. The opening in 2003 of the Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art, Cincinnati, her first completed project in the United States, guaranteed her place among the Olympians of modern architecture. Hadid is the Eero Saarinen Visiting Professor of Architectural Design.

All events take place in the Art & Architecture Building, 180 York St. All lectures take place at 6:30 p.m. in Hastings Hall (basement auditorium of the Art & Architecture Building). The hours for the Gallery are Monday-Saturday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. For more information, contact the Yale School of Architecture, 203-432-2288, or visit their web site at www.architecture.yale.edu.