Yale School of Architecture Announces Public Programs for the Coming Term

Exhibitions, lectures, discussions and other programs addressing issues ranging from suburban sprawl to the nature of sacred spaces, to writing about architecture are some of the highlights available to the public in the coming academic term at the Yale School of Architecture.

Among the guest lecturers and speakers who will help raise the level of public discourse on architecture are Santiago Calatrava, Tom Wolfe, Peter Eisenman, Frank Gehry and Paul Goldberger.

During the extensive renovation and restoration of Paul Rudolph’s landmark Art and Architecture Building, the School of Architecture will occupy temporary quarters in a newly constructed building—designed by the architectural firm KieranTimberlake Associates—at 32 Edgewood Avenue. The School of Architecture will return to the A + A building in September 2008, and 32 Edgewood Avenue will become the permanent home of the Yale School of Art sculpture department.

The schedule of events for the fall term is as follows.
Please Note: Unless otherwise noted, all lectures, discussions, and symposia take place at 6:30 p.m. in the Robert J. McNeil Lecture Hall of the Yale University Art Gallery, 1111 Chapel Street.

School of Architecture exhibitions are in a temporary gallery located in the new building at 32 Edgewood Avenue: Monday–Friday, 9 a.m.–5 p.m., Saturday 10 a.m.–5 p.m. Closed on Sunday.

Thursday August 30

Lecture: “Profit and the Planet: Placemaking for the People”
Nick Johnson, director of development at the urban regeneration company Urban Splash and current Edward P. Bass Distinguished Visiting Architecture Fellow at Yale, will deliver the first lecture of the season.

Exhibition: “A Field Guide to Sprawl”
On view from August 30 through October 19, 2007, “A Field Guide to Sprawl” combines 48 aerial photographs with explanatory text to examine some common mistakes of ex-urban development.  The exhibition reveals how sprawl—visible in the seemingly constant new construction at the fringes of cities and suburbs—is the product of careless land use coupled with lack of investment in older downtowns and suburbs. Photojournalist Jim Wark’s images, which show the excesses of the built environment, are grouped according to the particular type of sprawl they exemplify. The text is by Yale professor of Architecture and American Studies Dolores Hayden, a well-known authority on American culture and the politics of the built environment. Hayden is the author of such award-winning books as “The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History” (1995); “Redesigning the American Dream: Gender, Housing, and Family Life” (revised edition, 2002); and “Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth” (2003).

“A Field Guide to Sprawl” takes its title from a book of the same name by Wark and Hayden. It has been organized by The Hudson River Museum and is curated by the Museum’s Curator of Exhibitions Bartholomew F. Bland.  It grew out of a 2006 exhibition at The Hudson River Museum, titled “Westchester: The American Suburb.” “Sprawl” was also on view at the Westchester Arts Council, in White Plains, NY, in 2006.

“Sprawl” has been redesigned and installed by Yale School of Architecture critic Dean Sakamoto. The Yale installation will include a “living room study center,” where visitors can lounge and peruse related publications.

On September 20, Hayden will speak about some of the issues raised in the exhibition (see below).

Monday September 10

Conversation: “From Bauhaus to Our House”
Famed author and social critic Tom Wolfe and Peter Eisenman, celebrated architect, author and the Louis I. Kahn Visiting Professor at the School of Architecture, will discuss issues in modern architecture.

Thursday September 20

Exhibition-related Lecture
Linsly-Chittenden Hall, 61 High Street, Room 102
Dolores Hayden will deliver a lecture in connection with the exhibition “A Field Guide to Sprawl” (see above).

Friday September 21

Panel Discussion: “Photography and the Built Environment”
Yale Center for British Art auditorium, 1080 Chapel Street.
Chaired by Yale professor of American Studies and Women’s Gender  & Sexuality Studies Laura Wexler, this panel includes among its participants Yale University Art Gallery Director Jock Reynolds and photographer Jim Wark, whose aerial pictures of suburban sprawl are featured in the exhibition “A Field Guide to Sprawl,” on view at the School of Architecture (see above).

Monday October 1

Lecture: “The Project of Autonomy”
This year’s Brendan Gill Lecture will be given by architect and author Pier Vittorio Aureli.

Wednesday and Thursday October 3 & 4

Lectures: “Wings and a Prayer and A Collection of Pearls”
Whitney Humanities Center, 53 Wall St.
Wednesday lecture begins at 4:30 p.m.; Thursday, at 6:30 pm.
Celebrated architect, engineer, and sculptor Santiago Calatrava, this year’s Tanner Lecturer on Human Values, will deliver two Tanner Lectures: “Wings and a Prayer” (Wednesday) and “A Collection of Pearls” (Thursday)

The Tanner Lectures on Human Values were established by the American scholar, industrialist and philanthropist Obert Clark Tanner, who hoped that these lectures would contribute to the intellectual and moral life of mankind.

Monday October 8

Panel Discussion: “Writing about Architecture”
Chaired by Director of Yale University Press John Donatich, this panel on writing about architecture will feature Yale School of Architecture Dean Robert A.M. Stern, celebrated architectural historian Vincent Scully, Visiting School of Architecture (SoA) Professor Kurt Foster, Louis I. Kahn Visiting Professor Peter Eisenman (SoA), and Luis Fernández-Galiano, author of “Fire and Memory: On Architecture and Energy” and Franke Visiting Fellow at the Whitney Humanities Center.

Monday October 22

Lecture: “Islands and Worlds: Postmodernism after Globalization”
Reinhold Martin, the author of “The Organizational Complex,” an influential book on post-War American corporate architecture, will deliver the Myriam Bellazoug Memorial Lecture.

Wednesday October 24

Lecture: “Thinking with Images”
Whitney Humanities Center, 53 Wall Street; 4:30 p.m.
A lecture by Luis Fernández-Galiano, author of  “Fire and Memory: On Architecture and Energy.” Fernández-Galiano is the Franke Visiting Fellow of the Whitney Humanities Center.

The Franke Visiting Scholars Program is made possible by the generosity of Mr. and Mrs. Richard Franke of Chicago. The Frankes have already endowed the Whitney Center’s annual series of high-profile lectures and seminars presenting enduring topics in the humanities to Yale undergraduates and the broader New Haven community. Their most recent gift and the creation of this special residential fellowship will ensure ongoing interdisciplinary exchange and creative debate at the Whitney Center and more widely on the Yale campus.

Thursday–Saturday, October 25–27

Symposium: “Constructing the Ineffable: Contemporary Sacred Architecture”

Two events jointly sponsored by the Yale School of Architecture, the Institute of Sacred Music and the Yale Divinity School will examine various facets of architecture of the sacred. At the conference on October 25, held at the Institute of Sacred Music, titled “Sacred Spaces, Architecture for Worship in the 21st Century,” scholars, clerics and architects will present their individual perspectives on the qualities that define sacred spaces. The School of Architecture symposium on October 26–27 will feature presentations by such luminaries as Moshe Safdie, Stanley Tigerman, Rafael Moneo, Richard Meier, Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Peter Eisenman, Paul Goldberger and Steven Holl.  A more detailed announcement of this multidisciplinary forum for thought and contemplation will follow in a separate press release.

Monday October 29

Exhibition: “Ecology.Design.Synergy”
On view from October 29, 2007, through February 1, 2008, “Ecology.Design.Synergy” showcases the collaborative work of the Stuttgart-based environmental design pioneers Behnisch Architects and Transsolar Climate Engineering. The exhibition illustrates several ecological design strategies driven by considerations of temperature, air, sound and human scale.

“Ecology. Design. Synergy” is a traveling exhibition organized by the Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations and Galerie Aedes, Berlin, and supported in part by the Goethe-Institut New York.

Lecture: “It’s Not About You”
The speakers are Saarinen Visiting Professors Joshua Prince-Ramus and Erez Ella, partners and co-owners of the New York firm REX, formerly known as OMA.

Thursday November 1

Discussion: “Contesting Expectations”
Stefan Behnisch, principal partner of Behnisch Architects, and Thomas Auer, partner of Transsolar Climate Engineering, will talk about their collaborative efforts to combine an architecture that is friendly both to the environment and to its human inhabitants.

Monday November 5

Lecture: “On the Ground”
Urban-landscape architect Kate Orff will deliver this year’s Timothy Egan Lenahan Memorial Lecture.

November 12

Lecture: “Contingent Locations”
The lecture is by Homa Farjadi, award-winning designer and principal of the London-based firm Farjadi Architects.

Yale Arts Initiative
The renovation of the A + A building and construction of a new home for the sculpture department are part of an ambitious initiative to improve and add to the arts facilities at Yale. The venture also includes a new history of art building, to be named the Jeffrey H. Loria Center for History of Art, which will be joined to the A + A building by a vastly expanded fine arts library. Among the initiative’s many improvements to Yale’s arts facilities is the recent, much heralded $44 million renovation of the famed Louis Kahn building of the Yale University Art Gallery. The two historic structures adjacent to the Kahn building—the 1928 Gothic-style Swartwout building and the 1866 Street Hall—will also soon undergo full renovation.

Visit Arts at Yale for more information.