HTC Experiments

For better or worse, this site continues to transform into more of a news site than a content-driven site (although news items often have commentary!). Having come clean, from now until the beginning of school next year I will participate in many excellent and (frankly) challenging projects and events. Here’s a sample of the more public ones:

January 13-16 (Center for Land Use Interpretation, Los Angeles): I will be participating in Geoff Manaugh’s/BldgBlog’s “Landscape Futures Super-Workshop”. Geoff Manaugh, who has a dean-like ability to manage complex events, describes the event here. Stay tuned to BldgBlog for information about the public event I will be participating in and that includes most of the workshop leaders and participants.

Pamphlet Architecture 30: Coupling: Strategies for Infrastructural Opportunism is the name of Mason White, Lola Sheppard, Neeraj Bhatia and Maya Przybylski’s exploration of infrastructure “as artificially maintained natural systems.” The book promises to offer a counterpoint to “a New Deal approach of massive engineering or iconic infrastructure, Coupling employs adaptable, responsive, small-scale interventions whose impacts are global in scale.” The authors generously commissioned a mid-word/intermission (if it’s not the forward or afterword, what do you call it?) from me for their pamphlet: It’s a frank assessment of the turn toward environment (versus space) and the embrace of geography (versus design) in recent architecture and all its promise and pitfalls. I truly appreciate them publishing a work that is more rumination than plug!

February 10th, University of Waterloo, Cambridge, Ontario: I’m thrilled to finally give my public lecture at the department of architecture, University of Waterloo (had to cancel last year). It will be on the positioning of ground as a historical construction (versus phenomenological expression or ecological instrument) in architecture, with numerous historical and contemporary examples.

February 12th, “Architecture is All Over,” OCAD, Toronto: I’ll be speaking at a conference at the Ontario College of Art and Design with a fantastic and ominous title — “Architecture is All Over”. The event is the second organized by Esther Choi and Marrikka Trotter as part of their “Work-book” series of events and publications

February 17th, “Thinking Big: Diagrams, Mediascapes and Megastructures”, Yale School of Architecture: I’m one of eight architects, theorists, historians and critics addressing the work of Kevin Roche within larger architectural historical and urban contexts. I’m particularly excited about this as I’ll be rolling out new material from my forthcoming book on New York City, crisis-era building environments — “Maintenance Architecture”.

April 13th, Department of Landscape Architecture, SLU-Alnarp, Alnarp, Sweden. I’ll be giving a keynote lecture for Landscape Architecture Day, a regional event in the Cophenhagen/Malmo area of Northern Europe that addresses landscape futures and pedagogy. The talk will be based around Subnature and some other recent work.

In addition to the above, I’ll update on various publications and other projects in the works. These latter things include writing on reconstructions of nature in architectural history, further reflections on space versus environment in contemporary architecture, and the frameworks of historical appearance in cities and landscapes. As the instigators of these projects and commissions move things along, I’ll be sure to update here.

Thanks for visiting and have a happy and healthy 2011.