2008-2009 Hearst Lecture Series

Hosted by Cal Poly's College of Architecture and Environmental Design, the Hearst Lecture Series will focus this year on research in its relation to practice. In advancing its stellar reputation as a polytechnic institution, Cal Poly is making a concerted effort to broaden its commitment to new forms of research. “Research is enormously important to investigating and producing new ideas in architecture and design, series Director, Assistant Professor Stephen Phillips of Stephen Phillips Architects (SPARCHS) explains. The Hearst Lecture Series has invited an internationally respected group of designers and practitioners whose research either through practice, education, or both—productively impacts the professional world of architecture and design.

The free public lectures are made possible through a grant from the Hearst Foundation. For more information about the series, contact Tracee de Hahn at the College of Architecture and Environmental Design, by email tdehahn@calpoly.edu or phone 805.756.7114.

Abstract design with Spring 2009 superimposed

Geoffrey Payne
Wednesday, April 22 at 4pm
Berg Gallery: 05-105

Geoffrey K. Payne, an architect and planner from the UK with over thirty years of international experience, will be presenting the first Spring Quarter Hearst Lecture at 4:00 pm on April 22nd in the Berg gallery. He has taught at Oxford Brookes University, at the Architectural Association, and the DPU - Bartlett School of Architecture, London. His work and publications include urban housing project design and slum upgrading projects, urban housing sector reviews, assessments of policy options and project evaluation, reviews of regulatory frameworks for affordable shelter, public private partnerships in land for housing, innovative approaches to the provision of secure tenure for the urban poor, and the development of multi-stakeholder urban projects. A central theme of Geoff’s work involves building local capacity to stimulate social and economic development and reduce urban poverty. Geoff has worked in consultancy, training, and research assignments throughout the world; his clients include national governments, the UK Department for International Development (DFID), UN-HABITAT, SIDA, the World Bank, Cities Alliance and various NGOs and universities. He established Geoffrey Payne Associations in 1995.

For additional information, go to Geoffrey Payne Associations web site.

David Leatherbarrow
Friday, April 24 at 4pm
Business Rotunda: 03-213

Professor of Architecture and Chair of the Graduate Group in Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania will lecture on his current research on history and theory of architecture and the city. Leatherbarrow teaches courses in architectural theory and design studios in the graduate and undergraduate programs, supervises research, and directs the Ph.D. program. He is the recipient of the Visiting Scholar Fellowship from the Canadian Center of Architecture (1997-98). Books include: Topographical Stories, Surface Architecture, (with Mohsen Mostafavi); Uncommon Ground, Roots of Architectural Invention, On Weathering: The Life of Buildings in Time, and Masterpieces of Architectural Drawing.

For additional information, go to David Leatherbarrow web page

Symposium "Research Practice"
Friday, May 8 from 1 - 6pm
Business Rotunda: 03-213

The College of Architecture and Environmental Design will hold a symposium dedicated to the study of architecture research and its relationship to design practice. Internationally acclaimed architects, urban designers, historians and theorists will meet on the Cal Poly campus to discuss the history and theory alongside the methodological approaches of architecture design research relevant to innovation in contemporary building design, urban theory, and technology practices. Hearst Lecture Series Director, Assistant Professor Stephen Phillips will introduce and moderate the event.

Speakers will include:

Introduction/Moderator Stephen Phillips (Cal Poly)

Rafi Segal
Friday, May 15 at 4pm
Business Rotunda: 03-213

Rafi Segal will give a talk titled "The Urban Condition". Segal is a practicing architect and writer. He completed the award winning Palmach History Museum in Tel-Aviv (designed with Zvi Hecker). Publications include “A Civilian Occupation - the Politics of Israeli Architecture” (Verso, Babel, 2003) and “Cities of Dispersal” (Wiley, 2008). He is currently leading urban planning at KPF architects, New York, mainly concerning projects in China and North America. He has taught Architecture in Haifa, Vienna, and at Princeton University School of Architecture where he is completing his Ph.D.

Guy Nordenson
Wednesday, May 27 at 4pm
Berg Gallery: 05-105

Guy Nordensone is a principal structural engineer in the firm Guy Nordenson and Associates in New York will speak on his latest engineering projects. Nordenson began his career as a structural engineer drafting in the office of Shoji Sadao, R. Buckminster Fuller and Isamu Noguchi in Long Island City, New York. He has practiced structural engineering in San Francisco and New York. In 1987 he established the New York office of Ove Arup & Partners, where he was a director until 1997, when he formed his own firm. His office has collaborated on Steven Holl Architects' MIT Simmons Hall residence, Iowa University School of Art and Art History and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art expansion in Kansas City; The Museum of Modern Art expansion with Taniguchi and Associates; the Toledo Museum of Art in Toledo and New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York with SANAA architects; and the Bridges community center in Memphis with Coleman Coker's building studio. His office designed the prototype for the 2,000 foot tall World Trade Center Tower 1 (now in the collection of The MoMA) and with Henry Cobb proposals for the 7 Stems Broadcast Tower and the Patent Office Building Courtyard Roof in Washington, DC. The books WTC Emergency Building Damage Assessments and Tall Buildings were published in 2004 and Seven Structural Engineers: The Felix Candela Lectures edited by Nordenson was published by MoMA in 2006. His research team at Princeton won the 2007 AIA Latrobe Prize for the project "On the Water, A Model for the Future: A Study of New York and New Jersey Upper Bay".

Image of organic shapes with the words Winter 2009 embedded

Joel Sanders
Friday, January 16, at 4pm
Rotunda: 03-213

Joel Sanders of Joel Sanders Architects and Associate Professor at Yale University School of Architecture will lecture on his fashionable New York design practice. Joel Sanders Architects has completed numerous residential, commercial, and interior design projects with contemporary style and flare. He has been featured in many international exhibitions, including "Open House" at the Vitra Design Museum, "Glamour" at SF MoMA, "New Hotels for Global Nomads" at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, the "Bienal de São Paul" in São Paulo, Brazil, and "Unprivate House" at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Projects designed in his practice belong to the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, SF MoMA, and the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh and have been showcased in numerous publications, including Architecture, Interior Design, Architectural Record, The New York Times, Wallpaper, and A+U.

For additional information, go to Joel Sanders Architect web site.

Steve Plath
Monday, February 2, at 4pm
Berg Gallery: 05-105

Steve Plath, President of Plath & Co. The general contractor will speak on his work and career as a successful San Francisco Bay Area contractor dedicated to the art of high-end residential and commercial construction. Plath’s work has been featured in Gentry, Options for Fine Home Building, Diablo, Design/Build Construction, Home and Garden TV, Daily Pacific Builder, Sunset, Metropolitan Home, This Old House Books, Kitchen and Bath, Architectural Digest, Forbes, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Oakland Tribune, and San Francisco Business Times.

For additional information, go to Plath & Company web site.

William Leddy
Friday, February 6, at 4pm
Rotunda: 03-213

William Leddy will lecture on his work as founding principal of Leddy Maytum Stacy. His award-winning projects have been featured in Metropolitan Home and Architectural Record, as well as numerous national and international publications. Combining a deep concern for client needs, meticulous aesthetics, and appropriate technology, the firm has also been a pioneering force for sustainable design. Three of its buildings have been recognized by the AIA as Top Ten Green Buildings in the United States.

For additional information, go to LMS Architects web site.

Laura Hartman
Friday, February 20, at 4pm
Rotunda: 03-213

Laura Hartman will lecture on her work and practice at Fernau + Hartman Architects in the Bay Area. Using an improvisational design method borrowing from quirky forms of vernacular street architecture and varied modernist icons, the firm’s idiosyncratic buildings are uniquely suited to the particular circumstances of site, client and program. Fernau + Hartman participated in the "Emerging Voices" program at the Architecture League in New York and have since been profiled in numerous publications including GA Houses: 64.

For additional information, go to Fernau + Hartman Architects web site.

Reinhold Martin
Friday, February 27, at 4pm
Rotunda: 03-213

Reinhold Martin will lecture on postmodernism, iconography and contemporary culture. Martin is associate professor of architecture in the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation at Columbia University, where he directs the doctorate program in architecture, and the Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture. He is a founding co-editor of the journal Grey Room and a partner in the research practice Martin/Baxi Architects, and he has published widely on the history and theory of modern and contemporary architecture. He authored "The Organizational Complex: Architecture, Media, and Corporate Space," and co-authored "Architectural Itineraries."

Professor Vincente del Rio
Friday, March 6, at 4pm
Rotunda: 03-213

Cal Poly Professor Vincente del Rio will lecture on the new book, "Contemporary Urbanism in Brazil: Beyond Brasilia" authored by Vincente del Rio and William Siembieda (CRP Department Head).

For additional information, go to Vincente del Rio

abstracted image of a digital architectural model consisting of curved and flowing shapes with the words Fall 2008 embedded

Nader Tehrani
Wednesday, October 15, at 4pm
Berg Gallery, Architecture Building, Room 05-105

Nader Tehrani of Office dA and Associate Professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology will lecture on the extensive work of his practice with Monica Ponce de Leon, Dean at the University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Design. Office dA is based in Boston, and has completed the Main Library for the Rhode Island School of Design, the Tongxian Art Center in Bejing, the famed Helios House sustainable gas station, and the Oro/Laszlo furniture line, among many other internationally recognized building and design projects. Tehrani’s work focuses on research surrounding materials, methods of aggregations, geometry and the advancement of digital fabrication. His participation in the immaterial/ultra-material exhibition at the GSD is also paralleled by his installations at the Museum of Modern Art, Sci-ARC, and Georgia Tech, investigating new means and methods of fabrication in wood, steel, rope and polycarbonate. Tehrani has taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, the Rhode Island School of Design, and the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he served as the Thomas W. Ventulett III Distinguished Chair in Architectural History.

For additional information, visit Nader Tehrani

Neil Watson
Friday, October 17, 4pm
Business Rotunda, Room 213

Neil Watson will speak on the expressive and personal language of drawing using a variety of media.  He will discuss drawing on site, from memory and from imagination as a means to understand the built environment and celebrate the visual experience. Born and educated in Oxford, England, Watson has drawn and painted continuously since childhood. His work has been shown in museums and galleries on both sides of the Atlantic including having received a wide array of awards for his work.  He has published a number of books on visual self expression, and has carried out numerous commissioned works, mainly of architectural subject matter, for private and corporate clients. Wastson has taught drawing and painting workshops, mainly on location, in the USA and Europe for many years. He has resided in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1998 and has been an instructor at the Academy of Art College since 2000.

For additional information, visit Neil Watson

Jose Oubrerie
Friday, October 24, at 4pm
Business Rotunda, Room 213

We are very fortunate to have José Oubrerie, principal of Atelier Wylde-Oubrerie and a protégé of Le Corbusier, present his work and contributions to the completion of Le Corbusier’s 1960 project for the Church of Saint-Pierre in Firminy, France.

Oubrerie, French architect, author, and architect, is a twentieth century pioneer in his own right. He was a protégé of Le Corbusier between 1957-65 at the Atelier Rue de Sèvres, Paris. Shortly after Le Corbusier’s death in 1965, Oubrerie completed his studies and elected to pursue his professional and academic career between Europe and the United States. Since then, Oubrerie has completed several important buildings such as the Fondation Le Soufache for the French Cultural Center in Damascus, Syria (1977); the reconstruction as a "manifesto" of the 1925 Pavillon de L’Esprit Nouveau by Le Corbusier, in Bologna, Italy (1977), with Giuliano Gresleri; and the Miller House (1991) in Lexington, KY.

For additional information, visit Church of Saint Pierre or Architecture Interruptus

Hearst Lecture Series Workshops

For additional information and registration please contact Stephen Phillips as SPACE IS LIMITED.

To view poster visit Workshop Fall 2008

Joshua Aidlin in conjuntion with Vellum
Friday, November 7, at 4pm
Business Rotunda, Room 213

Joshua Aidlin will lecture on his architecture and furniture design practice as partner with David Darling of Aidlin Darling Design in San Francisco. The work of AD Design bridges the demands of artistic endeavor, functional pragmatics, and environmental responsibility, with the individual character of each project. Their research emphasis is on poetic spatial relationships, material richness and exacting detail at all scales. Keeping within the long tradition in theater, art, and architecture of a “total work of art” they design everything from furniture through to the master plan.

For additional information, visit Joshua Aidlin

Alex Hinds
Thursday, November 13, at 4pm
Berg Gallery, Architecture Building, Room 05-105

Alex Hinds, the Director of the County of Marin Community Development Agency will speak on his work as an architect and city planner. Hinds directed California land use agencies for 24 years in Marin, San Luis Obispo, and Lake Counties. He was responsible for the preparation of the Marin Countywide Plan and sustainability program which received the American Planning Association’s (APA) California Chapter’s award of excellence for comprehensive planning and the National APA award of excellence for implementation. Hinds was a Fulbright scholar in Ecuador and presently teaches at Cal Poly.

For additional information, visit Alex Hinds

Andrew Kudless
Friday, November 14, at 4pm
Business Rotunda, Room 213

Andrew Kudless will lecture on his digital design and performative integration research and building practice. Kudless is an architect based in San Francisco where he is an assistant professor at the California College of the Arts. Andrew has taught design studios, workshops, and seminars at The Ohio State University, the Architectural Association (London), Yale University, and Rice University. He is the founder of Matsys (materialsystems.org), a design studio exploring the emergent relationships between architecture, engineering, biology, and computation. Based on the idea that architecture can be understood as a material body with its own intrinsic and extrinsic forces relating to form, growth, and behavior, the studio investigates methodologies of performative integration through geometric and material differentiation. The studio’s work ranges from speculative and built projects to the crafting of new tools which facilitate an interdisciplinary approach to the design and fabrication of architecture.

For additional information, visit Andrew Kudless

Andrew Kudless
Saturday, November 15 (Workshop)
Location and time TBA

Andrew Kudless of CCA will be offering an advanced design workshop for our upper-division students based on his design studios at the AA in London and the CCA in San Francisco. For more information and if interested to attend, please email Assistant Professor Stephen Phillips or Assistant Professor Mark Cabrinha as space is limited.

For additional information, visit Andrew Kudless

Mitchell Joachim
Friday, November 21, at 4pm
Business Rotunda, Room 213

Mitchell Joachim will speak on his exciting new research experiments and inventions. Joachim is a young architect and partner at the nonprofit organization Terreform 1. Formerly an architect at Gehry Partners, Michael Sorkin Studio, and Pei Cobb Freed & Partners--he received the Moshe Safdie and Assoc. Research Fellowship, and the Martin Family Society Fellow for Sustainability at MIT. He won Time Magazine Best Invention of the Year 2007 for his Compacted Car designed in association w/ MIT Smart Cities Group. In addition he won the History Channel and Infiniti Design Excellence Award for the City of the Future, New York. Joachim is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Columbia University GSAPP, and received his Ph.D. from MIT, MAUD Harvard University, M.Arch. Columbia University, and BPS at SUNY, Buffalo w/ honors.

For additional information, visit Mitchell Joachim

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