Integrated Design Practices

Hosted by Cal Poly's College of Architecture and Environmental Design (CAED), the Hearst Lecture Series focuses this year on integrated design practices. The term “integrated practice” is often used in association with BIM, leading to the mistaken presumption that new technologies equate integrated practice. The organizers of this year’s series propose asking: what is the integration we seek and how are technologies situated to enable this? These questions apply equally well to each of the disciplines represented in the CAED.

Lectures in this year’s series will focus on the integration between the digital and the physical. The relationship between conception and execution has been severed through the separation of means and methods—a separation certainly amplified by the technological obsession of formal novelty from the 1990’s to today. Consequently, software is seen as the culprit or the solution, rather than the question at hand: the integration between conception and execution.

Conscious of Cal Poly’s reputation as a polytechnic institution, the internationally respected group of designers, practitioners and educators invited to participate in this year's lecture series employ new tools and technologies to integrate design and building in a way that is core to the polytechnic tradition. The invited lecturers themselves bridge teaching and practice further integrating and innovating pedagogical practices and design practices. This year's Hearst Lecture Series Director is Prof. Mark Cabrinha.

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.

Collage

Benjamin Ball: Ball-Nogues Studio
Friday, January 15th, 2010, at 4:00pm
Berg Gallery, Room 05-105

Benjamin Ball grew up in Colorado and Iowa where his mother's involvement in theatre proved influential. While studying for his degree at the Southern California Institute of Architecture, Ball logged stints at Gehry Partners and Shirdel Zago Kipnis. Upon graduation, he sought work as a set and production designer for films (including the Matrix series) as well as music videos and commercials with such influential directors as Mark Romanek and Tony Scott.

His experience ranges from work on the Disney Concert Hall and small residential commissions for boutique firms to complex medical structures and event design. In his current collaboration with Gaston Nogues, Ball is exploring the intersection of architecture, art and product design through physical modeling and the use of digital and more traditional forms of production. A major goal of his design endeavors is to create experiences; because of this, he feels "a building that is not built is not architecture."

In 2006, Ball-Nogues Studio was awarded the Best of Category distinction for Environments for their installation Maximilian's Schell by ID Magazine. Ball-Nogues is the recipient of two Los Angeles AIA Design Awards and Interior Design Magazines Best of Year Award for their installation Rip Curl Canyon.

In 2007 their installation Liquid Sky was the winner of the Museum of Modern Art / P.S.1's Young Architect's Program competition and Ball-Nogues became one three design teams who were awarded a United States Artists Target Fellowship. In 2008 their site specific installation Echoes Converge appeared at the 11th Venice Biennale of Architecture and an exhibit of their work appeared at the Beijing Biennale. The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles will host a new installation by the team in the summer of 2009. The partners have taught design courses at SCI Arc, UCLA and USC.

Their work has appeared in publications worldwide including the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Architectural Record, Architectural Digest, Interior Design, Icon, Log 10, Sculpture, and Surface.

For additional information, visit Benjamin Ball's web page

Michael Hughes
Friday, January 29th, 2010, at 4:00pm
Business Rotunda, Room 03-213

A 10-year project to design and build a home for a retired couple in Eastanollee, Ga., that successfully developed innovative ideas within a limited budget convinced Michael Hughes of the importance of grounding design education in hands-on experience. Hughes has refined his vision of design/build pedagogy while teaching at Cornell University, the University of New Mexico, the Catholic University of America, Louisiana State University and the University of Colorado at Denver.

His Joy House Project, conducted with 12 graduate students from CU-Denver, won the Colorado AIA Young Architects Design Award in 2004 and the ACSA Collaborative Practice Award in 2006. Hughes joined the University of Arkansas' School of Architecture in 2006. He teaches second-year studio and has initiated a new design-build project, an outdoor classroom for a local elementary school. Hughes' residential designs have won state and regional design awards from the AIA. His design for a Louisiana home was one of four selected nationally to receive the 2006-07 Faculty Design Award from the ACSA. Hughes' design work has been documented in Architectural Record, This Old House; his essays have appeared in Oz.

He worked with Richard Meier and Frank Gehry before starting his own design practice.

For additional information, visit Michael Hughes's web page

Ann Forsyth
Friday, February 5th, 2010, at 4:00pm
Business Rotunda, Room 03-213

Ann Forsyth’s work focuses on the social aspects of physical planning and urban development. Forsyth's contributions have been to analyze the success of planned alternatives to sprawl, particularly exploring the tensions between social and ecological values in urban design.

She is the author of three books: Reforming Suburbia: The Planned Communities of Irvine, Columbia, and The Woodlands (2005, University of California Press); Designing Small Parks: A Manual Addressing Social and Ecological Concerns (2005, Wiley, with Laura Musacchio); and Constructing Suburbs: Competing Voices in a Debate Over Urban Growth (1999, Routledge/Gordon and Breach). She is a Professor at Cornell in the College of Architecture, Art and Planning and has previously taught at the University of Minnesota, Harvard Design School, and the University of Massachusetts.

She has practiced in the private sector in both the United States and Australia and is a certified practicing planner in the Australian Planning Institute.

For additional information, visit Ann Forsyth's web page

Pierluigi Serraino
Friday, February 12th, 2010, at 4:00pm
Business Rotunda, Room 03-213

Pierluigi is an Italian architect practicing in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has worked in the offices of Mark Mack, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, and Anshen+Allen Architects, gaining extensive experience both in small and large scale domestic and international projects. He holds degrees in architecture from the University of Rome "La Sapienza",the Southern California Institute California, and the University of California Los Angeles. He is completing this year his Ph.D. in architecture at the University of California Berkeley on the subject of collaboration and teamwork in multidisciplinary design practices.

His articles and projects have appeared in Architectural Record, Architectural Design, ArCA, Global Architecture, Hunch, Costruire, Architettura Cronache e Storia, ACADIA, and Journal of Architectural Education. He has published books for TASCHEN, Chronicle Books, Birkhauser, Routledge, Princeton Architectural Press, John Wiley & Sons, and William Stout Publishers. Among his titles are "Modernism Rediscovered", "NorCalMod: Icons on Northern California Modernism", and "History of Form*Z". Forthcoming books are a monograph of mid-century architect Gordon Drake, and a study of Digital Design through the work design architect John Marx of San Francisco.

Scott Marble: Marble Fairbanks
Friday, February 26th, 2010, at 4:00pm
Business Rotunda, Room 03-213

Scott Marble is a founding partner of Marble Fairbanks and a faculty member at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation (GSAPP). His early engagement with digital technologies at Columbia University, teaching one of the first “paperless” design studios, has allowed Marble Fairbanks to pioneer innovative uses of digital fabrication and unique assemblies in their design work. Much of the office’s recent work has been designed utilizing computer production technologies to bring custom and cost effective solutions to the specific needs of clients.

Using this comprehensive process and integration, the firm has consistently achieved unique award-winning designs for a wide range of residential, educational, institutional and commercial projects. Marble Fairbanks is the recipient of many local, national, and international design awards including an Art Commission of New York City Award for Excellence in Design, AIA awards, American Architecture Awards, a PA Award, an ID Award, and an ar+d Award for Emerging Architecture from Architecture Review Magazine.

The work of Marble Fairbanks is published regularly in journals and books and has been exhibited in galleries and museums around the world including the Architectural Association in London, the Nara Prefectural Museum of Art in Japan and the Museum of Modern Art in New York where their drawings are part of the museum’s permanent collection.

For additional information, visit Marble Fairbanks' web page.