FAT, the Villa, Hoogvliet, the Netherlands, 2008 © Maarten Laupman.

While grand visions are often considered the currency of contemporary architecture, the truth is that compromise—rather, the uncomfortable sensation of being compromised—is the natural state of the architect, and the condition under which architecture is made. For architecture, context is never pure or abstract; it is a site physically, economically, and socially inscribed by competing interests. These compromised positions and scoured surfaces are where architecture’s political and ideological subtexts are revealed. Yet from these cloudy waters, the most innovative, relevant, and unexpected forms can emerge.

Sam Jacob (FAT), Liza Fior (muf), and Damon Rich of Newark will reveal their own complicities and compromises, and discuss how these conditions can become grounds for creative and engaged forms of architecture and urban planning.

Graham grantee Sam Jacob is a director of London-based architecture office FAT, where he has been responsible for award-winning projects in the UK and abroad, such as the Heerlijkheid Hoogvliet (NL), Islington Square(UK), and Sint Lucas Art Academy (NL). Current projects include the BBC Drama Production Village in Cardiff, and CIAC, an 80-unit housing scheme in Northern England. As part of FAT, Jacob has received several awards, including the RIBA European Award (in 2009 and 2007), the Architecture Foundation Next Generation Award (2007), and the FX Award (Best Museum, 2007; Best Public Project, 2005). Jacob has taught and lectured at universities internationally. He is currently professor of architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and unit master at the Architectural Association, London; previously, he has taught at the Yale School of Architecture. Jacob is codirector of the Architectural Doppelgangers Research Cluster at the AA, a design critic for Art Review, and contributing editor to Icon. With Charles Jencks, Sean Griffiths, and Charles Holland, he coedited the recent AD issue Radical Post Modernism. Jacob also writes and edits strangeharvest.com, and contributes to a variety of publications.

Liza Fior was born in London, UK, where she continues to practice as a founding partner of muf architecture/art. Muf negotiates between built and social fabrics, public and private interests,  through projects that have been largely, but  non-exclusively, focused in East London. These projects range from urban-design schemes to small-scale temporary interventions, from landscapes to buildings—each part of a continual dialogue. Muf's approach—value what’s there, nurture what's  possible, and define what’s missing—is currently demonstrated by Making Space in Dalston, which will extend into a series of projects around the fringe of London’s Olympic site. At the 2010 Venice Architecture Biennale, muf turned the British Pavilion into a platform for locally based concerns. Muf's awards include the 2008 European Prize for Public Space (a UK first), for Barking, East London's new "town square."  In addition, Fior is coauthor of This is What We Do: A Muf Manual.

Graham grantee Damon Rich is a designer and artist. In exhibitions, graphic works, and events, sometimes produced in collaboration with young people and community-based organizations, Rich creates fantastical spaces for imagining the physical and social transformation of the world. His work represented the United States at the 2008 Venice Architecture Biennale, and has been exhibited at PS 1 Contemporary Art Center, Storefront for Art and Architecture, the Canadian Centre for Architecture, and the Netherlands Architecture Institute. In 1997, he founded the Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP), a nonprofit organization working to increase the impact of public participation in planning and development, where he served as creative director for ten years. Rich has taught architecture and planning courses at the Cooper Union, Syracuse University, Pratt Institute, and the Parsons School of Design, and has written about architecture and politics for publications including Perspecta, the Nation, Domus, and Architecture. He currently serves as urban designer for the City of Newark, New Jersey, where he leads design efforts with public and private players to improve the city’s public spaces.

Image: Damian Holmes

The Graham Foundation is pleased to present the premier launch of the Graham grantee project Dirt (MIT Press, 2012) and a talk by Megan Born, who co-edited the book along with Lily Jencks and Helene Furján. Dirt presents a selection of works that share dirty attitudes: essays, interviews, excavations, and projects that view dirt not as filth but as a medium, a metaphor, a material, a process, a design tool, a narrative, a system. Rooted in the landscape architect's perspective, Dirt views dirt not as repulsive but endlessly giving, fertile, adaptive, and able to accommodate difference while maintaining cohesion. This dirty perspective sheds light on social connections, working processes, imaginative ideas, physical substrates, and urban networks.

Dirt is the latest installment from the student-edited and student-managed publication entity viaPublications, a collaborative of interdisciplinary students, professors, and professionals, founded by graduate students at the University of Pennsylvania School of Design.

Helene Furján is the series editor and faculty advisor for viaBooks. Contributors to Dirt include Barry Bergdoll, Alan Berger, Anita Berrizbeitia, Megan Born, William Braham, Lindsay Bremner, Kim Brickley, Case Brown, Mark Campbell, James Corner, Phillip Crosby, Keller Easterling, Ruth Erickson, Larissa Fassler, Annette Fiero, Future Cities Lab, Andrea Hansen, Mark Alan Hughes, Tetsugo Hyakutake, Robert Le Ricolais, Lily Jencks, Peter Lloyd Jones, Keith Kaseman, Ferda Kolatan, John Landis, Sylvia Lavin, Andrew Lucia, Ian McHarg, Frank Matero, PEG Office of Landscape + Architecture, Rhett Russo, SERVO, Cathrine Veikos, Phoebe Washburn, Marion Weiss, and Richard Wesley.

Megan Born is a landscape and architectural designer at James Corner Field Operations in New York, a lecturer at the Yale School of Architecture and a graduate of PennDesign (M.Arch/MLA, 2008).

Following the talk, copies of Dirt will be available for purchase. A book signing and reception will be held in the library.

Lampo and the Graham Foundation are pleased to present Keith Fullerton Whitman as he performs the US premiere of Rhythmes Naturels in a 4-channel mix. Whitman composed the work at the legendary INA-GRM studios in Paris, which was founded in the late fifties to encourage the development of electronic music. While in residence, he was commissioned to develop a new piece for the Acousmonium, an 80-speaker sound system designed by former INA-GRM member François Bayle. Whitman drew additional inspiration from other well known members of the midcentury studio collective including founder Pierre Schaeffer, Luc Ferrari, Iannis Xenakis, and Bernard Parmegiani. Whitman will also perform a live modular synthesizer improvisation.

Keith Fullerton Whitman (b. 1973, Bergen County, N.J.) is a composer and performer fascinated by electronic music from its mid-century origins in Europe to its contemporary worldwide incarnation as digital music. He has recorded albums influenced by many genres including ambient music, drone, drill and bass, musique concrète and krautrock. Whitman has recorded and performed using several aliases, of which the most familiar is Hrvatski. Whitman lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

This performance is presented in partnership with Lampo. Founded in 1997, Lampo is a non-profit organization for experimental music, sound art and intermedia projects.

Photo: Angeline Evans

Lampo and the Graham Foundation are pleased to welcome Thomas Ankersmit as he presents new work created for the Serge analogue modular synthesizer, an instrument developed by Serge Tcherepnin at CalArts in the 1970s. Ankersmit will play his own Serge modular live, mixing with pre-recorded material that he created with the original Serge synthesizers at CalArts, where he has been an artist in residence since December 2011. The performance will be processed in real-time in quad.

Thomas Ankersmit (b. 1979, Leiden, the Netherlands) is a musician and installation artist based in Berlin and Amsterdam. His main instruments are the Serge analogue modular synthesizer, computer and alto saxophone. He frequently works with New York minimalist Phill Niblock and electroacoustic artists Valerio Tricoli and Kevin Drumm. Ankersmit last performed at Lampo in September 2008, when he presented a solo concert for alto sax, Serge synthesizer and computer.

This performance is presented in partnership with Lampo. Founded in 1997, Lampo is a non-profit organization for experimental music, sound art and intermedia projects.

New stilt houses in the village of Lam Isek. Image courtesy of Adrea Fitrianto.

Around the globe, groundbreaking work is being done by small teams of outstanding professionals who are helping people recover from disaster and rebuild homes, infrastructure, and communities, and bridging the gap that separates short-term emergency needs from long-term sustainable recovery. On February 22, Paris based Marie Aquilino will discuss her new book Beyond Shelter: Architecture and Human Dignity. The book features 25 reports from the field by leaders of architecture, engineering firms, non-profits, research centers, and international agencies that are working to provide disaster prevention and sustainable recovery efforts in a wide range of urban and rural locales, including Manila, New Orleans, Gujarat, São Paulo, Sudan, Vietnam, Kashmir, Sierra Leone, Kansas, and Haiti.

Marie J. Aquilino is a professor of architectural history at the École Spéciale d'Architecture (ESA) in Paris and a specialist in contemporary urban redevelopment. At the ESA she is creating a program to train architecture students to work in contexts of extreme need and crisis in the developing world. In addition, she serves as associate program director of the BaSiC Initiative; is collaborating with the International Federation of the Red Cross to set up a working group on the reconstruction of Haiti; and is a founding partner in OpenJapan, a worldwide design collaborative that devises integrated systems of risk mitigation.

Following the talk, copies of Beyond Shelter will be available for purchase. A book signing and reception will be held in the library.

This event is co-sponsored by Archeworks and by the National Public Housing Museum.

Related Links
Beyond Shelter at D.A.P. books
http://www.artbook.com/9781935202479.html

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