Into the Open: The Conference at Parsons The New School for Design, featuring presentations by Teddy Cruz, Deborah Gans, Laura Kurgan, and Rick Lowe, with agents provocateurs Jean Gardner, Robert Kirkbride, David J. Lewis, Lydia Matthews, Brian McGrath, Raoul Rickenberg, Bob Rubin, Grahame Shane, John Thackara, Susan Yelavich, Alfred Zollinger, Sven Travis, Miodrag Mitrasinovic, and William Bevington December 31-December 31, 1969 Kellen Auditorium, 66 Fifth Avenue, Ground floor, New York City Opened on Friday, April 24, 2009 Conference Series

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Slought Foundation, in collaboration with Parsons The New School for Design, is pleased to announce "Into the Open: The Conference," on the evening of Friday, April 24 from 5-9:00pm in New York City at Parsons (Kellen Auditorium, 66 Fifth Avenue, Ground floor).

Into the Open: Positioning Practice, the official U.S. pavilion at La Biennale di Venezia, the 11th International Architecture Exhibition, is on view from March 4 through May 1, 2009 at the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center. The exhibition focuses on the increasing interest in civic engagement in American architectural practice, and examines the means by which a new generation of architects is reclaiming a role in shaping community and the built environment. Into the Open features 16 architectural groups who actively engage communities, responding to social and environmental issues, including shifting demographics, changing geo-political boundaries, uneven economic development, and the explosion of urban migration. These intellectually entrepreneurial actors are designing the conditions from which new architectures can emerge-becoming activists, developers, facilitators of inclusive urban policies, as well as innovative urban researchers. Reaching creatively across institutions, agencies, and jurisdictions, they are negotiating hidden resources in the private, public, and non-profit sectors. The conference will consider what happens after the exhibition Into the Open closes. How can the issues explored in it be mobilized in contemporary practice?

For more information on the exhibition Into the Open: Positioning Practice: http://labiennale.us

For more information on the conference: http://labiennale.us/events.php
Download the Conference Schedule

INTO THE OPEN: THE CONFERENCE Friday April 24, 2009 5-9 PM Kellen Auditorium, 66 Fifth Avenue, ground floor What happens after the exhibition Into the Open is over? How can the issues explored in it be mobilized in contemporary practice? With welcoming remarks by conference coordinator Laetitia Wolff And an illustrated introduction/overview by curators Aaron Levy and Bill Menking Listen to the presentation (18 min): format mp3 | format m4a Featured Speakers: Teddy Cruz, Deborah Gans, Laura Kurgan, Rick Lowe The curators will pose the following questions to the guest speakers, who have 20 minutes to present. Informal conversation with the public to follow, mediated by 3-4 agents provocateurs from the faculty of Parsons the New School: Question #1: BEYOND EXHIBITION What's the politics of displaying architecture? How can we actualize the ideas presented in the exhibit, beyond the space and time of the exhibit? Speaker: Rick Lowe Agents provocateurs: Alfred Zollinger, Susan Yelavich, Lydia Matthews, Ken Saylor, and Bob Rubin Listen to the presentation (48 min): format mp3 | format m4a Question #2: COMMUNITY OF INTEREST Should the architect define the program or should it be the community's responsibility? Speaker: Teddy Cruz Agents provocateurs: Jean Gardner, David Grahame Shane, Miodrag Mitrasinovic, and John Thackara (UK) Listen to the presentation (60 min): format mp3 | format m4a Question #3: DATA ARCHITECTURE How is research a form of architectural practice? Is digital visualization a new form of architecture ? Speaker: Laura Kurgan Agents provocateurs: William Bevington, Brian McGrath, and Sven Travis Listen to the presentation (44 min): format mp3 | format m4a Question #4: SHELTER AS CITY How do you design sustainably for extreme conditions? Speaker: Deborah Gans Agents provocateurs: David Lewis, Robert Kirkbride, and Raoul Rickenberg Listen to the presentation (48 min): format mp3 | format m4a

CURATORS Aaron Levy is the Executive Director and Senior Curator of the Philadelphia-based Slought Foundation and on faculty in the Department of English at the University of Pennsylvania. William Menking is an architectural historian and curator of architecture. He is the founder and co-editor of The Architect's Newspaper and a professor of Urbanism and City planning at Pratt Institute. GUEST SPEAKERS Guatemala-born Teddy Cruz, founder of Estudio Teddy Cruz, is an architect and educator based in San Diego, CA whose practice and pedagogy, through research and design production, has been focused on the particularities of the bicultural territory of the U.S.-Mexican border. He is currently associate professor in Public Culture and Urbanism in the Visual Arts Department at University of California, San Diego and was appointed by San Diego Mayor's Jerry Sanders to serve as a member of the board of directors of San Diego's Center City Development Corporation. His work has been included in major architecture biennales, magazines and exhibits around the world and he has been pinned one of the emergent voices in American architecture. www.estudioteddycruz.com Deborah Gans is the principal of NY-based Gans studio and a full professor in the Architecture School at Pratt Institute. She is also visiting critic at Yale University. Many of Gans studio's projects in industrial design and architecture have a focus on social engagement, including a school desk for the New York School Construction Authority and alternative forms of housing for Kosovo and New Orleans. Current projects are a master plan for The Graham School in Hastings-on-Hudson New York. Among Gans' publications are the Le Corbusier Guide, now in its third edition (2006) and Extreme Sites: The 'Greening' of Brownfield (2004). http://www.gans-studio.net Laura Kurgan teaches architecture at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University, where she is the director of the Spatial Information Design Lab (SIDL) and the Director of Visual Studies. Her recent projects include a multi-year SIDL project on "million-dollar blocks" and the urban costs of American incarceration, which has appeared most recently at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (where it is part of the permanent collection). Her book on working with GPS and satellite imagery in various ways, Satellites, is forthcoming from Zone Books. http://www.arch.columbia.edu/SIDL Texas-based Rick Lowe is the founder of Project Row Houses, an arts and cultural organization located in Houston's historically significant and culturally charged Third Ward neighborhood. As an artist, Lowe has participated in exhibitions and programs internationally, and has worked as guest artist on a number of community projects nationally. Lowe collaborated with arts consultant Jessica Cusick on the Arts Plan for Rem Koolhaas' Seattle Public Library, and worked with California-based artist Suzanne Lacy and curator Mary Jane Jacobs on the Borough Project for Spoleto Festival 2003, in Charleston, South Carolina. http://www.projectrowhouses.org AGENTS PROVOCATEURS Jean Gardner Senior Faculty, School of Constructed Environments and School of Design Strategies, Parsons; Co-Founder of the Michael Kalil Endowment for Smart Design at Parsons Robert Kirkbride Associate professor of Product Design and thesis coordinator in the product design department, School of Constructed Environments, Parsons David J. Lewis Associate Professor, director of The Design Workshop, School of Constructed Environments, Parsons Lydia Matthews Dean of Academic Programs of Parsons the New School for Design and Professor in Art and Design History and Theory Brian McGrath Interim Director of Academic Affairs, and Associate Professor, Urban Design, School of Constructed Environments, Parsons Raoul Rickenberg Assistant Professor in the School of Design Strategies, Parsons Bob Rubin Robert M. Rubin is an architectural historian and preservationist of Modernism Grahame Shane Adjunct Professor of Architecture, Columbia University and Cooper Union, author of Recombinant Urbanism (Wiley, 2005) John Thackara (UK) Programme director, Designs of the time (Dott 07), England; Commissioner, Tools for Survival, St Etienne Design Biennial, France Susan Yelavich Assistant Professor in Parson's School of History and Theory of Art and Design Alfred Zollinger Director of the BFAs in Interior Design and Architectural Design, Professor of interior design, School of Constructed Environments, Parsons Sven Travis Interim Dean, Communications Design and Technology Miodrag Mitrasinovic Chair of Design Strategies Urban Initiative William Bevington Executive Director, Parsons Institute for Information Mapping (PIIM); formerly Chair, Communication Design Department at Parsons The New School

Into the Open: Positioning Practice is organized by Slought Foundation and PARC Foundation, with media partner The Architect's Newspaper, and presented by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S, Department of State, Washington, D.C., in cooperation with the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice. Generous support for the project has been received from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, Robert Rubin and Stephane Samuel, and PARC Foundation.

Support for the exhibition and public programs has been provided by Oldcastle Glass, Pratt Institute, inSite San Diego/Tijuana, Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Thornton Tomasetti, FXFOWLE Architects, Gwathmey Siegel and Associates Architects, Abe and Pat Levy, Perkins Eastman, the Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative, funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts, the Samuel S. Fels Fund, Larry Levy, Weidlinger Associates, Kartell, Jack Stern, Jack and Bea Morton, the Bernice Gersh Foundation, Pilkington and Leggett, the Shimkin Foundation, Michèle Richman, and Deborah Levy.

Special thanks to Duggal Visual Solutions for generous assistance in the design and fabrication of exhibition display materials in Venice. Special thanks to Digital Plus, DuPont Building Innovations, International Building Products, inc., GreenDepot, WORKac, Illy, ABC Carpet & Home, Contaminatenyc, and viawines.com for exhibition materials at Parsons.


MLA Style: at Parsons The New School for Design, et al. "Into the Open: The Conference." Slought Foundation Online Content. [24 April 2009; Accessed 18 March 2010]. <http://slought.org/content/11418/>.

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