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A series of seminars exploring spatial politics and research as a form of production
Slought and the Department of Architecture at PennDesign are pleased to announce "Architecture Dejeuner," a series of lunchtime seminars exploring spatial politics and research as a form of production. Please note that these seminars often address pre-circulated readings and are intended for an intimate group of scholars, students, and interested members of the community.
The first event in this series will feature Sina Najafi, editor-in-chief of Cabinet magazine, New York, in a conversation titled "The Evolution of Fake Estates" and will take place on Wednesday, October 3rd, 2007 at Slought. In conjunction with this event, we are pleased to make available Mythology: The Evolution of Fake Estates, Part II, an Interview by Jeffrey Kastner, Sina Najafi, and Frances Richard from Odd Lots: Revisiting Gordon Matta-Clark?s Fake Estates (Cabinet Books / New York, in conjunction with the Queens Museum of Art and White Columns, 2005).
The second conversation will take place on Thursday, November 8th, 2007 and features Lindsay Bremner, Professor and Chair of the Architecture program in the Tyler School of Art, Temple University. In her presentation, "Citiness and Literariness," Bremner explores the ways in which cities are conjunctures that can take on properties that correspond to works of literature. Drawing on thinkers as diverse as Amin and Thrift, Benjamin, Blanchot, de Certeau, Danto, Kracauer, Lefebvre, Mbembe and Nuttall, Proust, and Simmel, Bremner presents attendees with a series of urban design conclusions concerning the relationship between the uniqueness of cities and the unparaphraphraseability of literature. This presentation is based on work recently submitted to the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg in 2007 for a Doctor of Architecture degree.
The third conversation in the series features architectural critic Nina Rappaport on October 30, 2009. In a talk titled "Episodes in Industrial Urbanism," Rappaport explores the factory in relation to globalization. Throughout architectural history, the factory has provided a place of design innovation for engineers and architects, while it was often sequestered into separate zones. This once-new building type provided a freedom to explore the spatial, structural, and organizational ramifications of machines and production from vertical systems dependent on gravity flow and centralized power sources to hermetically sealed horizontal sheds in suburban fields. In the post-war years industrial landscapes evolved from vertical dense urban agglomerations to horizontal suburban greenfields where land was cheap and abundant. As in other building typologies, the factory corresponds to cultural and spatial practices in urbanism and architectural design, influenced by social and economic organizational systems, resulting in a form that -follows -the functional logic of both the internal operations and the manufacturing process. Nina Rappaport will discuss this changing manufacturing practice as it influences the design of production spaces showing how economic systems—from Fordist economies of scale to Toyota's flexible just-in-time (JIT) inventory strategy—influenced the shape of production. Now that the effects of globalized infrastructure, have been assessed, manufacturing could shift again to the local within the global marketplace, as more ecologically-minded companies build factories closer to their consumers. New industries have the potential to develop innovative architecture that vastly improves upon prevailing patterns of urban industrial zoning and clustered production areas through a return to the vertical urban factory as a space of innovation and renewed urbanization. As the sociologist Henri Lefebvre has observed, functional efficiency, and the goal towards rational systems influences architecture and the shape of cities as spatial products, which can easily be applied to the industry-scape.
Sina Najafi is editor-in-chief of Cabinet magazine and the editorial director of Cabinet Books. He is the editor of Letters from Mayhem, co-editor of Presidential Doodles, and editorial director of Ilf and Petrov's American Road Trip. Najafi has also curated several exhibitions, including "Philosophical Toys" (Apex Art, Summer 2005) and "Odd Lots: Revisiting Gordon Matta-Clark's Fake Estates" (White Columns and Queens Museum of Art, Fall 2005).
Lindsay Bremner is professor and chair of the Architecture program in the Tyler School of Art, Temple University. She was formerly a practicing architect and academic in Johannesburg, South Africa, where she was the chair of Architecture at the University of the Witwatersrand. Bremner has published and lectured widely on the transformation of the South African city since the end of apartheid, after serving in public office in metropolitan government in Johannesburg the 1990?s. Her publications include "Thabo Mbeki: The Geography of Exile" (Domus 874), "Reframing Township Space" (Public Culture 16), "Border/Skin" (in Against the Wall, ed. Michael Sorkin) and a book, Johannesburg: One City Colliding Worlds. Her work has been key to the shaping of the exhibit on Johannesburg, curated by Ricky Burdett, for the 2006 Venice Architecture Biennale. Lindsay was a Visiting Professor at MIT in 2005.
Nina Rappaport is an architectural critic, curator, and educator. She is the Publications Director at Yale School of Architecture and editor of the biannual publication Constructs. She is currently working on the exhibition, "the Vertical Urban Factory," which will open in New York in spring 2010 and travel. She is author of the book Support and Resist: Structural Engineers and Design Innovation (The Monacelli Press, 2007), for which she received New York State Council on the Arts and Graham Foundation in the Fine Arts. She has contributed essays to Perspecta, Praxis, 306090, Architecture, Architectural Record, Future Anterior, and Tec21 among other architectural publications. She was a Design Trust for Public Space Fellow and co-author of Long Island City: Connecting the Arts (Episode Books, 2006). She teachers seminars on the post-industrial factory and on innovative engineers at Barnard College, City College, and Yale School of Architecture, Parsons School of Design and is currently teaching the seminar, Alternative Urbanisms in the Syracuse in NYC program.