United States

Karel Klein is an architect and educator who has been working with various AI technologies since 2016. Her ongoing project is an investigation into crossbred image-objects produced using atypically trained GANs (generative adversarial networks) and their capacity for contemporary myth-making in architecture. In the same way that imaginative vocabulary and metaphoric style were primary, if literary instruments for the invention of new mythologies for the Surrealists, the strange and idiosyncratic qualities of images produced using AI are similarly a kind of matter metaphor-ed and made visible by the cyborg imagination. With these tools, Karel is interested in the re-enchantment of the architectural body—one that both foments and succumbs to sensual perceptions, and one that discovers new and unexpected relations to the world beyond the realm of the rational. Her work in this realm has been exhibited at the 2021 Venice Biennale; the FRAC Institute, Orleans, France; Des Lee Gallery, St. Louis; and SCI-Arc Gallery, Los Angeles. Recent essays in pursuit of this work include “Verto Pellis” in Offramp, issue 17; “Machines are Braver than Art” in “Rendering Fiction,” Paprika!, volume 7, issue 8; and “Machines À Rechercher,” in Log 55, summer 2022. Karel teaches currently at Washington University, University of Pennsylvania, UCLA, and the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc).

Geo-Conversations: Nature and Technology in Architecture

AIA New York Center of Architecture open its doors to the public for a very special book launch by Alper Derinboğaz. He is founder of Salon, the internationally renowned architecture studio based in Istanbul, Berlin and recently Los Angeles known for its award-winning projects such as the Museum of Istanbul, pandemic-resistant office design Ecotone and zero-emission Villa Topos.

Pritzker Prize-winning architect Shigeru Ban is renowned for his innovative use of wood. Natural and beautiful, timber construction can also be a key tool in the fight against climate change through the creation of environmentally responsible buildings. Ban’s new book, Shigeru Ban: Timber in Architecture presents an in-depth examination of 45 of the architect’s works demonstrating the versatility of timber, from the undulating curves of the Centre Pompidou-Metz in France to the playful inversion of Japan’s Mt. Fuji World Heritage Centre. At this talk, Ban examines the awe-inspiring use of wood throughout his career, shares his long history of humanitarian work, and offers insights on working toward a more sustainable future through architecture. Moderated by Matilda McQuaid, Acting Director of Curatorial and previously Head of Textiles at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. Followed by a reception with a sale of autographed books. Program is the official U.S. book launch for Shigeru Ban: Timber in Architecture.

Bernard Tschumi is an architect based in New York and Paris. First known as a theorist, he exhibited and published The Manhattan Transcripts and wrote Architecture and Disjunction, a series of theoretical essays. Major built works include the Parc de la Villette, the Acropolis Museum, Le Fresnoy Center for the Contemporary Arts, Paul L. Cejas School of Architecture at FIU, MuséoParc Alésia, the Paris Zoo, the Binhai Science Museum, and a large educational complex for the University of Paris-Saclay opening in 2023. He was the Dean of the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation of Columbia University in New York from 1988-2003. The book Architecture Concepts: Red is Not a Color is a comprehensive collection of his conceptual and built projects. His drawings and models are in the collections of several major museums, including MoMA in New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, which each presented a major retrospective of his work in 1994 and 2014.

As the field of landscape architecture evolves to combat the issues of our time—climate change and just futures—how we practice matters. Through design research, experimental methods of design process and ideation, and provocative questioning, TEN x TEN challenges the normative environment of professional practice through process-oriented ways of working, engaging, and seeing landscape. Our agency as landscape architects to address the issues of our time is grounded in part by our ability to challenge the critical foundation of the design process itself and to practice modes of discovery as a generative act.

Addressing the crisis of housing, Lorcan O'Herlihy will present a number of projects that are tackling these important issues. 

Born in Toronto, Canada, Alex Josephson studied architecture at the University of Waterloo and in Rome. He co-founded PARTISANS in 2012 after dropping out of the Architectural Association School of Architecture (AA). Alex is the only Canadian to have received the New York Prize Fellowship at the Van Alen Institute, and he was named 2015 Best Emerging Designer by Canada’s Design Exchange. He currently lectures at the University of Toronto’s Daniels Faculty of Architecture. Alex is a registered architect in Ontario.

Michael Hsu Office of Architecture (MHOA) serves a broad audience, while specializing in materiality, detail, and design. The studio approaches everyday architecture and high design projects with a wide range of perspectives. In addition to offering architecture and interiors, the firm integrates branding, art curation, and landscape design services. This lecture will explore the firm's approach across a range of projects and will touch on the future plans of the studio, including our newly developed R&D team, established to ensure that we continue to push design forward. 

Where Business, Tech and Innovation Collide in Nashville!