The groundbreaking ceremony has taken place for Rubenstein Commons, a $20 million campus building for the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Designed by Steven Holl Architects, the scheme aims to provide space for enhanced collaboration and communication between faculty and scholars at “one of the world’s leading centers for curiosity-driven basic research.” The ceremony took place on March 14th, the birthday of famed physicist Albert Einstein, who spent the last twenty-two years of his life working at the Institute.
As final juries draw to a close, graduating architecture students are left with a crucial decision to make. While some might take a plunge into the scary real world looking to gain professional experience, others might choose to further reinforce their architecture education and skill set. Of the latter, most enroll in an MArch program, or take well-trodden paths into urban design and planning, landscape architecture, historic preservation, or theory and criticism. But in an increasingly complex world faced with myriad problems, what about those graduate architects looking to bolster their education in other related disciplines that will give them a more unique perspective on design problems? Here, we shortlist seven alternative, interdisciplinary graduate programs offered by architecture schools worldwide.
GSAPP Conversationsis a podcast series designed to offer a window onto the expanding field of contemporary architectural practice. Each episode pivots around discussions on current projects, research, and obsessions of a diverse group of invited guests at Columbia, from both emerging and well-established practices. Usually hosted by the Dean of the GSAPP, Amale Andraos, the conversations also feature the school’s influential faculty and alumni and give students the opportunity to engage architects on issues of concern to the next generation.
https://www.archdaily.com/806013/introducing-columbia-gsapp-conversations-inaugural-architecture-podcast-exhibition-models-james-taylor-fosterAD Editorial Team
Courtesy of Pixabay User Falco License Public Domain
Researchers at Princeton University’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering have discovered that hydroxyapatite, the primary compound found in human teeth and bones, can be used to help preserve the condition of marble, which is prone to cracking and deteriorating as a result of the effects of pollution and the weather.
https://www.archdaily.com/805307/new-type-of-marble-protection-derived-from-human-teeth-and-bonesOsman Bari
The residence belonging to famed Postmodernist architect Michael Graves will be sold to Kean University, home to the new Michael Graves College for architecture and design, after receiving approval from its board of trustees. Following Graves’s death last year, the architect’s will stipulated that the residence, his studio, another property were to be donated to Princeton University, Graves’s neighbor and longtime employer. But Princeton University felt the buildings would be better served in another capacity and rejected the gift, allowing Kean to step in.
The resignation itself was demanded* by Princeton University President Christopher Eisgruber after Zaera-Polo was accused of plagiarizing parts of a text he produced for the “Elements of Architecture” exhibition curated by Rem Koolhaas at the 2014 Venice Biennale. From the start, Zaera-Polo has denied that his texts violate Princeton’s academic code of conduct, but nevertheless agreed to Eisgruber’s demand. In the documents leaked Tuesday, Zaera-Polo criticizes the actions taken by Princeton both before and since his resignation, arguing that they have damaged his reputation. He is thus suing them on four charges: “breach of contract,” “breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing,” “tortious interference with contract and prospective economic advantage,” and finally “trade libel.”
The story will undoubtedly receive a lot of attention, given that it involves a controversial dispute between an internationally renowned architect and a university with an international stature. But the real story behind the dispute is not about Alejandro Zaera-Polo’s academic conduct or Princeton’s handling of its staff contracts; instead, it has everything to do with our expected standards for architectural research.
Monica Ponce de Leon has been named as the next Dean of Princeton's School of Architecture. Ponce de Leon, who co-founded Office dA in 1991, and then founded her own firm MPdL Studio in 2011, is the current Dean of the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. She also previously taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Design for 12 years, and is a recipient of the National Design Award in Architecture from the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian National Design Museum.
This past October Alejandro Zaera-Poloabruptly resigned from his position as Dean of Princeton’s School of Architecture amidst plagiarism rumors. The resignation, requested by University President Christopher Eisgruber, was the result of Zaera-Polo's removal of citations from his contribution to the “Facade” section of the Elements of Architecture exhibition at the 2014 Venice Biennale.
Claiming the rumors to be “demonstrably false,” Zaera-Polo has issued a “clarifying statement” outlining the purpose of his Biennale text to be polemic, and nonacademic, therefore it did not breach “any moral, ethical, or other applicable standards.” An email in support of Zaera-Polo sent by Rem Koolhaas to Eisgruber three days before the resignation has also released, denouncing any wrongdoing from Koolhaas’ perspective as the Biennale’s director.
Read Koolhaas' email, Zaera-Polo's clarification statement and a response from Princeton in full, after the break.
Formlessfinder of New York City has a vision "to liberate architecture from the constraints of form." Samuel Medina of Metropolis Magazine recently interviewed the Princeton duo on contemporary architectural practice - fittingly naming them "Formal Renegades."
“We like architecture,” says Garrett Ricciardi, with real sincerity. “We want to save architecture.” But from what? Ricciardi is one half of New York–based formlessfinder, the experimental—you might say radical—architecture firm he founded with Julian Rose in 2011, just after the pair completed a joint thesis at Princeton University. Their project, which laid out the blueprint for Ricciardi and Rose’s subsequent collaborations, advanced a daring proposition: to liberate architecture from the constraints of form.
“The basic idea of the formless is about freeing up architecture to make it about what we want it to be about,” Rose says. “The idea is that form has sort of gotten in the way,” he adds, before checking off a laundry list of offenders: parametricism, digital fabrication, blobs, minimalism. Where form has “always served to limit and control,” the formless, as the architects have come to define it, is subversive by nature. It’s an operation rife with uncertainty, producing “messy, equivocal, and, most importantly, generative” results.
Taking place at Princeton University on October 13th from 10:00am-5:30pm, the ‘Performing Architecture’ symposium will bring together significant theorists and practitioners in the fields of architecture and performance and inviting a broader engagement with the artistic and academic community. In parallel with the art world’s return to performance and a renewed search for architecture’s social and political relevance, this symposium seeks to move beyond disciplinary hegemony in the dissemination of architecture today. Including Liz Diller(DS+R), Pedro Gadanho (MoMA), Vito Acconci, Roselee Goldberg, and many others, they hope to offer lasting provocations to how we think of the body, space, structure, and design in the disciplines of performance and architecture – and somewhere between the two. For more information, please visit here.
Our friends at Dwell have shared with us their short film featuring the legendary Michael Graves inside his beautiful Princeton home in which he created out of a disused warehouse. In the film, Graves shares the discoveries he made when renovating his house and thoughts about his career, his practice and universal design.
The film was directed and edited by Gary Nadeau. Continue after the break for the complete list of credits.
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