Fall 2009 Discipline Group Lectures
Building Technology — Computation — HTC — Aga Khan — Visual Arts
Building Technology
Monday, October 19 2009
12:30-2PM ROOM TBA
BYRON STIGGE
Associate Principal, Buro Happold
Costs and benefits of Double Skin Facades
A case study of the design and construction process for an externally ventilated double skin facade for the University of Michigan Biomedical Science Reseach Building will be presented in this lecture, the first in the Fall 2009 Building Technology Lecture Series. The design process included extensive energy modeling, CFD analysis, value engineering, detailing design and control specifications. Following the case study, Associate Principal of Buro Happold, Byron Stigge, will present a more general research project comparing the payback issues of double skin facades. The research included the wide variety capital costs as well as the variety of operational and maintenance costs and savings for 4 types of double skin facades in 5 climate types.
Byron Stigge leads the Sustainability Consulting group for the North America region of Buro Happold. Byron has focused his engineering and design career on environmental building consulting with the UK-based firm Buro Happold since 1998 and has worked in their London, Bath and New York offices. His passion for sustainable development of the built environment has offered him the opportunity to work on a wide range of projects around the world from city-scale sustainable master planning projects to LEED Platinum buildings to detailed systems and facade analysis projects.
Recent projects include: Orange County Great Park in Irvine, CA; Tellapur City, Hyderabad, India; CSOB Bank, Prague; Governors Island Strategic Plan, New York City; Genzyme Center, Cambridge, MA; Pole, Moscow; Lavasa, India; The World Trade Center Competition with “Team Think”; Lotte Super Tower in Seoul, Korea; Lifestyle Hotel at MGM CityCenter, Las Vegas, Koukeny Design Initiative, Kibera, Nairobi, Kenya.
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For updates on the BTLS and other Building Technology News,
visit: http://mitbt.tumblr.com
Light refreshments will be served.
Please contact amulcahy@mit.edu with questions.
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Mon Sept 28
AVT 7-431, 12:30-2PM
Christoph Reinhart, Harvard University
“The role of building performance simulation in architectural education and practice”
Mon Oct 5
AVT 7-431, 12:30-2PM
Brent Gabby, Simpson Gumphertz & Heger
Lecture title TBA
Mon Oct 19
Room TBA, 12:30-2PM
Byron Stigge, Buro Happold
“Costs and benefits of Double Skin Facades”
Mon Nov 2
1-190, 12:30-2PM
Erik Olsen, Transsolar Inc.
“Inside the shoebox: Using physics-rich performance simulations to provide meaningful design guidance”
Mon Nov 16
AVT 7-431, 12:30-2PM
Simon Greenwold, MathWorks
Lecture title TBA
Mon Nov 23
AVT 7-431, 12:30-2PM
Roger Chang, Westlake Reed Leskosky
“Sustainable Design: A Collaborative Approach”
Computation
Oct.9
CAD/CAM for Coded Assembly
Jonathan Bachrach, Principal, Other Lab
Oct 23
Phrases of the Kinetic: Organicism and Transformation from Robots to Biofuels
Amanda Parkes (Ph.D.) CTO, Bodega Algae / Researcher, Tangible Media Group, MIT Media Lab
Oct 30
Mass Customization: Models and Algorithms
Jose Duarte (Ph.D.) Associate Professor, Technical University of Lisbon / Visiting Scientist, MIT Design Lab
Nov 6
—CANCELLED—
I|K investigations
Mariana Ibanez, (M.Arch, AA), Assistant Professor, Harvard University Graduate School of Design
Simon Kim, AIA (M.Arch, AA, S.M. MIT), Assistant Professor, University of Pennsylvania, School of Design
Nov 13
Emergence through Conflict: The Multi-Disciplinary Design System (MDDS)
Anas Alfaris (Ph.D.), Research Scientist, Strategic Engineering Group, Engineering Systems Division, MIT
Nov 20*
Computational Form and Material Gestalt
Achim Menges (AA Dipl Hons), Professor / Director, Institute for Computational Design, Stuttgart University
Visiting Professor, Architectural Association, Visiting Professor, GSD, Harvard University
*Note different location: Room 4-237
History, Theory + Criticism
MIT HTC Forum: PRODUCING GEOPOLITICS
presents
Ana Miljacki
The Cool Look of Reasonable Consumption: “Lifestyle” in Cold War Czech Architectural Discourse
Tuesday, September 22
One of the most famous events marking the cold war tension’s capacity to infiltrate all aspects of life revolved around a washing machine. The image of Nixon and Khrushchev standing together at the American Exhibit in Moscow in 1957, observing a scene of suburban domestic life, allegorically summarizes the “peaceful race” that held the world in balance for four decades after the Yalta meeting of 1945. Although the juxtaposition of relative luxury to relative scarcity appropriately describes the most basic circumstances of life (and practicing architecture) on the opposing sides of the curtain, this juxtaposition has often obfuscated the importance that the concept of lifestyle held in the postwar discourse about the Second World War.
This talk will examine the status of the concept of lifestyle in the work of the Club for The Study of Consumption in Prague (1946-1948), and track related invocations of lifestyle in the Czech postwar architectural discourse.
Ana Miljacki is currently an Assistant Professor of Architecture at MIT.
Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen
Alvar Aalto: Architecture, Modernity and Geopolitics
Tuesday, October 6
Perhaps more than any other architect, Alvar Aalto’s life and career have been tied to his home country, Finland. This lecture will elaborate upon our understanding of Aalto’s “Finnishness” by placing him within the terrain of 20th century geopolitics, understood here as a combination of geographic and political factors influencing Aalto’s career during the Finnish Civil War of 1918, spanned through two Finno-Russian wars that took place, respective in 1939-40 and 1941-44, and culminated at the beginning-of-an-end of the Cold War in the mid-1970s.
Considering all the turmoil, it comes as no surprise that various geographic narratives dominated his architecture, writings and reception. Yet, this talk will prove that “Finnish” was not the only attribute Aalto used to describe his architecture. Ideas about “Nordic,” “Scandinavian,” “Baltic,” “international,” “pan-European,” “regional” and “universal” culture bear witness to the richness and scale of his geographic ambitions at different times.
Alvar Aalto: Architecture, Modernity and Geopolitics is based on Pelkonen’s book of the same title, published by Yale University Press in Spring 2009.
Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen is an Associate Professor at Yale School of Architecture, where she teaches design, history and theory of architecture and directs the Masters of Environmental Design program.
Eve Blau
Hybridity as Condition + Challenge: Beyond Project Zagreb
Tuesday, November 10
The European Union is generating a new transnational political geography in Europe that raises a number of questions about the internal dynamics and role of cities in cross-border networks. Focusing on Zagreb – a city currently transitioning into the EU and with more than 150 years of experience of operating in conditions of instability and within transnational political structures – Blau examines how such conditions create opportunities for architecture, and generate new forms of practice and techniques for city making.
Eve Blau is Adjunct Professor of Architectural History and Director of the Master in Architecture Degree Programs at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.
Nato Thompson
Seeing Power: Art and Activism in the Age of Cultural Production
Tuesday, November 17
Nato Thompson is Chief Curator at the public art agency Creative Time, New York, where he has organized such projects as Paul Chan’s monumental Waiting for Godot in the streets of New Orleans (2007), Democracy in America: The National Campaign (2008) in New York City’s Park Avenue Armory, the roving cross-country discussion platform It is What it Is: Conversations about Iraq by artist Jeremy Deller, and PLOT09, which brought a number of art encampments to Governor’s Island, NY. Prior to this, Thompson was Curator at MASS MoCA, where his massive exhibition The Interventionists looked to contemporary art engagements across the social sphere — including conferences, nomadic housing, free taxi rides, media detournement, and shoplifting.
Thompson will discuss his book Seeing Power: Art and Activism in the Age of Cultural Production. Borrowing from his experience as an activist and curator, Thompson discusses the difficulties and potentialities of producing meaning under a neoliberal information economy.
All lectures begin at 6:30pm and are held in Room 3-133
MIT, 77 Mass. Ave, Cambridge. See http://whereis.mit.edu for room location.
The Fall 2009 HTC Forum, Producing Geo-Politics, considers creative production within geo-political systems.
HTC Forum events are free and open to the public. Organized by the History, Theory, and Criticism Program of Architecture and Art at MIT and sponsored by the Lipstadt-Stieber Fund. For information about this and other forum events, please contact: htc@mit.edu.
Aga Khan Program
Fall 2009
An Evening With...
Lecture Series
Building New Campuses In the Islamic World
Available Bios & Abstracts
October 5
KAUST -
King Abdullah University for Science and Technology -
A Step into the Future
William Odell, FAIA
Design Principal, HOK Architects
Ammar Alnahwi, PhD
Associate Director, Global Collaborative Research, KAUST US
October 26
Education for All
Education City, Doha, Qatar
Kevin Underwood
Vice President / Principal, EDAW | AECOM
November 16
Drawing on Islamic City-Building Traditions to Create
a 21st Century Community of Learning
David Dixon, FAIA
Principal in charge of Planning and Urban Design
Goody, Clancy & Associates
Special Lecture
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
at 12:30 PM in room 3-133
Palmettes, Arches, Geometrical Patterns:
Ornaments in the Marble Carvings from Medieval Afghanistan
Martina Rugiadi, PhD
AKPIA@MIT Post-Doctoral Fellow
Sapienza Università di Roma
Lectures are free and open to the public.
Unless indicated, lectures are on Mondays
at 5:30 pm in Room 3-133 (map)
Visual Arts Program
Fall 2009 Lecture Series
CITY AS STAGE, CITY AS PROCESS
City as Stage, City as Process brings together speakers from art and (counter) culture, architecture, urbanism, and media technology to discuss such questions as: In what way is the city not a fixed entity, but a process? How do artists and cultural activists reclaim the street, activating the city as backdrop and insisting on public space? What makes a city a city? Who owns the city? How can media technology be designed to intervene in and navigate the city? The MIT Visual Arts Program (VAP) lecture series is directed by Ute Meta Bauer and Amber Frid-Jimenez. On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the VAP this term, the lecture series highlights the issues at the core of the academic program and the work and research of the faculty.
Location:
Joan Jonas Performance Hall, MIT Visual Arts Program, Bldg N51-337, 3FL
265 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139
(see directions below).
For more information:
http://visualarts.mit.edu
vap@mit.edu
617-253-5229
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9/28/09 - Factory City
Christoph Schaefer
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Factory City
The City is our Factory: Politics of desire and the production of urban spaces between Grande Latte and Park Fiction. In the new urban fabric, subcultures, cultural workers, musicians and artists play a significant role as producers of collective spaces, places shaped by desires; as inventors of new perspectives and lifestyles. Christoph Schaefer will introduce Park Fiction, a collective self-organised project that managed to break from the grip of real estate developers an expensive piece of land on the prestigeous riverbank of Hamburg St. Pauli. In a joint effort, a group of residents together with artists organized for the right to the city and against gentrification, winning a public park with a harbor view. The struggle for urban spaces is the struggle for the means of production: the city is our factory. What role can cultural workers play in this scenario?
Christoph Schaefer
Hamburg-based German conceptual artist Christoph Schaefer focuses on urban space and how it can be altered through art. Since 1995, he has been part of the Park Fiction project. He is interested in the exchange of subjectivities and the collective new definition of public space. As a guest of Sarai Media Lab, he researched irregular settlements and gated communities in Delhi and Kolkata. His video installation Hoang's Bistro deals with the growing Vietnamese shadow cities in Leipzig in the context of shrinking cities in east Germany. Since 2008, Schaefer has been part of Es Regnet Kaviar (It's Raining Caviar - Action Network against Gentrification), and the neighbourhood organisation NoBNQ. His upcoming book of drawings and texts The City is our Factory will be published by Spector books Leipzig this winter.
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10/05/09 - Performative City
Joan Jonas
Performance and video pioneer Joan Jonas screens and discusses her outdoor performance pieces Jones Beach Piece, Nova Scotia Beach Piece, and Delay, Delay that she developed into a video piece titled Song Delay (1973). First performed in lower Manhattan in 1972, the footage was shot from the roof of a loft building. From there, the audience overlooked the performance taking place in empty lots below with a view to the distant docks of the Lower West Side. Performing with a cast that included Gordon Matta-Clark, Jonas choreographed a theater of space, movement and sound with the urban landscape of New York in a featured role. She performed this piece a second time in Rome, where the audience watched the performance from the other side of the Tiber riverbank. Joan Jonas is a professor in the MIT Visual Arts Program, teaching performance and related media.
10/19/09 - Public City
Antoni Muntadas
Artist Muntadas investigates notions of 'City' and 'public.' Is there still a public space? Is the city a place for interventions? City authorities and the private sector provide surveillance and control. Yet it is the city dwellers who should make critical decisions over the city. Can they? What contribution can artists, architects, designers, city planners make today to this discussion? Antoni Muntadas is a visiting Professor of the Practice in the MIT Visual Arts Program. In his teaching, Muntadas focuses on the shift of public art to the production of public spheres through artistic intervention.
10/26/09 - Propaganda City
Mike Bonanno of the The Yes Men
The activist collective The Yes Men transformed New York city for a day through a tactical media intervention. A hoax print of the New York Times was massively distributed throughout the city during the US presidential election campaign in 2008. The Yes Men have an unusual hobby: posing as top executives of corporations they hate. Armed with nothing but thrift-store suits, they lie their way into business conferences and parody their corporate targets in ever more extreme ways.
11/02/09 - Protest City
Ana Miljacki, Nomeda Urbonas
Architect and architecture theorist Ana Miljacki speaks about her project Classes, Masses, Crowds. Representing The Collective Body and The Myth of Direct Knowledge. Miljacki is an Assistant Professor in MIT's Department of Architecture. Nomeda Urbonas, member of the Lithuanian artist collective Gediminas and Nomeda Urbonas, talks about the concept, process, and outcome of their project Pro-test Lab, a multi-dimensional project to save a historical cinema in Vilnius.
11/09/09 - Fragmented City
Angus Boulton
Berlin-based English photographer Angus Boulton talks about his photo series Richtung Berlin currently on view at the Wolk Gallery in MIT's Department of Architecture. This 'Becoming Berlin' event is collaboration between the MIT Museum and the MIT Visual Arts Program on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall.
11/16/09 - Porous City
Krzysztof Wodiczko
Artist Krzysztof Wodiczko introduces his critical design proposals including Poliscar and Homeless Vehicles. Wodiczko's work points toward the search for the city to come, one which provides a space that allows for disagreement, a prerequisite for democracy. This lecture coincides with his solo show at the ICA Boston, which will be open November 4, 2009 to March 28, 2010. Wodiczko is a professor in the MIT Visual Arts Program and Director of the Interrogative Design Workshop and the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT.
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DIRECTIONS
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The MIT Visual Arts Program is located adjacent to the MIT Museum at 265 Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge. Enter through the grey door on Front Street and take the elevator to the third floor. Exit to your left and go down the ramp. The Joan Jonas Performance Hall is located on the right. .
By Public Transportation
Take the Red Line to Central Square. Walk four blocks along Massachusetts Avenue towards Boston and the Charles River or take the #1 bus to the Front Street stop.
