Manifesto Series: .TEMP Architecture

Buildings Without Consequences?

Wednesday, April15th, 2015 at 7 PM

97 Kenmare St.

 

Temporary architecture, from the model to the building, has been a genre in the middle.

Between the scale of the model and the scale of the building, between the ephemeral temporality of a thought and the permanence – even if illusory – of buildings, temporary architecture has been the middle ground protagonist of the most radical and experimental forms of architectural production in the 20th century.

With its few financial and legal liabilities, temporary architecture was once the only realm for experimentation that allowed for the production of innovative programs, forms, and methods beyond what was imaginable within the canon or the norm. Today, temporary architecture has become a common, ubiquitous practice for architecture students and firms of all ages in the development of their practices. It has become, in and of itself, a form of practice that connects to the ephemeral, floating, transient, and hyper-capitalized status of contemporary life. 

Worldwide institutions with cultural, capital, and pedagogical aspirations have begun to undertake programs for the construction of their own kinds of temporary installations with sometimes unknown purpose or consequences. Simultaneously, temporary architecture has had an important role in providing shelter during natural disasters and in cases of political strife in conflict zones. 

What is the role of temporary architecture today? What is the value proposition of temporary architecture? Is experimentation still an intrinsic property of this architectural genre in the face of new technological developments? What can temporary architecture accomplish in relation to pressing challenges in sustainability, social change, and urbanization?

 

Panelists include Izaskun Chinchilla, Adam Frampton, Pedro Gadnho, Basar Girit, Jason Klimosky, David Eugin Moon, and Ada Tolla.

 

This event is free and open to the public. Reserved seating is available to Storefront Members. If you would like to reserve a seat email mw@storefrontnews.org.

 

—–

 

Izaskun Chinchilla. Master Architect since 2001 from Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (Spain). She is driving her own office since 2001 in Madrid. She has a long and deep experience in research and education. She is Senior Teaching Fellow and Senior Research Associate at Barlett School of Architecture (UCL London). She has also taught at Ecole Special (Paris), HEAD University (Geneva), University of Alicante (Escuela de Arquitectura Universidad de Alicante) or Madrid University (ETSAM). Her designer activity is accompanied by a research project called “Social and Aesthetic Repercussions of technical topics and solutions which take ecology into account” and that has taken her as visiting scholar to Columbia University in New York, Ecole de Mines de Paris and Princeton University in New Jersey. She has won the 2015 City of Dreams competition and will build a pavilion in Governors Island this summer.

 

Adam Snow Frampton is an architect and the Principal of Only If, a New York City-based design practice for architecture and urbanism founded in 2013. He is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Columbia Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation. He previously worked as an Associate at the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) in Rotterdam and Hong Kong. During almost seven years there, he was involved in over 20 projects, responsible for leading teams producing architectural and urban designs in China, Taiwan, Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E., Bahrain, and India.  His independent research on Hong Kong urbanism has been published as the co-authored Cities Without Ground, which maps the city’s three-dimensional networks of pedestrian circulation and public space. His work has been exhibited in the 12th and 14th Venice Biennale, the Museum of Modern Art, Storefront for Art and Architecture, the Center for Architecture, and the Van Alen Institute, New York. He holds a Masters in Architecture from Princeton University School of Architecture and a Bachelors of Environmental Design Summa cum Laude from the University of Colorado Boulder. He is a registered architect in the Netherlands and the United States, and a member of the American Institute of Architects.

 

Pedro Gadanho is the Curator of Contemporary Architecture in the Department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Since he joined MoMA in 2012, he is responsible for the Young Architects Program, and he curated the exhibitions 9+1 Ways of Being Political, Cut’n’Paste, Conceptions of Space, and Uneven Growth. Previously, he divided his activity between architecture, teaching, writing and curating. Gadanho holds an MA in art and architecture and PhD in architecture and mass media. He is the author of  Interiores 01-010 and of Arquitetura em Público, a recipient of the FAD Prize for Thought and Criticism in 2012. He was the editor of BEYOND bookazine, writes the ShrapnelContemporary blog, and contributes regularly to international publications. He curated Metaflux at the 2004 Venice Architecture Biennale and exhibitions such as  Post.Rotterdam, Space Invaders, and Pancho Guedes, An Alternative Modernist. He was also a chief curator of ExperimentaDesign between 2001 and 2003.  Amongst exhibition layouts, galleries and refurbishments, his designs included the Ellipse Foundation in Lisbon, and the widely published Orange House, in Carreço, Family Home, in Oporto, and GMG House in Torres Vedras.

 

New York, January 2015

 

Basar Girit is a founding partner of SITU Studio and Director of SITU Fabrication. The practice, founded in 2005 and based in Brooklyn, remains committed to material investigation as well as research and writing. SITU was selected as one of six interdisciplinary teams to participate in the current MoMA exhibition UnevenGrowth:Tactical Urbanisms for Expanding Megacities and recently presented L+ as part of a design study, Re-envisioning Branch Libraries co-sponsored by the Center for an Urban Future and The Architectural League of New York. SITU has received numerous awards including Interior Design Best of Year in 2014 and 2011 as well as an award for Excellence in Design by the Art Commission of the City of New York. The firm was a recipient of the 2014 Emerging Voices Award from The Architectural League of New York and their work has been featured in the Architectural Record, Domus, Dwell, Interior Design, The New York Times, Surface magazine and the Wall Street Journal. Basar has taught in the architecture program at Pratt Institute and holds a Bachelor of Architecture degree from Cooper Union.

 

Jason Klimoski is a principal at the Brooklyn-based architecture and design firm STUDIOKCA he cofounded with Lesley Chang. He received his Master in Architecture from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design and his Bachelor of Arts Summa Cum Laude from the University of Minnesota. Prior to cofounding STUDIOKCA, he worked for lighting designer Ingo Maurer in Munich and New York, and Skidmore, Owings and Merrill as a senior designer in the New York office. He is a registered architect and a member of the American Institute of Architects.

His work has been featured in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Architectural Record, Interior Design, New York Magazine, Popular Mechanics, Discovery Channel, The Weather Channel, and CNN, and recognized with awards from the AIA National and AIA New York Chapters.

 

David Eugin Moon is a New York based architect and a founding partner of N H D M / Nahyun Hwang + David Eugin Moon, a collaborative practice for design and research in architecture and urbanism. The work of N H D M has been recognized through publications and awards including the I.D. Annual Design Review Design Distinction, the 2012 and 2014 AIANY Design Honor awards, among others, and has been exhibited and presented at global venues including the 5th and 6th International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam and the 2014 Venice Biennale. Prior to founding N H D M, Moon practiced as a key designer and researcher at the Office for Metropolitan Architecture for several years in Rotterdam and New York., and has lived and worked in the U.S., Europe, and Asia,. 

 

His current research examines the historic significance of the architectural program and its reinterpretation and manipulation in the contemporary urban discourse. Moon holds a Master in Architecture degree from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University (’01), and a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from the University of Michigan. He is currently faculty in the Architecture Department at Cornell University and is a licensed architect in the Netherlands and New York.

 

Ada Tolla is a founding partner of LOT-EK. She has a Master Degree in Architecture and Urban Design from the Universita’ di Napoli, Italy, and has completed post-graduate studies at Columbia University, New York. Besides heading her professional practice, she currently teaches at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation in New York. She also lectures at major universities and cultural institutions globally.

LOT-EK has achieved high visibility for its sustainable and innovative approach to construction, materials and space, through the upcycling of existing industrial objects and systems not originally intended for architecture. LOT-EK is also recognized for the use of technology as an integral part of architecture, for addressing mobility and transformability in architecture and for working across art and architecture.  LOT-EK’s projects have been published in national and international publications, magazines and books, including The New York Times, The London Times, Herald Tribune, The Wall Street Journal, Domus, A+U, Wired, Metropolis, Mark and more.

 

LOT-EK’s monograph, Urbanscan, was published by PAP in February 2002. LOT-EK Mixer, by Edizioni Press, was issued in 2000 and MDU Mobile Dwelling Unit, published by DAP, was printed in June 2003.

 

In December 2011, Ada Tolla was recognized as USA Booth Fellow of Architecture & Design by United States Artists (USA).