University of Cincinnati Gems
With Jay Chatterjee, remarks and tour to four iconic buildings.
Tuesday May 2, 2017, from 5:00 to 6:30 pm.
University of Cincinnati, DAAP, Aronoff Room 5460
RSVP below. Parking in the DAAP garage off Clifton Court is free to the first 20 registrants.
As dean of the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning from 1982-2001, Jay Chatterjee fulfilled his vision to bring the world’s very best architects to UC in order to transform the campus. In 2010, Forbes magazine named UC among the world’s top 20 most beautiful college campuses. Others making that list were Oxford University, Princeton, Stanford, Yale and the University of Virginia. Of UC's campus, Forbes stated: "Architecture students at UC need only step outside the classroom to observe some of the more cunning modern architecture of their day.”
We will start with remarks from Jay in his office, Room 5460 of the Aronoff Building of DAAP, and then continue with a walking tour to four buildings integral to the transformation of the campus, those by Peter Eisenman, Michael Graves, Thom Mayne and Bernard Tschumi.
Parking: Take Clifton Court to its end, staying on the left. You should end at the DAAP garage entrance. Take your ticket from the parking machine and find the entrance to the level 2 tunnel. Stay right through the tunnel and continue into the Aronoff and up the main staircase. You will top out at level 4. Look for the stairs to level 5 and #5460 will be on your right. Jay will have parking vouchers for the first twenty to register. The only cost of this program is potentially parking.
Questions? Contact Couper Gardiner, cgardiner@post.harvard.edu.
If you have trouble finding us on May 2, call or text Marcy 513-518-7363.
Mr. Eisenman is an internationally recognized architect and educator. The principal of Eisenman Architects, he has designed large-scale housing and urban design projects, innovative facilities for educational institutions, and a series of inventive private houses. His current projects include the six-building City of Culture of Galicia in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, and a large condominium housing block in Milan, Italy. Mr. Eisenman has taught at Cambridge University, Harvard University, Princeton University, Ohio State University, and The Cooper Union. His many books include Eisenman: Inside Out, Selected Writings 1963–1988; Written into the Void, Selected Writings 1990–2004; Tracing Eisenman; and Giuseppe Terragni: Transformations, Decompositions, Critiques. From 1967 to 1982 he was the director of the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies in New York City, which he founded. (from Yale University)
Born in Indianapolis on July 9, 1934, Michael Graves studied architecture at the University of Cincinnati and Harvard University. In 1962, he began a 40-year teaching career at Princeton. As one of the New York Five, he was linked with Mr. Eisenman, Richard Meier, Charles Gwathmey and John Hejduk. They were also known as the Whites, because of their proclivity for white buildings inspired by the purist forms of Le Corbusier. One of the most prominent and prolific American architects of the latter 20th century, he designed more than 350 buildings around the world but was perhaps best known for his teakettle and pepper mill. He used his fame as a brand, designing housewares for Target while continuing to run a busy practice even as postmodernism fell out of fashion. When he was awarded the American Institute of Architects’ gold medal in 2000, the institute’s Eugene C. Hopkins said Mr. Graves had “brought quality designed products within reach of everyone in the country.” He also received the National Medal of Arts from President Bill Clinton the previous year. “We have behind us all this mass production, so why not take advantage and bring the price down for everybody?” Graves said. “I figured, if it’s going to get designed, let’s do it well. So that’s what we did, and I’m happy about it.” (excerpted from NYTimes, R.Pogrebin)
Thom Mayne, the 2005 Pritzker Architecture Prize laureate, is a founder and design principal of Morphosis, an interdisciplinary and collectively organized architecture firm. Morphosis has always been known for uncompromising designs and a drive to surpass the bounds of traditional forms and materials, while also working to carve out a territory beyond the limits of modernism and postmodernism. Types of buildings undertaken by Morphosis range from residential, institutional, and civic buildings, to large urban planning projects. Mayne was born in Westbury, Connecticut in 1944. He lived for part of his childhood in Gary, Indiana. When he was ten, his mother moved the family to Whittier, California. Although he enrolled in California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, he received his bachelor of architecture degree from the University of Southern California in 1968. He then worked for two years as a planner for Victor Gruen. He began his teaching career at Cal Poly at Pomona, but soon he, along with six colleagues, was fired. That was the genesis of the founding of the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) in 1972. He returned to school and received his master of architecture degree from Harvard University in 1978. He has held teaching posts at Columbia University, Harvard University, Yale University, the Berlage Institute in the Netherlands and the Bartlett School of Architecture in London.
Bernard Tschumi is widely recognized as one of today’s foremost architects. First known as a theorist, he drew attention to his innovative architectural practice in 1983 when he won the prestigious competition for the Parc de La Villette, a 125-acre cultural park based on activities as much as nature. The intertwining concepts of “event” and “movement” in architecture are supported by Tschumi’s belief that architecture is the most important innovation of our time. Tschumi often references other disciplines in his work, such as literature and film, proving that architecture must participate in culture’s polemics and question its foundations. Since then, he has made a reputation for groundbreaking designs that include the new Acropolis Museum; Le Fresnoy National Studio for the Contemporary Arts; the Vacheron-Constantin Headquarters; The Richard E. Lindner Athletics Center at the University of Cincinnati; two concert halls in Rouen and Limoges, and architecture schools in Marne-la-Vallée, France and Miami, Florida, as well as the Alésia Archaeological Center and Museum among other projects. Tschumi was awarded France’s Grand Prix National d’Architecture in 1996 as well as numerous awards from the American Institute of Architects and the National Endowment for the Arts. He is a member of the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects. He is also an international fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects in England and a member of the Collège International de Philosophie and the Académie d’Architecture in France, where he has been the recipient of distinguished honors that include the rank of Officer in both the Légion d’Honneur and the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Tschumi’s Acropolis Museum was honored as a finalist for European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture in 2011, and an Honor Award from the AIA the same year.