Additional SOA events and non-SOA events
Below is a running list of events from the school of architecture and other schools and allied organizations that may be of interest to the UTSOA community. Be sure to check back as events will be added throughout the semester.
Wednesday, October 13, 12:00 - 1:00pm | GOLDSMITH TALK: DR NICK WEBB - TRACING THE PAST: DIGITALLY AIDED ANALYSIS OF MEDIEVAL VAULTS IN ENGLISH CATHEDRAL, USING GENERATIVE DESIGN TOOLS
Click Here to Watch on Zoom
Click Here to Watch on the UTSOA Youtube Channel
Abstract:
Medieval masons relied on a ruler and compass to generate vault designs of increasing complexity in both two and three dimensions. They understood that arcs and lines could be used for proportioning, working with halves, thirds, fifths and so on, rather than specific dimensions. Geometric rules enabled them to create vaulted bays, high up in church and cathedral interiors. In recent years, the influence of digital generative design tools can be seen in our built environment. We will explore generative design to reverse engineer and better understand the design and computational processes that the medieval masons might have employed at Exeter cathedral, in south-west England. Our focus is on a run of bays along the nave, which at first appear consistent in their design, yet in reality are subtly different. We will investigate the capacity for changes in the generative process whilst preserving the overall medieval design concept.
Dr Nick Webb is a qualified architect and lecturer at the Liverpool School of Architecture. As a researcher he is interested in how digital tools and techniques can be used as methods to enhance and critique our understanding of historic works of architecture, whether they be existing buildings, were built and then damaged or destroyed, or were not built at all. His research focuses on methods that enable new information to be provided that would not have been possible in a pre-digital context, including digital capture technologies such as laser scanning, three-dimensional digital modelling and analysis, and immersive virtual reality techniques. He is currently co-leading the ‘Tracing the past: analysing the design and construction of English medieval vaults using digital techniques,’ research project alongside Dr Alex Buchanan.
PAST EVENTS:
April 22-23, 2021 | CLIMATE IN CONTEXT: HISTORICAL PRECEDENTS & THE UNPRECEDENTED
Click here for more information
Click here to register for the event
This conference brings together diverse scholars whose work grapples with the challenges that climate change presents to the discipline of history. Participants will address precedents for this “unprecedented” crisis by uncovering and analyzing the historical roots and analogues of contemporary climate change across a wide range of eras and areas around the world. Can history offer an alternative to visions of the future that appear to be determined by prevailing climate models, and help provide us with new ways of understanding human agency?
Bauhaus Campus 2021 | Registration Now Open
Competition Link
The challenge you are about to embark is the design of the new 2021 Bauhaus Campus. An educational space where the status quo of architecture can be challenged and where new ideas and solutions can be explored. Visit the competition link to view the brief and learn about available prizes.
Kaira Looro Architecture Competition 2021 | Registration opens January 16, 2021
Competition Link
The objective of the competition is the creation of a “Women’s House” within a symbolic and environmentally friendly structure, inspired by local traditions and designed with the intent of mitigating discrimination and promoting gender equality and female empowerment in Africa. The winning project will receive a cash prize (€5000.00), an internship at Kengo Kuma & Associates studio in Japan, and the project's construction.
Monday March 8 12-1:30pm | Exploring Critical Environmental Justice Conflicts from the Neighborhood to the Carceral System - A talk by Dr. David Naguib Pellow
This presentation considers the evolution of environmental justice studies as a field concerned primarily with the intersection of social inequalities and ecological risks. Drawing on the concept of “critical environmental justice studies,” I present cases from research on struggles for environmental justice in prisons and jails across multiple scales, including the body, communities, populations, and nations. I draw on evidence from historical and contemporary cases to illustrate the importance of understanding how multiple categories of difference (race, gender, class, sexuality, ability, species) are entangled in both the production of environmental inequalities and in the possibilities for realizing imaginative forms of environmental and climate justice.
Wednesday March 3, 7:00pm | Making Austin More Equitable
Join us for a discussion between architects, urban designers, activists, and community leaders on achieving positive growth of historically disinvested communities and applying an equity lens to Austin’s fast growing built environment.
We are thrilled to announce Natasha Harper-Madison// City of Austin District 1 Council Member Mayor Pro-Tem as keynote speaker for the upcoming Women in Architecture event. Other speakers will include: Pamela Benson Owens // Six Square, Donna Carter // Carter Design Assoc., Trinity White // Trinity White Arch., Sonja Trauss // Yimby Law
Monday November 2, 2020 | Yale School of Architecture | Tod Williams and Billie Tsien Lecture
Wednesday November 18, 2020 | NOMA Inaugural Event | Empower Speaker Series Featuring Donna Carter | noon - 1:30 PM CDT
Click here for more information and to register for the event.
Please join the NOMA Central Texas Interest Group in their inaugural Empower Speaker Series event featuring Donna Carter, FAIA. Industry partners include AIA Austin, AIA San Antonio, ACE Mentorship, UT Austin, and UT San Antonio.
Tuesday October 6, 2020 | Harvard GSD | Charles Davis | “Cannon Fodder: Debating the Racial Politics of Canonicity in Modern Architectural History” | 7:30 PM EDT
Click here for more information and to register for the event.
This talk introduces audiences to the antiracist framework for architectural history that guided the formulation of the recent monograph Building Character: The Racial Politics of Modern Architectural Style (2020). This revisionist intellectual history recovers the ways that architectural organicism provided a rationalist model of design to consciously relate the perceived racial and architectural “characters” of a nation to the people they served.
Charles L. Davis II is an assistant professor of architectural history and criticism at the University at Buffalo, SUNY. His book manuscript, Building Character: The Racial Politics of Modern Architectural Style (University of Pittsburgh, 2019) traces the historical integrations of race and style theory in paradigms of “architectural organicism,” or movements that modeled design on the generative principles of nature.
Wednesday October 7, 2020 | Lecture by Ronald Rael | Design Activism | 5:00 PM CDT
Register Here for Zoom Link Information
As part of our Hostile Terrain 94 exhibit activities, the Humanities Institute in partnership with Texas State Galleries at Texas State University invites you to a Zoom lecture by Ronad Rael, author and design activist.
Rael holds the Eva Li Memorial Chair in Architecture and a joint appointment in the Department of Architecture and the Department of Art Practice at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of Borderwall as Architecture: A Manifesto for the U.S.-Mexico Boundary (2017), an illustrated biography and protest of the wall dividing the U.S. from Mexico; and Earth Architecture (2008), a history of building with earth in the modern era to exemplify new, creative uses of the oldest building material on the planet.
Rael’s research interests connect indigenous and traditional material practices to contemporary technologies and issues. Emerging Objects, a company co-founded by Rael, is an independent, creatively driven, 3D Printing MAKE-tank specializing in innovations in 3D printing architecture, building components, environments and products.
Thursday October 22, 2020 | BELLA (Built Environments and Landscapes of Las Americas) | Talk by Prof Ana Maria Duran Calisto | 3:30 PM CDT
Thursday, 10/22 at 3:30 pm the BELLA (Built Environments and Landscapes of Las Americas) is hosting Prof Ana Maria Duran Calisto, from Yale University, who will talk about Pre-colombian Urbanism in the Americas.
Tuesday October 27, 2020 | Harvard GSD | Frederick Law Olmsted Lecture: Everett L. Fly, “American Cultural Landscapes: Black Roots and Treasures”
Everett L. Fly believes that African American legacies are embedded in the physical and cultural substance of many of America’s built and vernacular places. Formal education in architecture introduced him to the positive potential of planning and design in respecting and expressing the cultures of people wherever they live, work and play. He believes that American planning and design should be more deliberate in reflecting and respecting a broader cultural diversity, including Black and Indigenous people.
As a first year student in the Harvard Department of Landscape Architecture, Fly was introduced to leading scholars, including John Brinckerhoff Jackson. Under Jackson’s tutelage he began to research and study the origins and evolution of historic Black settlements across the United States. Fly began to develop an interdisciplinary research methodology which could be applied to planning design, practical conservation, preservation, and interpretation of African American and underrepresented communities, buildings and landscapes.
Fly’s projects have been used to inspire interest and protect some of America’s most threatened, and treasured, historic African American resources.
Fly will discuss research, discovery, interpretation and applications of his preservation and cultural landscape work, including autonomous Black settlements, urban enclaves, districts, schools, churches, cemeteries, cultural rituals and traditions.
Wednesday October 28, 2020 - Friday October 30, 2020 | Texas Society of Architects | Virtual Conference and Showcase
Participate in educational programs, tours, networking activities, and the Sponsor Showcase at this year’s Texas Society of Architects Virtual Conference + Showcase. This year’s theme – CATALYST – embraces the silver lining in “the cloud.” This design-focused conference is open to architects across Texas.
Emerging Professionals Grassroots Track
The Emerging Professionals Grassroots track is a series of curated sessions for emerging professionals including students, recent graduates, and recently licensed. Connect with leaders of diverse career stage, type of work, and type of firm.
It is FREE for students to attend! Students should register under the non-member category. Hook ‘em!
