Dr. Alex Karner's Talk Description
Elena Manferdini, principal and owner of Atelier Manferdini, has over fifteen years of professional experience in architecture, art, design, and education. She graduated from the University of Civil Engineering (Bologna, Italy) and later received her Master of Architecture and Urban Design from the University of California Los Angeles (Los Angeles, CA). In 2004 she founded Atelier Manferdini in Venice, CA. The office has completed projects in the US, Europe and Asia.
Description
For LGBTQ+ planners, designers and engineers their identity informs their work and worldview. With an evolving professional field and work place, LGBTQ+ individuals are able provide a different perspective that is necessary to assess existing systems and practices. This conversation will focus on three questions.
How do LGBTQ+ identities inform the planning and design practice?
What is the experience of LGBTQ+ identifying planners and designers?
Why is it necessary to include LGBTQ+ voices in the planning and design fields?
Jim Hallock, from Colorado Earth, led two Compressed Earth Block Workshops at the Materials Lab on Thursday, March 28th. Compressed Earth Blocks (CEBs) are unfired earth masonry units made from inorganic subsoil, clay, and aggregate, formed into blocks through compression with a mechanical press and joined with standard bricklaying techniques. Stabilizers such as cement or lime are sometimes added to increase strength and water resistance.
Students gathered in the Materials Lab to learn about Rockwool, a sustainable form of stone wool insulation made by spinning minerals from molten rock and recycled metal slag. The result is a durable material that resembles cotton-candy and can be further processed into blanket or board products. The material can be recycled multiple times, though currently closed-loop recycling is only available in Europe.
On Friday, March 8, the Center for American Architecture and Design will host Allan Shearer as part of the Friday Lunch Forum series.
The aim of the series is for faculty, staff, and students to meet in an informal atmosphere to debate topics and to share ideas about history, practice, theory, and new directions for architecture. Recordings of each forum will be posted as they become available.
Architecture is not neutral; it either hurts or heals. Architecture has the power to project its values far beyond the building’s walls and into the lives, the consciousness, of communities and people. To acknowledge that architecture has this kind of agency and power is to acknowledge that buildings, and the industry that erects them, are as accountable for social injustices as they are critical levers to improving the lives of the people who use them.
Description
The Materials Lab hosted Dmitri Julius and Jason Ford, Director of Sales and Operations and the VP of Software Engineering, of ICON Build for a Lunch 'n Learn presentation. "ICON is an Austin-based construction technologies company dedicated to revolutionizing homebuilding and making dignified housing the standard for people throughout the world.