Architecture as the New Geography
Vortrag von Shelley McNamara im Rahmen der Vortragsreihe BIG! BAD? MODERN: veranstaltet vom Institut für Kunst und Architektur.
When we see images of cities destroyed, obliterated, we realize how buildings ‘hold’ culture and civilization. Buildings are the mirrors of values. They tell the story of our lives in built form. With globalization, Architecture’s role to ‘hold’ culture is even more critical. We walk through and feel places with our whole bodies with all our senses, not just with our eyes or with our minds. We are fully involved in the experience – this what make us human. When Architecture is referred to as the mother of the arts, it is describing the all-encompassing nature of building, which actually envelops you, doing so over time, each day, throughout the seasons. Architecture is a shield and a protector of our humanity. As more of the natural world disappears, what we do as architects in making this new landscape of buildings has deep, societal repercussions.
This is why we use the term: Architecture as the New Geography.
BIG! BAD? MODERN:
The Academy of Fine Arts, Institute for Art and Architecture will throughout the 2010-11 academic year debate and suggest new ideas in order to revisit the cultural heritage of modernism, its built and un-built utopias.
Modernism has produced some of the largest single buildings of our times.
Today architects continue to speak of their achievements in terms of size and square meters. City developments are measured in hectares and acres, when concerning emerging economies even in square kilometres.
Le Corbusier's allegorical ocean liner became the normative and even litteral reference in many debates on the city and its architecture. Megastructures, as autonomous systems of dense living, working and existence became the basis of many architectural theses. The metabolists, the archigram group, the situationists and many other thinkers/architects such as Rossi and perhaps to the present time Koolhaas have described through various models the potential of projecting in cities.
The lecture series BIG! BAD? MODERN: will explore the Modernist belief in architecture's capacity to absorb the city scale. It will do so by presenting various speakers who are addressing the issue from different foci.
Nasrine Seraji | Head of Institute
11.04.2011 | Lecture Stefan Gruber
09.05.2011 | Lecture Kalliope Kontozoglou
23.05.2011 | Lecture Sabine Kraft
15.06.2011 | Peter Leeb, Architect, Professor | Vienna
30.06.2011 | Shelley McNamara, Architect | Dublin
www.akbild.ac.at/ika