Category Archives: ARCHITECTURE

PIONEERING WOMEN OF AMERICAN ARCHITECTURE

In celebration of Beverly L. Greene (1915-57)—the first African American women architect licensed to practice in the United States—and Norma Merrick Sklarek (1926-2012)—the first African American woman to be made a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects—join architect Roberta Washington, professors Mary McLeod and Patricia Morton, and Victoria Rosner (Dean of Academic Affairs, General Studies at Columbia University) for an online discussion.

McLeod and Rosner are the editors of the Pioneering Women of American Architecture website. See link below to register for the program.

BEVERLY L. GREENE and NORMA MERRICK SKLAREK—NEW RESEARCH IN BLACK WOMEN’S HISTORY IN ARCHITECTURE

Columbia University
Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation

Friday, January 15.

10 am on the West Coast, 1 pm East Coast, 6 pm London, 7 pm Paris.

From top: Unknown photographer, Contact sheet of Norma Merrick Sklarek, circa mid-20th century, silver and photographic gelatin on photographic paper, collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, image courtesy and © the Smithsonian; Sklarek in the meeting room at Gruen Associates, circa 1960, image courtesy and © Gruen Associates; Beverly L. Greene, photograph courtesy and © University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne; the Gruen Associates projects Sklarek managed included the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood, image courtesy and © Gruen Associates; Greene worked with Marcel Breuer on the design of the UNESCO United Nations Headquarters in Paris, image courtesy and © UNESCO.

ALYSA NAHMIAS — THE NEW BAUHAUS

Filmmaker Alysa Nahmias and Film at LACMA present the documentary THE NEW BAUHAUS, which focuses on László Moholy-Nagy and the Chicago iteration of the legendary school.

The event includes a post-screening conversation with the director. See link below for details.

THE NEW BAUHAUS—THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF MOHOLY-NAGY

LACMA

Friday, December 4.

Streams from 10 am to 10 pm PST.

From top: László Moholy-Nagy, Self-Portrait, 1925, image courtesy and © Moholy-Nagy Foundation; front entrance, The New Bauhaus American School of Design, housed in Marshall Field’s former home in Chicago, courtesy of the Bettmann Archive and Getty Images; Alysa Nahmias, The New Bauhaus: The Legacy of Moholy-Nagy (2019) poster courtesy and © Opendox; Ludwig Mies van Der Rohe in Chicago with model of the 860–880 Lake Shore Drive towers, photograph by Frank Scherschel, courtesy and © the photographer, the LIFE Picture Collection, and Getty Images; Walter Gropius (foreground left) and Moholy-Nagy in 1938 in Chicago at The New Bauhaus American School of Design, courtesy of the Bettmann Archive and Getty Images.


LINDA SHI ON GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE

Linda Shi—urban environment planner and assistant professor at Cornell—will give a virtual talk exploring “explores whether it is possible to achieve both social justice and environmental sustainability in efforts to mitigate urban flood risk.”

The event is presented by the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. See link below to register.

LINDA SHI—GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE BEYOND FLOOD RISK REDUCTION

Thursday, September 10.

4:30 pm on the West Coast: 7:30 pm East Coast.

Top: Linda Shi, image courtesy and © Shi. Below: Pond at Chantilly Ecological Sanctuary from the remaining portion of the Doral Apartment complex in Charlotte, North Carlina, photograph by Hannah Wilson, image courtesy and © the photographer.

EILEEN GRAY

The Bard Graduate Center Gallery presents a virtual tour of their current exhibition EILEEN GRAY.

Curated by Gray expert Cloé Pitiot, this is the first comprehensive exhibition in the United States of the work of the pioneer designer and architect.

See link below for details.

EILEEN GRAY

Bard Graduate Center Gallery

New York City.

Eileen Gray, from top: Tempe a Pailla, Castellar, France; dressing cabinet in aluminum and cork, 1926-29, courtesy and © Centre Pompidou; Au Cap Martin Roquebrune, 1926–1929, from L’Architecture Vivante, no. 26, courtesy and © Centre Pompidou, Bibliothèque Kandinsky, Paris, Eileen Gray collection; exhibition pavilion, final design, 1937, composite plan, section, and elevation, pen and ink (and inscription by Le Corbusier in red and orange crayon) on tracing paper, courtesy and © Victoria and Albert Museum, London; dining room serving table, 1926–1929, courtesy and © Centre Pompidou; Transat chair, 1926–1929, varnished sycamore, tubular steel, synthetic leather, courtesy and © Centre Pompidou; Berenice Abbott, Eileen Gray, 1926, courtesy and © the National Museum of Ireland; extendable metal wardrobe at Tempe a Pailla, 1934; dressing table, circa 1920; breakfast table, 1927; E 1027, courtesy and © Centre Pompidou, Bibliothèque Kandinsky, Eileen Gray collection.

A MADELINE GINS READER

In the 1960s] Madeline Gins… was exploring states of extreme influence, even possession, by literary language. Her way of “deal[ing] with” the displacement of her self by an influx of words was to write in the very space of delay and estrangement that reading and writing produce, to continue this delay, this interruption. She seemed truly not to aspire to any sort of fixed meaning—or, rather, to aspire to unfixing meaning—even as she was quite insistent that she wrote in the novel form. — Lucy Ives

Madeline Gins was marooned here, on Earth, and made the best of it, using what was available to her, like words. This book is a splendid testament to how far she pushed them, and us, to realize what she already knew. That this, all this, is not it. Not. Even. Close. — Paul Chan

The new anthology THE SADDEST THING IS THAT I HAVE HAD TO USE WORDS: A MADELINE GINS READER—published by Siglio—”brings never-before-published poems and essays together with a complete facsimile reproduction of Gins’ WORD RAIN (or A Discursive Introduction to the Intimate Philosophical Investigations of G,R,E,T,A, G,A,R,B,O, It Says) (1969), along with substantial excerpts from her two later books What the President Will Say and Do!! (1984) and Helen Keller or Arakawa (1994). Long out of print or unpublished, Gins’s poems and prose form a powerful corpus of experimental literature, one which is sure to upend existing narratives of American poetics.”*

See link below for details.

THE SADDEST THING IS THAT I HAVE HAD TO USE WORDS: A MADELINE GINS READER, edited and with an introduction by Lucy Ives (Catskill, NY: Siglio Press, 2020).*

From top: Madeline Gins in Tokyo, 1998, image courtesy and © the Reversible Destiny Foundation; Arakawa and Gins, Study for Critical Holder, 1990, image courtesy and © 2018 the Estate of Madeline Gins; Gins, Untitled, n.d.; Gins, Untitled, 1969, published in the Street Works edition of 0 TO 9; The Saddest Thing Is That I Have Had to Use Words: A Madeline Gins Reader, edited by Lucy Ives, image courtesy and © Siglio Press; Arakawa and Gins, Screen-Valve, 1985–1987, image courtesy and © 2018 the Estate of Madeline Gins; Gins, 2007. Images courtesy and © the Reversible Destiny Foundation Archives.