Conversations in Context 2012

Photo by Oberto Gili

Francois de Menil, FAIA, LEED AP BD+C; is Principal and founder of FdM:Arch, an internationally acclaimed architecture firm. De Menil grew up in one of the first International Style structures built in Texas, a mid-century residence designed by Philip Johnson in 1948, a one-story brick long and low-slung house set back on a large plot of land that is now part of the Menil Collection.  De Menil began his career as a filmmaker, creating films on the sculptors Mark di Suvero, Jean Tinguely and Niki de Saint Phalle. It was an interest in three-dimensional forms that first drew him to architecture. In 1987, he received his Bachelor in Architecture from the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. Prior to founding his own firm in 1991, de Menil worked in the offices of Richard Meier & Partners and Kohn Pedersen Fox. FdM:Arch has provided architectural and interior design services for a variety of institutional, residential, retail and corporate office projects. Under de Menil’s guidance, FdM:Arch is known for combining a understanding of light and space with an ability to find architectural solutions through inspiring narratives. The firm’s architecture examines issues of social, historical, and cultural context and transforms this research into a specific narrative related to the client, the site, and the program. From this synthesis emerges a signature concept that informs the tectonics. Across typologies from residential to institutional, the work explores issues relating to how we live, how we work, and how we experience the spirituality of life. The work exhibits innovative interpretations of programs capturing the project’s essence, reflecting its occupants, and harmonizing with its site.

Photo: Millicent Harvey

Gary Hilderbrand is a principal of Reed Hilderbrand in Watertown, Massachusetts. His firm has been recognized with over fifty-five regional and national design awards in the United States. He is Adjunct Professor of Landscape Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where he has taught since 1990. Widely published as an author and critic on landscape architecture practice, his writings include The Miller Garden: Icon of Modernism and Making a Landscape of Continuity: The Practice of Innocenti & Webel. In 2009, his work on contemporary American landscape architecture practices, Reciprocities, was exhibited in Barcelona for the Fifth European Landscape Biennial. He is a fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects and of the American Academy in Rome. In 2011, his firm received an honor award for the rehabilitation of Philip Johnson’s 1964 Beck House in Dallas.

Kenneth Frampton was born in the United Kingdom in 1930 and trained as an architect at the Architectural Association School of Architecture, London.  After practicing for a number of years in the United Kingdom and in Israel, he served as the editor of the British magazine, Architectural Design.  He has taught at a number of leading institutions including the Royal College of Art; The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich; École Polytechnique Fédéral de Lausanne; the Accademia di Architettura in Mendrisio; and the Berlage Institute in The Netherlands.  He is currently the Ware Professor of Architecture at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Columbia University, New York.  He is the author of Modern Architecture and the Critical Present (1980); Studies in Tectonic Culture (1995); American Masterworks (1995); Le Corbusier (2001); Labour, Work & Architecture (2005) and an updated fourth edition of Modern Architecture: A Critical History (2007).

Photo: Photo courtesy of HWKN

HWKN is the 2012 recipient of the MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program (YAP), joining past winners including Philip Johnson (1999).

Matthias Hollwich, SBA, is the co-founder of HWKN and a registered European Architect. Before cofounding HWKN, Hollwich worked at OMA in Rotterdam, Eisenman Architects and Diller+Scofidio in New York City. He is currently a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania, where he has been the creator of an international conference on aging and architecture: New Aging. In 2004, Hollwich finished editing his first book with Rainer Weisbach at the Bauhaus: UmBauhaus – Updating Modernism. His work has been featured in Wallpaper*; The New York Times; Bauwelt; Dwell and Architectural Digest. He has been a speaker at TEDx Atlanta and the PICNIC conference in Amsterdam. Hollwich is driven by the aim to upgrade manmade environments on a human and engaging scale.

Marc Kushner, AIA,  is co-founder of HWKN and has worked for J. Mayer H. Architects in Berlin and Lewis Tsurumaki Lewis (LTL) in New York City. Since graduating from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design in 2004, Kushner has co-taught advanced architecture studios at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation with Juergen Mayer and Marc Tsurumaki, as well as a summer studio at Parsons. He is currently teaching in the real estate development program at Columbia and speaking about media and architecture at events around the country. Kushner has been published in magazines and books, including an upcoming article in A+D about humanity’s architectural future. Kushner believes that architecture has a duty to serve its patrons and a responsibility to entertain the public.

Mark Wigley is currently the Dean of Architecture at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. He was raised and educated in New Zealand and then moved to the United States in 1986 to teach at Princeton University. In 1988, Wigley co-curated the Museum of Modern Art exhibition Deconstructivist Architecture with Philip Johnson, featuring Frank Gehry; Zaha Hadid; Peter Eisenman; Daniel Libeskind; Bernard Tschumi; Rem Koolhaas and Coop Himmelb(l)au. In 2005, Wigley founded Volume Magazine with Rem Koolhaas and Ole Bouman, which serves as an experimental think tank focusing on the process of spatial and cultural reflexivity. Wigley has written on the theory and practice of architecture, and is the author of The Architecture of Deconstruction: Derrida's Haunt (1993); White Walls, Designer Dresses: The Fashioning of Modern Architecture (1995); and Constant's New Babylon: The Hyper-Architecture of Desire (1998). He co-edited The Activist Drawing: Retracing Situationist Architectures from Constant's New Babylon to Beyond (2001).  In 2002, Wigley published the essay Resisting the City in V2's TransUrbanism (2002).

Image Courtesy of Michael Graves & Associates.  Photography by Barry Johnson.

Michael Graves is credited with broadening the role of the architect in society and raising public interest in good design as essential to the quality of everyday life.  A native of Indianapolis, Graves received his architectural training at the University of Cincinnati and Harvard University.  In 1960, he won the Rome Prize and studied at the American Academy in Rome, of which he is now a Trustee.  In 1962, Graves began a 39-year teaching career at Princeton University, where he is now the Robert Schirmer Professor of Architecture, Emeritus.  He has received 12 honorary doctorates and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects.  Cited by Paul Goldberger, former New York Times critic, as “the most truly original voice American architecture has produced in some time,” Graves has received many prestigious awards, including the 1999 National Medal of Arts, the 2001 Gold Medal from the American Institute of Architects, and the 2010 Topaz Medallion from the American Institute of Architects and the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture.  Graves is the first architect inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame, and the first recipient of the Michael Graves Lifetime Achievement Award from the AIA-NJ.

Photo by Dean Kaufman

Michael Maharam is the creative principal of the eponymous textile company, known in design circles for its collaborations with everyone from Nike to Hella Jongerius to Paul Smith. Maharam, a fourth generation family-run business, celebrated its centennial in 2002. First renowned as a supplier of theatrical textiles, in the 1960s Maharam pioneered the contract textile concept, developing engineered textiles for commercial application. Though performance is an essential element of every product, Maharam continues to create innovative textiles through the exploration of pattern, material and technique. Maharam pursues a holistic approach to design, embracing a range of disciplines as fundamental to its business philosophy; showrooms, graphics and accessories receive the same attention to detail as product design. The Maharam Design Studio is responsible for the development of Maharam’s extensive textile collection, ranging from re-editions of enduring designs of the twentieth century’s most noted visionaries to fashion-forward concepts and materials. The Maharam Design Studio maintains a strong focus on new technologies and cultural markers, often finding inspiration beyond the textile industry, including collaborations with avant-garde industry outsiders. Conceived to foster an open dialogue across varied design disciplines, these collaborative projects also serve to introduce a fresh perspective and unexpected media into the world of textiles. New York-based Maharam offers a comprehensive collection of textiles for seating, walls, window covering, systems and healthcare applications. In North America, Maharam textiles are available to the trade and through a select group of authorized Maharam retailers.

Photo courtesy of Moss

Murray Moss of MOSS and Moss Bureau, has sought out, discovered (or re-discovered), collaborated with, supported, and often nurtured, a large number of international designers, studios, and manufacturers, not only providing a unique and highly influential platform for their voices to be heard, but introducing new thinking, new contexts, new technologies, and new materials to the public for the past 17 years. Moss’s store has often been compared to a museum: at his shop/gallery in SoHo, he was a pioneer in his field, curating and producing, annual, acclaimed exhibitions, partnering with diverse entities and thereby expanding greatly the subject and definition of design.  Moss’ agenda is to expand the criteria with which we evaluate 'functional objects', arguing that the inclusion of narrative, or an 'art content', in a functional object creates a hybrid: for example, 'sculpture' as well as 'tool.’ Moss has continuously argued that the dictum 'form follows function' should be re-thought of as a point of view, not a biblical command. He believes good design is based on established, but arbitrary criteria, and that there are multiple sets of criteria due to multiple designer agendas; and hence multiple definitions of good. He has repeatedly invented more effective ways of illuminating the multitude of briefs designers can bring to a project, and succeeded in clearly articulating these briefs to the public through his iconic store displays and gallery exhibitions. Deliberately blurring the distinctions between industrial production and studio craft, between utilitarian objects and art, and more recently, between Modernist tenants and the resurgence of the Decorative Arts, the highly eclectic, ingeniously curated, museum-like presentations incorporate both humor and surprise as well as an intelligence and highly informed familiarity with the questions what ‘design’ is (and, most importantly, what it can be). Moss is a frequent guest speaker at art academies, universities, and museums.  Mr. Moss has been acknowledged through numerous awards in his field, including the 2002 Chrysler Design Award and Russell Wright Award, House Beautiful's 2000 Giants of Design Award, and Metropolitan Home's 2004 Modernism Award. In 2007 he was inducted into Interior Design Magazine's Hall of Fame. In February of this year, Moss opened Moss Bureau, an advisory agency providing a large number of services to the sector.

Photo: David Farran, Courtesy of MoMA

Pedro Gadanho is the new curator of contemporary architecture at the Museum of Modern Art, Department of Architecture and Design. A Portuguese architect, curator and writer, Gadanho holds a master’s in Architecture from the University of Porto; a master’s in Art and Architecture from the United Kingdom’s Kent Institute of Art & Design; and a Ph.D. in Architecture and Mass Media from the University of Porto, where he has also served on the Faculty of Architecture (FAUP).  He has curated numerous architecture exhibitions in Europe, including Portugal’s entry for the 2004 Venice Biennale.  Gadanho is responsible for a broad portfolio that reinforces the Museum’s commitment, since 1932 when Philip Johnson founded the Department of Architecture, to contemporary architecture. In addition to building the Museum’s holdings of contemporary architecture, he will oversee the annual MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program (YAP), awarded to Philip Johnson in 1999, and the two-year-old YAP International in conjunction with the MAXXI in Rome and Constructo in Santiago, Chile. Gadanho will organize further exhibitions in the Museum’s "Issues in Contemporary Architecture" series and develop larger scale exhibitions of contemporary architecture, including exhibitions that explore relationships between architecture and other contemporary art practices.

Photo courtesy of Robert A.M. Stern, Architects, LLP

Robert A. M. Stern, practicing architect, teacher, and writer, is Dean of the Yale School of Architecture. Stern first visited Philip Johnson's Glass House as a Yale Architecture student in 1961, and soon began a long and enduring professional friendship with Johnson. After graduating with his Master of Architecture degree in 1965, at Johnson's suggestion (and with his oversight) Stern began his career developing programs for the Architectural League of New York as the League's first J. Clawson Mills Fellow. In 1985, Stern recorded a series of interviews with Johnson that were edited and published in 2008 as The Philip Johnson Tapes: Interviews by Robert A.M. Stern (The Monacelli Press). Johnson was a featured guest in Stern's "Pride of Place: Building the American Dream," an eight-part, eight-hour documentary television series that first aired on the Public Broadcasting System in 1986.  Stern was the 2011 Driehaus Prize laureate and in 2008 received the tenth Vincent Scully Prize from the National Building Museum. In 2007, he received both the Athena Award from the Congress for the New Urbanism and the Board of Directors' Honor from the Institute of Classical Architecture and Classical America.  Before returning to Yale in 1998, Stern was Professor of Architecture and Director of the Historic Preservation Program at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation at Columbia University. He served from 1984 to 1988 as the first director of Columbia's Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture. Stern has lectured extensively in the United States and abroad on both historical and contemporary topics in architecture. As founder and Senior Partner of the 260-person New York-based Robert A.M. Stern Architects, Stern directs the design of each of the firm's projects.