CONFERENCE / 18 APRIL 2009 / PRINCETON SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE

Green roofs, artificial mountains and geological forms; buildings you walk on or over; networks of ramps and warped surfaces; buildings that carve into the ground or landscapes lifted high into the air: all these are commonplace in architecture today. New technologies, new design techniques and a demand for enhanced environmental performance have provoked a re-thinking of architecture's traditional relationship to the ground. Some of today's most innovative buildings no longer occupy a given site but instead, construct the site itself.

Landscape urbanism emerged more than a decade ago as a sub-field promising a productive cross-disciplinary exchange. The best work in landscape urbanism occupies a territory between disciplines, drawing productively from the expertise of many different fields. But the emergence of landscape urbanism was predicated on a series of formal experiments carried out in the early 1990s by architects working with strategies of folding, surface manipulation and the creation of artificial terrains. Tracing back from there, in the mega-structures of Kenzo Tange, the vast enclosures of Vilanova Artigas or the Smithsons' mat buildings, the variables associated with landscape urbanism--constructed ground, change over time and programmatic indeterminacy--have a long and complex history in architectural practice.

The conference Landform Building sets out to examine the many ways in which landscape effects are manifest in architecture today: not as a cross-disciplinary phenomenon (architects working on the landscape) but as new design techniques, new formal strategies and technical problems within architecture itself.

-- How have the single surface projects of the 1990 evolved in the present?
-- What are the new constraints and potentials on emerging urban sites?
-- What are the opportunities afforded by new fabrication, building and envelope technologies?
-- Can landform building constitute a productive new approach to sustainability and enhanced environmental performance?
-- What new programmatic possibilities are opened up by the creation of artificial terrains?
-- Is there a parallel between architecture's current fascination with ambient effects and the experience of landscape?

A small group of architects, critics and engineers will address these and other questions.



AGENDA / 18 APRIL 2009

10:00-10:30 am
Introduction--Stan Allen

10:30-12:30 pm
ARTIFICIAL MOUNTAINS
Vicente Guallart--Guallart Architects, Barcelona
Michael Jakob--Université de Genève
Marion Weiss/Michael Manfredi--Weiss/Manfredi Architects, New York

12:30-1:30 pm LUNCH BREAK

1:30-3:30 pm
FABRICATING TERRAIN
Jesse Reiser/Nanako Umemoto--RUR Architects, New York
Fabian Scheurer--Designtoproduction, Zurich/Stuttgart
Nader Tehrani--Office dA, Boston

3:30-4:00 pm COFFEE BREAK

4:00-6:00 pm
BETWEEN GEOLOGY AND CULTURE
Iñaki Abalos--Abalos+Sentkiewicz Arquitectos, Madrid
Michael Maltzan--Michael Maltzan Architects, Los Angeles
Mirko Zardini--Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal

Organized and moderated by Stan Allen, Dean, Princeton University School of Architecture