In the Spring term of 2014, the Princeton School of Architecture will continue the series of lectures and public debates about the aesthetics of the Rarefied: what is the architecture that grows in a resource-depleted environment? Rarefied aims to capture an environment, an atmosphere of asphyxia which surrounds a practice driven by the lack of financial credit and natural resources. Which are the practices and the aesthetics that will succeed these decades of excess, and the architecture that results from them?
The Rarefied has a certain relation to the Miesian tradition, but without the essentialism, the neoclassicism or the material exuberance. It is anemic rather than minimal, and never white. It is neither modern, contemporary nor future; rather it is from the right now. It is related to the Povera lineage, but it is truly poor. It is gritty, rough, cheap, bare, precarious, and shared...often generic, automatic and anonymous. And it is generally built! The Rarefied is a candidate for a new architectural canon which explores a reduced material expression grounded in streetwiseness, economy, innovation and lack of self-indulgence.
The Rarefied sessions will be held at the Princeton School of Architecture in a round-table format where speakers will face the Princeton SoA Faculty and selected graduate students in a studio-like environment. The lectures will be streamed online for the general public from the Princeton School of Architecture home page. Sessions will take place on Wednesdays during the Spring term. Every session will be focused on a particular modality of the Rarefied.
2/12 - The Ad-Hoc
Joseph Grima
Editor, Domus, Milan
2/19 - The Anemic
Junya Ishigami
Architect, junya.ishigami+associates, Tokyo
2/26 - The Anonymous
Brendan McGetrick
Independent Writer, Editor, and Designer, Moscow
3/5 - The Gehryfied. A Conversation with Alejandro Zaera Polo
The Kassler Lecture
Frank Gehry
Architect, Gehry Partners, Los Angeles
3/26 - The Depleted
Teresa Gali-Izard
Associate Professor and Chair of Landscape Architecture, University of Virginia School of Architecture; and Principal of Arquitectura Agronomia, Barcelona
4/9 - The Soft
Sheila Kennedy
Architect, Kennedy & Violich Architecture, Boston
4/30 - The Found
Momoyo Kaijima
Architect, Atelier Bow Wow, Tokyo
All lectures take place at 6:00 PM in room N107, Architecture Building. For additional information please call 609-258-3741, e-mail soa@princeton.edu, or visit soa.princeton.edu. Lectures made possible by the Jean Labatut Memorial Lecture Fund. The School of Architecture, Princeton University, is registered with the AIA Continuing Education System (AIA/CES) and is committed to developing quality learning activities in accordance with the AIA/CES criteria.
Poster design by Phi Van Phan
