LEXINGTON, KY - When Michael Speaks arrived on the scene in the winter of '08, it was clear that Lexington's dialogue about urban design and sustainability was on an entirely new trajectory.
Speaks, a Ph.D. in Literature, a former instructor in graphic design at Yale, Harvard, Columbia, Parsons and Berlage in Rotterdam, and most recently head of the Metropolitan Research and Design post-graduate program at Southern California Institute of Architecture in Los Angeles, had been enticed to Lexington to succeed the retiring David Mohney as the new Dean of the University of Kentucky College of Design.
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Many in the local architecture and design communities were delighted to hear of Speaks' appointment because they had become aware of his devotion to the concept of sustainability. "My view of sustainability is not simply of matter of greening, but of making cities or buildings reusable, transformable over time. That can work with historic preservation, that can work with larger planning efforts. But at a curricular level, I think the real target - and this I believe we'll see occur in the next five, six, seven, eight years - is for sustainability to be so embedded in curriculum that you don't see it," he noted in a interview soon after arrival.
In recent weeks, Speaks has begun to step up his efforts to open up community discussions about Lexington and the value of thoughtful urban planning and design.
There was the late March symposium on design and politics, an interesting daylong discussion about the increasingly essential role of design in the development of government policy (ie: downtown Lexington.)
Next is 3 & 1, a College of Design event at 6pm on April 13 that will be located off-campus to make it more accessible to the community. Local and international designers and thinkers will gather at Lexington's Land of Tomorrow (LOT) (http://www.lotlex.com)gallery on 3rd Street for a lecture by David Erdman, followed by a discussion about contemporary architecture with Jeffrey Kipnis, Marcelo Spina, and Speaks.
We've told you about the Dean. Here's background on Kipnis, Spina and Erdman.
David Erdman was the principal of servo's Los Angeles office before establishing davidclovers in 2007 with Clover Lee. In 2009 the firm moved to Hong Kong immersing the practice into an actively maturing Southeast Asian design culture. Recognized as an emerging international practice, davidclovers is committed to developing innovative work that merges their design sensibility, material and computational expertise with the intellectual and physical resources of Hong Kong, the Pearl River Delta and China. Their work is a unique blending of urban design, architecture, interiors and product design. This is evident in their housing proposal for the greater Beijing Arts District (selected for construction) and Lunar House, the first application of Corian exterior cladding in the US, designed in collaborations with DuPont China. They have lectured widely and been published in most major architectural journals and news papers. Their work has been exhibited in many cities and institutions including the Center Pompidou, MOMA, SF MOMA and the Venice, Hong Kong, Beijing and Korean International Biennales.
Jeffrey Kipnis' work has shaped the thinking, imagination and creative work of architects and critics for more than two decades. From seminal studies of the work of such key practitioners as Philip Johnson, Peter Eisenman, Rem Koolhaas and Daniel Libeskind, to theoretical reflections on the intellectual, cultural and political role of contemporary architecture in such essays as Toward a New Architecture, Twisting the Separatrix and Political Space I, to his award-winning film on the work of Frank Gehry, to exhibitions on architectural drawing and design, Kipnis has brought a restless, generous and provocative originality to bear on the issues that have defined contemporary architecture. He is currently a Professor of Architecture in the Knowlton School of Architecture at The Ohio State University.
Marcelo Spina is the founder and co-principal, with Georgina Huljich, of Patterns, a design research architectural practice based in Los Angeles known for its inventive approach to architecture, fusing advanced computation techniques with an extended understanding of form, tectonics and material. Spina joined SCI-Arc in 2001, and has since taught design studios and technical courses and served as the school's Applied Studies coordinator. Spina's work has received numerous prizes and awards including the third prize in the Young Architect of the year Award in 2003 and first prizes in the competitions for the new SCI-Arc Cafe and the Vertical Garden at the Schindler House in West Hollywood. Spina joined SCI-Arc in 2001, and has since taught design studios and technical courses and served as the school's Applied Studies coordinator. He is currently the Sutherland Visiting Professor of Landscape Design at the University of Kentucky College of Design.