The Relevance and Resilience of (super) High Rise Architecture

with Gerard Loozekoot (Partner / Senior Architect) and Harlen Miller (Senior Architect / Associate), UNStudio

The high-rise typology has always been synonymous with modernist notions of a futuristic utopia. The grand impressions of spires rising from the urban fabric while piercing the sky have shaped our collective culture over the last century through our writing, film, public policy, means of transportation, economic stratification and urban disposition. Towers have become targets for sharp criticism where they boarder on being icons of egotistical opulence, to a sociopolitical byproduct of greed.

Yet despite the critique, we remain in an ever challenged world, with a growing populous in need of food, energy, and ultimately space… leaving only one option for us to move forward… but to build upward. Once the spectacle of constructing upward has faded from the conversations of pop culture, what will keep this typology relevant? The high-rise, in the end, will have to demonstrate resilience and true value through its functionalist and utilitarian character.

Gerard Loozekoot received his Master of Architecture from TU Delft, after which he joined UNStudio in 2000. Alongside two other partners, Gerard has been part of UNStudio’s management team since 2008. Gerard has extensive experience and interest in complex design processes with a focus on typological innovation. As a UNStudio Partner and Senior Architect, Gerard is actively involved in all phases of the design and construction process.

Harlen Miller is a Senior Architect and Associate who joined UNStudio in 2012 after moving to the Netherlands from Los Angeles. He currently stands as the Coordinator of the Computational Knowledge Platform which assists office-wide in numerous projects of varying scale and complexity. As a lead designer, his work is integral to developing strategies and tools for rationalizing buildings and facade systems through computational and parametric modelling.

Jia Yi Gu is an architectural historian, designer and cultural producer. She is currently a doctoral student in UCLA Critical Studies in Architecture. Her research work focuses on the use of scientific and form-finding models in postwar architectural practices. She is currently director and curator of the exhibition space Materials & Applications, and co-director in Spinagu. Read More.

Mitchell Akiyama is a Toronto-based scholar, composer, and artist. His eclectic body of work includes writings about sound, metaphors, animals, and media technologies; scores for film and dance; and objects and installations that trouble received ideas about history, perception, and sensory experience. He holds a PhD in communications from McGill University and an MFA from Concordia University and is Assistant Professor of Visual Studies in the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto.

Jeannette Kuo is founding partner of Zurich-based Karamuk Kuo, an architecture office whose work often intvestigates the relationship between structure and space. She has taught at numerous universities including MIT and EPF Lausanne and is currently Assistant Professor in Practice at Harvard GSD. Recent publications include A-Typical Plan, Space of Production, and a monograph of the office by El Croquis.

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Adrian Phiffer is originally from Romania. He received his Master of Architecture from University of Architecture and Urbanism “Ion Mincu” in Bucharest, and a Master of Urban Design from University of Toronto. In 2001-2002 he studied at Ecole d’Architecture de Toulouse under a Socrates-Erasmus Scholarship offered by the European Union. He has worked with Office for Metropolitan Architecture in Rotterdam. In parallel to Office of Adrian Phiffer, he teaches at the University of Toronto - John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design.

Office of Adrian Phiffer is an architecture office based in Toronto, Canada. The work of the office is characterized by an openness that considers all aspects of the contemporary city, including its surreal nature, in a real and rational manner. The result is an architecture afraid neither of appearing generic nor uncanny and emotionally charged. The office engages in projects that range in scope from movies and art objects to monumental buildings and large urban plans.  The projects are developed mainly via international design competition. Exercising and adhering to the format of design competition has allowed the office to experiment with a range of design methods that bring new intensities to the current practice of architecture. The office works with apparently contradictory notions: bricolage, found objects, non-authorship, grossform, repetition, and generics. The members of the Office of Adrian Phiffer make time to teach, write, and instagram as a way of expanding the office’s thinking on architecture.

As an assistant professor of landscape architecture at the University of Toronto and a member of the Dredge Research Collaborative, Justine Holzman researches landscape infrastructure for regional design, responsive technologies in landscape architecture, and the epistemic history of scientific landscape modelling. Holzman previously taught at the University of Tennessee and Louisiana State University as a visiting assistant professor. At LSU, Holzman worked as a research fellow with the LSU Coastal Sustainability Studio, a transdisciplinary research studio with scientists, engineers, and designers working on coastal issues in Louisiana. Holzman is co-author of Responsive Landscapes: Strategies for Responsive Technologies in Landscape Architecture (2016) and previously worked as a Research Affiliate for the Responsive Environments and Artifacts Lab. Holzman holds an MLA from LSU and a BA in Landscape Architecture from UC Berkeley. ​

Julia Jamrozik and Coryn Kempster are Canadian designers, artists and educators who have collaborated since 2003. Together, they endeavour to create spaces, objects and situations that interrupt the ordinary in critically engaging and playful ways. Their multi-disciplinary practice operates at a variety of scales, from temporary installations to permanent public artworks and architectural projects.

Julia is an Assistant Professor and Coryn is an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Architecture at the University at Buffalo SUNY. Their academic research focuses on the role of play in the built environment and alternative methods of documentation as a form of historic preservation. In 2018 the Architectural League of New York honoured their work with the prestigious League Prize.

www.ck-jj.com

Michael Young is an architect and educator practicing in New York City where he is a founding partner of the architectural design studio Young & Ayata. Young & Ayata were awarded a Design Vanguard Award from Architectural Record for 2016. In 2015 they received a first place prize to design the new Bauhaus Museum in Dessau, Germany. In 2014 they received the Young Architects Prize from the Architectural League of New York, and were finalists for the MoMA Young Architects Program at the Istanbul Modern.

Michael is currently an Assistant Professor at the Cooper Union. In the Fall of 2016 he was the Louis I. Kahn Visiting Assistant Professor at Yale University. He has previously taught at Princeton, SCI-Arc, and Columbia. He has published essays in Log, The Cornell Journal, Thresholds, AD, and in 2015, the book titled The Estranged Object. Michael received his Master's Degree from Princeton University and a Bachelor of Architecture from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. He is a licensed architect in the State of New York.

Terri Chiao (b. 1981) is a multi-disciplinary artist and designer based in Brooklyn, NY. She collaborates with Adam Frezza at CHIAOZZA. Their studio explores play and craft across a range of media, including painted sculpture, works on paper, installation, public art and design. Chiao received her B. A. from Brown University (2004) and her M. Arch. from Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation (2008). Read More...

Note: This Midday Talk will take place on a Tuesday (most other Midday Talks happen on Wednesdays).

The Midday Talks lecture series is coordinated by Assistant Professor Wei-Han Vivian Lee. These lectures are open to the public and registration is not required.

Introduction by Wei-Han Vivian Lee.

This talk by Tei Carpenter of Agency—Agency will explore speculative and built work at the intersection of architecture, infrastructure and the environment that opens up alternative possibilities and agency for design. It will focus on a relationship to scale and an interest in systems and processes that underpin existing conditions, materials and protocols.  Recent work includes projects that deal with, for example, water infrastructure, waste, and public space.

Tei Carpenter is an architectural designer, educator and founder of Agency—Agency, an award-winning New York City-based architecture and design studio that seeks out an expanded role for architecture by engaging buildings, objects, interiors, infrastructures, speculations, and environments. She is Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto Daniels Faculty and Adjunct Assistant Professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and Director of the Waste Initiative, an applied research and design platform.

Carpenter’s design and research work has been supported by the New York State Council on the Arts and has been exhibited at the Storefront for Art and Architecture and at the 2016 Venice Biennale. In 2018, Agency—Agency was named one of the New Practices New York by the American Institute of Architects. Recent design work and writing have appeared publications including Architect, The Avery Review, Oculus and RIBA Journal. Previously she has taught at Brown University, Cornell University, City College of New York and at Rice University as the Wortham Visiting Lecturer. Carpenter earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy from Brown University and her Master of Architecture degree from Princeton University where she was awarded the Howard Crosby Butler Traveling Fellowship in Architecture.