NORWAY
At the invitation of the Royal Norwegian Consulate, I travelled to Norway to participate in the Oslo Architecture Triennale. This conference attracts a large number of architects, urbanists, and theorists from Europe and Asia. The U.S. was represented by Barry Bergdoll (MoMA & Columbia GSAPP), Eva Franch i Gilabert (Storefront for Art & Architecture), Gregory Dreicer (Chicago Architecture Foundation), and Chase Rynd (National Building Museum). The conference, organized by Norsk Form director Andreas Vaa Bermann, focused on sustainability, and was complemented by the exhibition “Beyond the Green Door,” curated by Rotor, a young collective of architects, engineers, designers, and researchers based in Brussels. The exhibition remains on view at DogA Norsk Design, the Norwegian Architecture Center at Hausmanns Gate 16, Oslo, until 12.01.14. It brings together more than 600 projects and objects from more than 200 architecture offices, companies, and environmental organizations. The “cabinet of curiosities” exhibition questions accepted assumptions about sustainability, arguing for a more engaged interaction. A related exhibition at the Nasjonalmuseet – Arkitektur, or National Museum of Architecture, is called “Far-Out Voices,” curated by Jérémie McGowan with Caroline Maniaque-Benton, on view until 03.02.14. It speaks of lessons from 1960s U.S. counter-culture that started to change the world, especially in regard to sustainability.
RUSSIA
Invited by the Union of Architects of Russia (UAR) to speak in St. Petersburg at the time of its annual conference of emerging professionals, I was also asked to be a juror for the Lazar Khidekel Award. Named for the renowned Russian Suprematist, the Lazar Khidekel jury and other student and post-graduate awards also drew some 600 projects from 30 cities and universities throughout the Russian Federation and former Soviet Union. Suprematism, founded in St. Petersburg in 1913, is distinct from Constructivism in that it is based more on pure geometry and artistic feeling, using a limited but specific range of colors. The awards jury was led by architect Mark L. Khidekel, son of the award’s namesake, and included deans of architecture schools as well as Swiss architect Martina Bigliardi Möhr. A series of meetings was also hosted by UAR St. Petersburg President Alexei Romanov and held at the UAR/SPb’s building, the former Stieglitz mansion on Bol. Morskaya. It followed two days of equivalent discussions in Moscow, with UAR National President Andrey Bokov at Granatniy Per. 12, the UAR national headquarters, with Irina Korobina at the Shchusev State Museum of Architecture, and at the Strelka Institute in the Red October chocolate factory district. Continue reading “Rhetorically Speaking: Don’t Know How Lucky You Are…”
