Lecture Series

Every Spring and Fall AIA Central Pennsylvania has a major membership event. This event typically includes a presentation by a high profile, nationally recognized architect, and a social with the architect.

Next Lecture:
No lectures are scheduled at this time. Please check back for upcoming lectures in 2012.

Our 2011 AIA Central Pennsylvania Fall Lecture was held Thursday November 3rd at Armstrong World Industries Corporate Campus in Lancaster. Winka Dubbeldam, Assoc. AIA presented the work of her firm Archi-Tectonics based in New York, New York and Rotterdam, Netherlands in a lecture entitled "Fragmentation as Optimization."

Winka's presentation validated my introduction that her work feels like the future of architecture. She noted her stated interest in blurring the boundary between industrial-design intelligence and architecture. Archi-Tectonics' work is unapologetically modern even when sited in locations requiring approval of a historic review board. The work was consistently sophisticated and well resolved ranging from high-end residential to pro-bono work in Africa for a village of orphans. Winka's designs were inspiring in their rigor, elegance, and ultimately their beauty. Archi-Tectonics has not received the media attention it deserves so it was exciting to see the projects and hear Winka's back stories for each.

Armstrong continues to be a gracious host for our Fall Lectures and I was asked to explain the title of the lecture for their newsletter. I responded by quoting Winka from the intro to her book AT-Index, "This notion of the 'right' problem...prioritizes concept development over problem solving, curiosity over absolute knowledge, and immediacy over stasis...The work can be described as an open network, a network of projects linked through 3 fields of investigation: armature, surface, and interface. These fields are not isolated but rather create a synthesis of interests that overlap and inform each other and afford rethinking, reinvestigating, and regenerating of architectural concepts. The focus is not on form but on the performative, not on aesthetics but on intelligence." I also quoted Reed Kroloff who wrote an essay in the same book, "Multivalency, Le Corbusier's familiar term for double-functioning, is thus multiplied, and multiplied again in the "performative" worlds of digital architecture: one assesses an architectural object or component not just for its beauty or its utility, but for its capacity to allow - and even encourage - change. Dubbeldam's performative unit, or walls, or skin perform actual and representational functions, and may perform a different set in the future. It is in creating this flexibility that beauty is born, rather than as a goal unto itself. In other words, aesthetics is no longer a point of departure in the design process; it is a byproduct of analysis."

Our lecture series is not possible without the support of our sponsors...
Thank you to each one:
Armstrong World Industries, Centria, Chris Dawson Architect, The Engineering Society of York, Fessenden Hall of PA, Interface FLOR, Keith Bush Associates, Kinsley Construction, LSC Design, Modernfold of Reading, Murphy & Dittenhafer Architects, Penn Lighting Associates, Pennsylvania Concrete Masonry Association, Reese Lower Patrick & Scott Architects, TONO Architects, & Whitney Baily Cox & Magnani