This annual series of presentations on architecture and the built environment illuminates the ways in which all of us shape the design of our neighborhoods and cities, and the profound impact design has on our communities and the way in which we live. This series is co-sponsored by the Boston Public Library and is held in the Library's Rabb Lecture Hall in Copley Square. Each presentation begins at 6:00 pm and is free and open to all. Reservations are not required, but we recommend that you arrive 15 minutes before the start time of each presentation.
September 16, 6:00 pm
Crossover: Buildings, lasers and sewing machines
Juan Frano Violich FAIA
Co-sponsored by the Design Industry Group of Massachusetts
Architect and innovator Juan Frano Violich FAIA explores the nature of materials and surfaces and how the integration of technology and materials creates energy-efficient solutions.
Violich will introduce two current projects. The Portable Light Project, a nonprofit initiative, creates new ways to deliver renewable power and light to the developing world in a textile form that integrates flexible photovoltaics and energy-efficient solid state lighting. The Soft House Project—a pre-fabricated house that transforms the household curtain into a set of energyharvesting textiles that distribute renewable electrical power—adapts to changes in contemporary domestic/work space needs and generates up to half the daily power needs of an average U.S.
household.
Violich and his partner Sheila Kennedy AIA are co-founders of Kennedy & Violich Architecture, a Boston-based interdisciplinary
design practice that explores new relationships between architecture, digital technology and emerging public needs. MATx,
the firm’s pioneering materials research unit, engages teaching, writing and applied creative production across the fields of
electronics, architecture and material design. Violich and David Hacin AIA co-chair the Design Industry Group of Massachusetts
(DIGMA), which is co-sponsoring the lecture.
1 LU/CE credit
October 21, 6:00 pm
Fluid movement
Janet Echelman
Co-sponsored by the Loeb Fellowship Program at Harvard
Artist Janet Echelman discusses her vision for transformative public art in a lecture co-sponsored by the Loeb Fellowship Program at Harvard University. Through her art, Echelman reshapes urban airspace with monumental public sculptures that respond to environmental forces such as wind, water and sunlight.
This year, the artist inaugurates two major art commissions in North America. A 100-foot-tall sculpture makes the pattern of desert winds visible to the human eye and casts intricate shadow drawings onto the ground for the Phoenix Civic Space in Arizona.
The Richmond Olympic Oval, an official venue for the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Winter Games, takes the runoff water
from the building’s five-acre roof and transforms it into a water garden intersected by red curved pedestrian bridges, “water-drawing” aeration fountains, and red and orange, netted “sky lanterns” that respond to the wind.
1 LU/CE credit
December 16, 6:00 pm
Urban sustainable living
Patti Moreno
Through websites, videos, workshops and unlimited energy, this
Roxbury mother, businesswoman and self-proclaimed “Garden Girl” shares her passion for urban garden ing and her message of urban sustainable living.
January 20, 6:00 pm
The practice of living system design
William Reed AIA
A nationally recognized sustainability expert talks about the imperative to nurture a conscious understanding of the whole system of life-giving processes that shape the places we live in.
February 17, 6:00 pm
A vision of history and culture
David Adjaye Hon. FAIA and Philip Freelon FAIA
Co-sponsored by Harvard Graduate School of Design and the Loeb Fellowship Program at Harvard
Leaders of the internationally renowned team of architects chosen to design the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC discuss their collaboration and the winning design.
March 18, 6:00 pm
Cultural complexity
Samina Quraeshi
An artist, author and educator raised in Pakistan brings her global
perspective and her devotion to arts and culture to Boston to share highlights from her rich and varied experiences and book projects.
April 21, 6:00 pm
Architecture through urban design
Lawrence A. Chan FAIA of Chan Krieger Sieniewicz
The BSA president shares observations on built environments enhanced and made more meaningful through urban design.
May 19, 6:00 pm
The Canary Project
Susannah Sayler
Co-sponsored by the Loeb Fellowship Program at Harvard
A photographer and founder of the Canary Project discusses her experiences photographing landscapes around the world impacted by climate change.
June 16, 6:00 pm
Civic center
Joshua Simoneau
The 2008 recipient of the prestigious Rotch Travelling Scholarship
recounts lessons learned from European civic spaces and how they might be applied to improve Boston’s civic realm.
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