FRANÇOIS ROCHE

www.new-territories.com // www.new-territories.com/blog

R&Sie(n) consists of François Roche , Stéphanie Lavaux and Toshikatsi Kiuchi. This group works simultaneously through the architectural practice R&Sie(n) and the “new-territories” research organization. It also leads architectural research such as the Advanced Studio at Colombia University- Gsapp in New York.
Their works are organized on three sets of themes : Research as Speculation, Fiction as Practice, and Practice as Lifespan (H&N).
- Here and Now: An architecture which expresses the action to produce in real-time, and that this moment indicates the fragile moment which negotiates with the arrow of time, with the transitory one or what seems the being in order to give an account of the strategies of interventions like as much of negotiation with the constraints and the economies.
- Here and tomorrow (fiction / from Latin fictio as “a making to form, mold, shape...”): An architecture which expresses the action to produce in differed and altered time. Simultaneously operative and fictional, it tries to re-scenarize the relation with a situation, an environment, an industrial innovation like a capable fiction to become a vector of reality, a principle of capable expertise of transforming this same reality.
- Elsewhere and simultaneously (speculation): An architecture which expresses the action to produce in a speculative time, and which works out devices between robotics, mathematics, neurobiology and biochemistry, in order to take the risk of a critical, political and esthetic emission. The investigation of the new technological tools opens lines of thoughts which nourish and nourish the imaginary ones. R&Sie (n) tries through manifest exposures to give an account of the field of these possible, but also of their projection and uncertainties, mishearings and misunderstandings, and through academic Lab(s) research and teaching at Gsapp/UPenn/Angewandte/USC.
Their projects have been exhibited at the Columbia University (New-York, 1999-2000), UCLA (Los Angeles, 1999-2000), ICA (London, 2001), Mori Art Museum (Tokyo, 2004), Pompidou Center (Paris, 2004), MAM / Musee d'Art Moderne (Paris, 2005, 2006), MIT's Media Lab (Cambridge 2006), Tate Modern (London 2006), Orléans/ArchiLab International Architectural Conference (1999, 2001, 2003). R&Sie(n) were among the architects selected by France for the 1990, 1996, 2000 and 2002 (refused) Venice Architectural Biennale, and were also featured in the 2000, 2004, 2008 and next 2010 in international selection.

ILA BERMAN

Ila Berman, Professor and Director of Architecture at the California College of the Arts and Principal of Studio Matrixx, is an architect and architectural theorist who holds a doctorate from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. Berman is the recipient of many awards and honors including the Lieutenant Governor’s Medal for Design, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Fellowships and the President’s Award at Tulane University, where she was the Associate Dean of the School of Architecture until 2007. Berman’s design work and publications include her recent book URBANbuild local global (co-authored with Mona El Khafif) winner of an AIGA award for the top 50 books of 2009; New Orleans: Strategies for a City in Soft Land by Harvard University (with Joan Busquets and Felipe Correa); “Synthetic Nature” in Projects and Their Consequences, an upcoming monograph on the work of Reiser + Umemoto; Material Folds + Crystalline Fractures.” in Next AEDS, part of a book series on global emergent digital practices, “Amphibious Territories” in the AD Territory: Architecture Beyond Environment and “Regenerative Returns” in the Cornell Journal of Architecture among many others. In addition to her exhibitions at the Contemporary Art Center, the Ogden Museum, the Perloff Gallery and other public and private institutions, she is also the creator of “New Orleans: Urban Mappings for a Future City,” an exhibition in the U.S. Pavilion at the 2006 International Architectural Biennale in Venice, Italy.

MARTIN FELSEN

www.urbanlab.com
 

Martin Felsen is the co-founder with Sarah Dunn of UrbanLab, a collaborative office based in Chicago practicing architecture and urbanism. UrbanLab is engaged in projects at various scales, ranging from urban masterplans to houses and educational installations. UrbanLab is also a research laboratory actively engaged in examining American cities and megalopolises. Felsen is Principal Investigator for research projects funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the American Institute of Architect’s College of Fellows Latrobe Prize (2009). UrbanLab’s practice is complimented by academic involvement: Felsen is an Associate Studio Professor in the College of Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology, and in 2008 he was appointed the Director of Archeworks, a non-profit design-based think tank in Chicago.

LYDIA KALLIPOLITI

www.ecoredux.com
 

Lydia Kallipoliti is a practicing architect, engineer and theorist living in New York. She holds architecture degrees from A.U.Th in Greece, MIT and Princeton University. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor Adjunct at the Cooper Union and at Columbia University. Kallipoliti is the editor of “EcoRedux: Design Remedies for a Dying Planet,” a special issue of Architectural Design (AD) magazine. She is also the author of the EcoRedux online non-profit educational resource for ecological experiments in the postwar period that received an honor at the 14th International Webby Awards and a silver medal in theW3 awards by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences. Her design and theoretical work has been published and exhibited internationally.

JANETTE KIM

www.urbanlandscapelab.org
 

Janette Kim teaches at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and the Barnard+Columbia College Department of Architecture. She is director of the Urban Landscape Lab, an inter-disciplinary applied research group at GSAPP. Janette’s work focuses on design and ecology in relationship to public representation, interest, and debate. Her research lab and design practice, All of the Above, have worked with the Metropolitan Transit Authority in New York and the City of Newark, as well as non-profit advocacy groups. Janette's “Underdome” project (with Erik Carver) has been awarded by the Van Alen Institute New York Prize Fellowship. And as partner of Town/Kim studio, she won an international design competition to design the AIDS Memorial in San Francisco. Janette's work has been featured on NPR's Brian Lehrer Show, Artforum, Architect, and other journals including Volume, which recently published her article “Biosphere 2's Contested Ecologies.” Janette's work has been exhibited on the New York City subway system and galleries including Artists Space, Eyebeam, and the Storefront for Art and Architecture. Janette holds a Masters of Architecture from Princeton University and a Bachelor of Arts from Columbia University.

SEAN LALLY

www.w-e-a-t-h-e-r-s.com
 

Sean Lally is the founder of WEATHERS, an office that approaches design by embracing the potential overlaps between the disciplines of architecture, landscape architecture and urban design. WEATHERS does this by engaging design strategies and materiality, including material energies that offer the potential to embrace a wider bandwidth of information when seeking design solutions. WEATHERS pursues the spatial, organizational and social opportunities that our current design tools and building materialities offer as they trickle down to influence our daily lifestyles. Recent projects include proposals for the Gdansk Museum of WWII, an extension to the Stockholm City Library and a proposal for the urban redevelopment of Tamula, Estonia. Sean is an Assistant Professor at the School of Architecture at The University of Illinois Chicago. Sean is most recently quest editor and contributor for the AD Journal issue entitled “ENERGIES – New Material Energies”.

LIAT MARGOLIS

Liat Margolis is Assistant Professor in the Landscape Program at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design. She is principal investigator of GRIT LAB (Green Roof Innovations Testing Laboratory) where she examines the environmental and ecological performance of Green Roof, Green Wall and Solar Technologies in the context of the City of Toronto's Green Roof Bylaw. Liat is the co-founder and former director of Harvard Graduate School of Design's Materials Collection, and former director of research at Material ConneXion, Inc. New York. She is co-author of the book Living Systems: Innovative Materials and Technologies for Landscape Architecture. Her upcoming books are titled VERTicalia: Design and Construction of Green Facades, and Out of Water: Sustaining Development in Arid Climates. Liat received a BFA in Industrial Design from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MLA from Harvard Graduate School of Design.

CHRISTINE MACY

Christine Macy is Dean of the Faculty of Architecture and Planning, Dalhousie University, Canada. Her research interests include the representation of cultural identity in architecture and public spaces, temporary urbanism, civic infrastructure, and landscape history. She practiced architecture in New York and San Francisco before establishing her partnership, Filum, with Sarah Bonnemaison in 1990, specializing in lightweight structures and public space design. Her books with Sarah Bonnemaison include Architecture and Nature: Creating the American Landscape (Routledge, 2003), Festival Architecture (Routledge, 2007), and Responsive Textile Environments (TUNS Press, 2007). Other books include Greening the city: ecological wastewater treatment in Halifax (TUNS Press, 2000) and Dams (W.W. Norton, 2009). Book chapters include "Three views of 'frontier' at the World's Columbia Exposition" (Ballantyne and Arnold, Architecture as Experience, Routledge, 2004), "The Architects' Office of the TVA" (Culvahouse, The Tennessee Valley Authority: Design and Persuasion, Princeton Architectural Press, 2007), and "Flows as Agents of Transformation — Benton MacKaye und die TVA" (Nierhaus, Hoenes, Urban, Landschaftlichkeit, Reimer Verlag, 2010).

JOHN J. MAY

John J. May is Assistant Professor in the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto. He holds a master's degree with distinction in Architecture from Harvard University and a doctorate in Geography and Environmental Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles.

JOHN MCMINN

John McMinn is Associate Professor at the University of Waterloo, an architect, writer and curator. He graduated with the AA Diploma from the Architectural Association in 1990 and McGill University with a Bachelors degree in Art History in 1983. He has taught and lectured at many schools of architecture in Europe and North America, practices architecture in Toronto, is a frequent curator of exhibitions on architecture, and has published widely in North American and European journals on contemporary Canadian architecture. He has written books on the cultural dimensions of contemporary sustainable architecture, 41º to 66º: Regional Responses to Sustainable Architecture in Canada co-authored with Marco Polo of Ryerson University, and on Canada’s leading engineering practice, Yolles: A Canadian Engineering Legacy co-authored with Beth Kapusta. He was the recipient in 1992 of the Canada Council Prix de Rome in Architecture. The exhibition 41º to 66º: Architecture in Canada – Region, Culture, Tectonics, co-curated with Marco Polo, was selected to represent Canada at the 2008 Venice Biennale for Architecture.

ANDREW PAYNE

Andrew Payne is a Senior Lecturer in the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto, where he also teaches in the Literary Studies Program. Payne’s book, Expo 2010 Shanghai: States of Architecture in the Early Twentieth Century, co-authored with Rodolphe el Khoury, was published by Thames Hudson Press in 2011. Payne’s articles on architecture, art, and contemporary culture have appeared in publications like the Harvard Design Magazine, Praxis, Princeton Pamphlet Architecture, Public, and Parachute. His is also the author of numerous monograph and catalogue essays on various contemporary artists and architects. He is currently working on three book manuscripts. The first, Adieux: Hamlet Remembered in the Thoughts of Benjamin, Lacan, Levinas, and Derrida, treats Shakespeare’s tragedy as a key locus for Romantic and post-Romantic discussions of the relationship between philosophy and literature. The second, Thales or Some Other: The Intellectual and Cultural Legacies of Construction , examines the significance of a single term, construction, in the modernization of the intellectual and cultural disciplines. The third, Distributions of the Sensible: Architecture, The Reorganization of Sense Experience, and the Meaning of Modernity, also co-authored with el Khoury, examines the role that sense experience had in the modernization of architectural theory. Payne is also a former editor of the cultural journals Public, Impulse, and Borderlines.

ALESSANDRA PONTE

Alessandra Ponte is professeure agrégée, École d’architecture, Université de Montréal, since 2006 and Adjunct Professor, School of Design of Built Environment and Engineering, Queensland University of Technology (Australia), 2009-2012. She has taught history and theory of architecture and landscape at Pratt Institute (New York), Princeton University, Cornell University, Instituto Universitario di Architettura (Venice), and ETH (Zurich). She has written articles and essays in numerous international publications, published a volume on Richard Payne Knight and the Eighteenth century Picturesque (Paris, 2000) and co-edited, with Antoine Picon, a collection of papers on architecture and the sciences (New York 2003). For the last four year she is been responsible for the conception and organization of the Phyllis Lambert Seminar, a series colloquia on contemporary architectural topics. She has recently organized the exhibition Total Environment: Montreal 1965-1975 (Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal, March- August 2009). She is currently completing a series of investigations about the North American landscapes and preparing a show and catalogue on François Dallegret (AA School, London, Fall 2011).

CARY WOLFE

Cary Wolfe is Bruce and Elizabeth Dunlevie Professor and Chair in the Department of English at Rice University. He has published widely on animal studies, systems theory, posthumanism, and literature, art, and culture in venues such as Boundary 2, Diacritics, New Literary History, Cultural Critique, New German Critique, and Postmodern Culture. His books include Critical Environments: Postmodern Theory and the Pragmatics of the "Outside" (Minnesota, 1998), Animal Rites: American Culture, the Discourse of Species, and Posthumanist Theory (Chicago, 2003), the collection Philosophy and Animal Life (with Ian Hacking, Stanley Cavell, Cora Diamond, and John McDowell) (Columbia, 2007), and What Is Posthumanism? (Minnesota, 2010). He has recently published the co-edited collection The Other Emerson (with Branka Arsic) (Minnesota, 2010), and is founding editor of the Posthumanities series at the University of Minnesota Press, which has published volumes by Michel Serres, Donna Haraway, Roberto Esposito, Isabelle Stengers, and others.

LOLA SHEPPARD

www.infranetlab/blog

Lola Sheppard has a B.Arch from McGill University and an M.Arch from Harvard Graduate School of Design.
Lola Sheppard’s work and research exists at the intersection of architecture, landscape, and urbanism. It privileges architecture as a mutable territory that is formed out of and responsive to its environment and to the cultural, social and economic imperatives of its context. Recent research questions infrastructure’s potential to become more mutable, scalable and responsive and in the process, generate new ecologies, economies and public realms.
Lola founded Lateral Office in 2002 in partnership with Mason White. Prior to this, she worked in architecture firms in Rotterdam, Paris, and London (UK). Lola is also a Director of InfraNet Lab, an exploratory initiative launched in 2008. InfraNet Lab is a non-profit research collective probing the spatial byproducts of contemporary resource logistics. InfraNet Lab is an editor of the journal Bracket: Architecture, Environment, Digital Culture (www.brkt.org).
Lateral Office was awarded the Emerging Voices from the Architecture League of New York, in 2011 and the 2010 Professional Prix de Rome from the Canada Council for the Arts. In 2005, the practice was selected for the Young Architects Forum from the Architectural League of New York and in 2003, Sheppard and White were the Lefevre Emerging Practitioner Fellow at Ohio State University in 2003-04.
Lola is co-author of Pamphlet Architecture #30 titled COUPLING: Strategies for Infrastructural Opportunism, published by Princeton Architectural Press (2010) and co-editor of the second issue of Bracket titled [Goes Soft], to be published by Actar (2011).Lateral’s work has been published in Landscape Architecture China (2010), Young Architects: Situating (Princeton Architectural Press, 2006), Landscape Architecture, C3 and l’Arca. Lola’s writing has been published in Canadian Architect, On Site, Alphabet City: Water (MIT Press, 2009), and 306090.