Lectures & Seminars
$25 ($20 members, $10 students & interns) each; any three lectures for $65 ($60 members, $25 students & interns). Entire series, five lectures, for $90 ($75 members, $45 students & interns).
College Towns: Rediscovering Local Treasures
Thursday, February 21
6:30 pm – 8:30 pm
$25 2 AIA/CES LUs [Theory]
Lecturer: Dhiru A. Thadani, AIA, CNU, Principal, Ayers/Saint/Gross
Registration
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Dhiru Thadani, AIA, CNU, is a Principal and head of the Town Planning Studio at Ayers/Saint/Gross (ASG). ASG is an architecture and planning firm primarily dedicated to serving academic institutions. They are currently working on 40 campuses across the United States and abroad. Dhiru’s studio has for the past seven years been researching, designing, and implementing plans to revitalize the college town neighborhoods adjacent to these academic institutions. His work employs new urbanist principals, utilizing a highly collaborative process to develop plans for sustainable, pedestrian-oriented communities which provide strong connections between the institution, the town and all various community amenities. Among his many projects, he has served as the lead designer for several developments in both first and third world countries, including a series of towns for 500,000 inhabitants as part of a 8,500 acre new university campus in India.
When in Rome: A Conversation with Alma Shapiro Prize Winner Michael Grimaldi and ICA&CA President Paul Gunther
Thursday, March 6
6:30 pm – 8:30 pm
2 AIA/CES LUs [Practice]
As the 2007 Alma Shapiro Prize winner, Michael Grimaldi was awarded a three month residency at the American Academy in Rome. Having recently returned to the states, Mr. Grimaldi, a realist painter trained in the classical tradition, will present examples of the works he produced while at the Academy and discuss the impact of the trip on his studio practice.
Mr. Grimaldi has exhibited at Arcadia Gallery, Arnot Museum, Forbes Magazine Collection, Forum Gallery, Hirschl & Adler Gallery, National Academy Museum, and John Pence Gallery, CA. Awards include: The Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant, Stacey Foundation Grant and the Edward G. McDowell Travel Grant. He has taught at The National Academy School of Fine Arts, The School of Visual Arts, The Seattle Academy of Fine Arts, The Water Street Atelier, Studio 126, Studio Incamminati, and The Art Students League of New York.
Figures in the Landscape: Classical Myth, Allegory and the Heroic Narrative
Tuesday, March 18
6:30 pm – 8:30 pm
2 AIA/CES LUs [Theory]
Lecturer: Edward Schmidt; Painter, Full–time and Founding Faculty Member, New York Academy of Art
Registration
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Edward Schmidt is a founding instructor at the New York Academy of Art and a Prix de Rome recipient from the American Academy in Rome. He has received painting grants from the NEA, the Ingram Merrill, Greenshields, and Gottlieb Foundations and is a recipient of the Arthur Ross Award for painting. His work has been shown in numerous exhibitions both here and abroad including the Albright-Knox, Brooklyn and Gibbs Museums, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Centre Georges Pompidou. Mr. Schmidt will speak on the development of his work and current pedagogical practice within the context of his early studies at the Ecole des Beaux Arts and the American Academy in Rome.
The City of Ideas
Tuesday, April 8
6:30 pm – 8:30 pm
2 AIA/CES LUs [Theory]
Lecturer: Robert Davis, Architect, Urban Planner
Registration
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Robert Davis, the builder/developer whose award-winning communities of Northwest Florida’s Emerald Coast have become the studied models for new urbanism, will present a talk on the meaning and import of “cittá ideale” — Renaissance Humanism’s concept of the city. While engaged in the future planning for our historic cities, Davis asks us to forgo the “utopian ideal”. Heeding the humanist theories of Leon Battista Alberti and Sebastiano Serlio, Mr. Davis advises us to consider the “art of the possible”. Unlike “utopia,” the “cittá ideale” does not have to be perfect; in fact, the best examples (Pienza and Rome) maintained the existing medieval eccentricities that announced “character of place” while benefiting from periodic design interventions that aimed to make the city more legible, more livable and more elegant. The pre-existing town is still there, in all its ad hoc imperfection, and the beautiful street, square, obelisk, cathedral, and palazzo pubblico is made more interesting by its close proximity to the messy vitality of the pre-existing city.
Air, Wind, Spirit, Soul: Venetian Villa Design By Trento, Palladio & Scamozzi
Tuesday, April 29
6:30 pm – 8:30 pm
2 AIA/CES LUs [Theory]
Instructor: Barbra Kenda, Architect, Author and Academician
Registration
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Barbara Kenda is a former faculty of the University of Notre Dame School of Architecture, Postdoctoral Fellow of Dumbarton Oaks, and Director of Education at The Prince’s Foundation in London. Currently, she is a Consultant for The Prince’s Foundation, editing a book on green architecture and urbanism. Her main research focuses on architecture and health. She identified the unexpected subject of pneumatology in the field of the sixteenth century architecture and linked the theme to contemporary environmental questions. Among her publications is Aeolian Winds and the Spirit of Renaissance Architecture (Routledge, Taylor & Francis, 2006), based on International Symposium AER that she organized in Vicenza in 2004. This lecture will explore the Renaissance art of well-being and will demonstrate that pneuma (air, wind, spirit, soul), was a fundamental link in establishing harmony between the human body, a building and the cosmos. The lecture will focus on the most famous examples of Venetian therapeutic villas built by Francesco Trento, Palladio and Scamozzi.