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“To Be Determined”

François Sabourin is a designer, educator, and half of the collaborative project yyyy-mm-dd with Kate Yeh Chiu. His research seeks to conceive architecture within the loose conditions of instability and indeterminacy, with work ranging from software tools to structural installations and architectural robotics. He has published articles in PLAT, ACADIA, Pidgin, and PLI and his work has been featured in The Guardian, Architectural Review, the Architect’s Journal, and Dezeen. He has participated in exhibitions in Paris, Oslo, Ottawa, Montréal, and Québec City. François holds a B.Sc. in Architecture from McGill University and an M.Arch from Princeton University, where he was the recipient of the Suzanne Kolarik Underwood Prize. He was previously teaching at McGill University and has worked in architecture practices in New York City and Montréal.

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RECREATION

Isabel Abascal holds a M.Arch from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, she also studied at the Technische Universität in Berlin and at the Vastu Shilpa Foundation in Ahmedabad (India) by Balkrishna Doshi. She was a design studio professor for six years in the Faculty of Architecture, Escola da Cidade, in São Paulo (Brazil). From 2015 to 2017, she was Executive Director of the LIGA, Space for Architecture platform in Mexico City. In 2015 she founded, together with Alessandro Arienzo, the architecture office LANZA Atelier.

LANZA’s first solo show took place at SFMOMA from March until July 29, 2018. They have been lecturers at TEC of Monterrey (Monterrey, 2018), at the CONSTRUCTING (engaged) PRACTICE symposium at GSAPP-Columbia University (NY, 2019), at the University of Houston TX-MX series (Houston, 2019), and at the Architectural Association TownHall Studio (London 2021). LANZA has participated of the 12 São Paulo Architecture Biennale in 2019 and has been nominated for the 2016 Ibero-American Architecture Biennial Award, the Mies Crown Hall Award for Emerging Architects IIT Chicago 2016, the Debut Award of the Lisbon Triennale 2019, the Brick Award 2021 for their project Forest House and to the Dezeen Exhibition Design Award 2021 for their project Re-Source at Storefront for Art and Architecture. The studio is one of the winners of the Architectural League Prize of 2017.

Body Politics: Social Equity and Public Space

Joel Sanders, founder and director of JSA/MIXdesign, will discuss how the inclusive design think-tank and consultancy has expanded its mission to consider the inevitable impact that the coronavirus pandemic has had on social equity and public space. Addressing the spatial implications of COVID-19 is an extension of MIXdesign’s commitment to the creation of safe and accessible designed environments that meet the needs of “non-compliant bodies”: people of different ages, races, genders, religions, and abilities that the discipline of architecture has traditionally overlooked.

Joel Sanders, FAIA is the founder of MIXdesign, an inclusive design think tank and consultancy that is a branch of his New York based, LGBTBE-certified architecture studio JSA (Joel Sanders Architect). MIXdesign is dedicated to making everyday building types like restrooms, art museums, and university campuses accessible and welcoming to people of different ages, genders, abilities, cultural identities, and religions. MIXdesign initiatives include Stalled!, an AIA award-winning project that responds to national controversies surrounding transgender access to public restrooms. In addition to being Principal of JSA/MIXdesign, Sanders is a Professor at Yale School of Architecture.

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Black Holes Ain’t So Black

In the ground-breaking A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bank to Black Holes, Stephen Hawking discusses the idea of defining a black hole as the set of events from which it is not possible to escape to a large distance. Furthermore, this means that the edge of a black hole, the event horizon, is comprised of the four dimensional space-time light rays that forever hover on this edge and fail to get away. Hawking explains “ It is a bit like running way from the police and just managing to keep one step ahead but not being able to get clear away!”

At this present moment in history and the global social revolution of Black, indigenous, and people of color against the forces of systemic oppression, Hawking’s description of the event horizon takes on particular resonance. However, the fugitivity and futurity of a black hole is also evocative of the ways in which Black bodies have moved through space and manipulated space-time to create flows and spaces of liberation. The Blackness of a black hole is elusive and illegible; yet it produces a dark matter that transforms existence, knowledge, and culture. Enacting feminist theorist Tina Campt’s concept of “practicing refusal,” Black Holes Ain’t So Black uses juxtaposition and collage of found footage; still images; and simultaneous performance to enact the spatial praxes of liberation of historic and contemporary Black life and architecture.

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Mute Icons and Other Dichotomies in the Real in Architecture

Marcelo Spina is an Argentinean-American Architect and Educator. Along with Georgina Huljich, he is a partner in Los Angeles-based PATTERNS, which he founded in 2002 as a speculative platform to explore an increasingly global design culture. The firm brings a progressive approach to projects and buildings across scales, agendas and geographies, insisting on the cultural and social relevance of architectural form, contemporary aesthetics and emerging technologies. 

As a licensed architect in Argentina and in the United States, Mr. Spina has more than twenty years of experience designing and executing distinctive buildings worldwide, gaining a reputation as one of the most innovative architects in contemporary design culture. He received his BArch from the National University of Rosario, Argentina and a M.Arch from Columbia University, New York. Mr. Spina is a Design Faculty at Southern California Institute of Architecture [SCI-Arc] since 200. He has been a Visiting Professor at the Universities of Yale, Syracuse, Pennsylvania, Harvard, Berkeley, Innsbruck, and Di Tella among others. PATTERNS’s built and unbuilt work has received many important awards including Local and National AIA awards, American Architecture Award, Young Architect of the Year, Architectural League’s Emerging Voices and the prestigious USA Artists Fellowship, an endowment that recognizes America’s most accomplished and innovative artists.

Spina’s work has been widely published and exhibited worldwide, most notably at the Venice Biennale, The Chicago Biennial, The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, The Art Institute of Chicago, The San Francisco MOMA and The MAK Museum in Vienna, where is also part of the permanent collection.  He is the Co-Author of Embedded [ACDCU, 2010], Co-Editor of Material Beyond Materials [SCI-Arc 2012] and Co-Curator of Matters of Sensation at Artists Space [2008]. His forthcoming book Mute Icons and other Dichotomies of the Real in Architecture [ACTAR] will be released to the public in Summer 2020.

Mr. Spina is the author of ‘Material Beyond Materials: Composite Tectonics, by SCI-Arc Press, the co-author ‘PATTERNS: Embedded’, PATTERNS first monograph published in 2010 by Shanghai based ACDCU and the forthcoming ‘Mute Icons & other Dichotomies of the Real in Architecture’, by ACTAR Press, Barcelona

P-A-T-T-E-R-N-S  

PATTERNS is a leading architectural practice led by partners Marcelo Spina and Georgina Huljich. The studio brings a critical and progressive approach to projects across scales, programs, and geographies, insisting on the cultural and social relevance of architectural form, contemporary aesthetics, and emerging technologies. Based in Los Angeles, the forward-looking studio takes advantage of the city’s decidedly global stance and idiosyncratic identity to create engaging and speculative architectural projects that become civic and cultural landmarks within the public realm.

PATTERNS gained international recognition as one of the most intriguing and broadminded firms in contemporary architecture with work exhibited worldwide, most notably at the Venice Biennale in Italy, The Chicago Biennial, The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, The Art Institute of Chicago, The San Francisco MOMA, The MAK Museum in Vienna, and The FRAC in Orleans, where it is also part of their permanent collections.

PATTERNS work has been published extensively and has been the subject of numerous essays, books, magazines, newspapers, and catalogues.

PATTERNS is a registered Women Owned Business, Minority Owned Business and Small Business Enterprise.

WWW.PATTERNS.WORK