Nathalie de Vries - Perspectus Lecture
Livestream or Recording:
Recent Work
Nathalie de Vries (Appingedam, NL - 1965) is founding partner of MVRDV, an architect and urban planner and the “DV” in MVRDV. She is an Honorary Fellow of the AIA and International Fellow of the RIBA. She is currently Professor of Architectural Design and Public Building at Delft University of Technology, and from 2021 to 2023 held the role of City Architect for Groningen.
The work of De Vries focuses on the invention of new building typologies and the creation of changeable, open systems, an approach which she brings to both buildings and urban plans. Her projects are spatially varied and ground breaking, always giving particular attention to the project’s interaction with the public domain. With MVRDV, De Vries develops sustainable and innovative concepts and working methods, and showcases them through exhibitions, publications, interviews, and lectures.
As an architect, she appreciates intensive collaboration with clients and interdisciplinary design teams, but also with residents and other stakeholders. Whatever the project, there is always a lot of attention given to the design’s interaction with its surroundings, by designing inviting collective spaces and outdoor areas, among other approaches. In her urban designs, De Vries explores the combination of high-quality public spaces with functionally mixed buildings that act as catalysts for the development of an area.
Together with MVRDV, De Vries has won various awards for both individual buildings and for her entire oeuvre, such as the Amsterdamprijs, the Architizer A+ Award and Red Dot Design Award. Juries, clients, and end users alike appreciate the way she stretches the boundaries of existing typologies. Well-known designs by Nathalie include two faculties for the University of Toronto, several projects for resilient urban design in Groningen, Vancouver and San Francisco, as well as the recently finished mixed-use projects for Mission Rock (San Francisco, US) and Ascension Paysagère(Rennes, France). A number of mixed-use projects and masterplans are also currently under construction in Amsterdam, Brussels, and Boston. She has also created cultural projects for the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam and the Buitenplaats Ypenburg. Older projects for MVRDV include Villa VPRO, Silodam, the transformation of a former silo building and dam into a new residential and work building, Nieuw Leyden and the Lloyd Hotel.
Other notable designs by De Vries include the library of Spijkenisse, a mountain of books incorporating many public meeting spaces; the Lloyd Hotel in Amsterdam, a listed building with surprising hotel rooms that functions as the living room of the neighbourhood; Concordia Design Wrocław, a co-working office in Poland with lively public functions on the ground floor and a publicly accessible roof terrace; and the entrance to the Stedelijk Museum in Schiedam.
De Vries is committed to the education of future generations of architects. She has been active as a teacher throughout her career, and previously, she taught at TU Berlin, Harvard GSD, IIT Chicago, and the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, among others, and frequently provides lectures to students and young professionals on architecture and urbanism at a number of academic institutions worldwide. She has also been chair of the Royal Institute of Dutch architects and Chief Railroad Architect.
“With our clients we work together to make buildings as inclusive as possible. MVRDV develops new typologies and construction methods based on investigative design methods. We want to create a new generation of architecture and urbanism, and make buildings that support an unknown – but nevertheless limitless – future.” - Nathalie de Vries
Alan Balfour, Michelle Hauk, Sung Ho Kim, + Heather Woofter
Livestream or Recording:
Invisible
Tomàs Folch
Livestream or Recording:
The Paradox of Abundance and Scarcity: Designing for a Floodable Desert
Tomás Folch is an accomplished architect with a Master's degree in Architecture from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile and a degree in Landscape Architecture from Harvard University. He currently serves as a professor and co-director of the Center for Ecology, Landscape, and Urbanism (CEPU) within the DesignLab at Adolfo Ibáñez University in Santiago. In addition, he is a partner at Paisaje Urbano / PAUR, alongside Sofía Armanet. Folch was honored as the Daniel Urban Kiley Teaching Fellow for 2022-23 and has served as a design critic at the Harvard Graduate School of Design for the 2023-24 academic year.
His professional expertise spans architecture, urban design, and landscape architecture, with notable experience in heritage preservation, urban design, housing, social facilities, and public spaces. Folch's work has been widely recognized, including awards at the 2006 Chilean Architecture Biennial for emerging talent, the National Exhibition Award at the 2008 Santiago Architecture Biennial, and the South-South Professional Award at the XX Chilean Architecture Biennial in 2017 for his effective dialogue with the global south's geographies. Additionally, he has received three Urban Contribution Awards: Best High-Rise Construction Project (2017), Best Urban Project for Subsidized Housing (2017), and Best Social Housing Project (2023).
Virginia San Fratello
Livestream or Recording:
Out of the Lab and into the Landscape
Virginia San Fratello is an architect, interior designer, and educator. She is Chair of The Department of Design at San José State University in Silicon Valley. San Fratello is a winner of the International Interior Design Educator of the Year Award and is also a winner of the Metropolis Magazine Next Gen Design Competition. Her creative practice, Rael San Fratello, was named an Emerging Voice by The Architectural League of New York, and in 2021 they were awarded the Beazley Design of the Year.
San Fratello is the co-author of Printing Architecture: Innovative Recipes for 3D Printing, a book that reexamines the building process from the bottom up and offers illuminating case studies for 3D printing with materials like chardonnay grape skins, salt, and sawdust. She is a partner in Emerging Objects, a creatively driven, 3D Printing MAKE-tank specializing in innovations in 3D printing architecture, and a co-founder of Forust.
Her work is recognized by several institutions including The National Building Museum, the Bellevue Museum, For Freedoms, and is included in the permanent collection of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the CSMVS Museum in Mumbai, LACMA and the Design Museum in London.
David Eskenazi
Livestream or Recording:
The Whole Picture
David Eskenazi leads d.esk in Los Angeles, with projects in California and Mexico. The practice's work has been published and reviewed in the Architect’s Newspaper, Log, Brooklyn Rail, the Avery Review, the Plan Magazine, and the Harvard Design Magazine, amongst others. Alongside the practice, David writes and teaches, and has published in journals including Log, Project, Offramp, and Pidgin. He’s been awarded the League Prize from the Architectural League of New York, the Oberdick Fellowship at the University of Michigan, the LeFevre Fellowship at the Ohio State University, and was a MacDowell Fellow. Currently, David is a design studio and visual studies faculty at SCI-Arc.
Elisa Dainese
Livestream or Recording:
Design after Destruction: On Relocating, Rebuilding and Repairing
Elisa Dainese is a historian and theorist of architecture and urbanism. Currently an Assistant Professor of History and Theory of Architecture at the Georgia Institute of Technology, she specializes in the history of the production and transnational circulation of architectural knowledge with a focus on cross-cultural exchanges between Europe, North America, and historically underrepresented communities, including ones in the sub-Sahara and, more recently, the Arctic. Her research and teaching deal with twentieth and twenty-first century architecture; cross-cultural exchange; Indigenous material cultures and epistemologies; western/non-western modernisms; collective memory, representation, and identity construction. She has published widely in architectural books and magazines (JSAH, JA, e-flux, Thresholds, Bauhaus, OASE, and Planning Perspectives), and her research has received grants and awards from Columbia University, the Bruno Zevi Foundation, CCA, SSHRC, GAHTC, the Graham Foundation, the University of Pisa, SESAH, and Georgia Tech. She is the co-editor of the collection entitled War Diaries: Design after the Destruction of Art and Architecture (University of Virginia Press, 2022) which examines the effects of violence on art, architecture, and cultural memory; and she is author of Africa Fever (forthcoming) in which she explores the key role that African traditions played in the historical and conceptual refashioning of modern and post-war Euro-American architecture. Dr. Dainese has served in research and professional boards, among them that of the Directors of the Society of Architectural Historians and is co-chair of the SAH 78th Annual International Conference.
James F. Kerestes, Ebrahim Poustinchi, + Vahid Vahdat
Livestream or Recording:
A Purple Architecture
James F. Kerestes is an Associate Professor of Architecture at Ball State University and a registered architect in Pennsylvania. He holds a Bachelor of Architecture degree from Syracuse University and a Post-Professional Master of Architecture degree from Pratt Institute. Prior to his current position at Ball State, he taught digital media and emergent technologies at Pratt Institute, Princeton University and the University of Pennsylvania. His current research focuses on identifying and exploring the latent potential within tools and building typologies to instigate novel architectural design inquiries. This emphasis explores methods for engaging tools as mediums where authorial exchanges lead to new opportunities in design communication, architectural storytelling, user interaction, digital fabrication and construction.
Ebrahim Poustinchi, an award-winning designer, artist, curator, and inventor, is a tenured Associate Professor of Architecture and founder/director of the Robotically Augmented Design (RAD) Lab at Kent State University and the founding principal of the STUDIO EP L.L.C. Poustinchi’s research is focused on the intersection of design, worldbuilding, space, media, and robotics, with an emphasis on an alternative reading of human/non-human relationships through AI, UI/UX, Human-Machine Interaction (HMI), and physical computation and tangible interfaces.
Ebrahim has widely lectured, taught workshops, and exhibited his work nationally and internationally. His research and creative work have been disseminated worldwide in various Journals, conferences, galleries, and museums, including the International Journal of Architectural Computing (IJAC), Journal of Engineering Technology (JET), ACADIA, CAADRIA, eCAADe, SIGraDi, ASCAAD, ASCA, the Museum of Moscow and the Meyerhold Theatre Center in Russia, the Arab American National Museum in Michigan, Jan Koniarek Gallery in Slovakia, Fully Booked Art Fair in Dubai, and Levantine Cultural Center, Perloff Gallery, Architecture and Design (A+D) Museum in Los Angles, and over ten different galleries, and museums in Iran. In 2021, he served as the guest curator and designer at the Architecture and Design (A+D) Museum in Los Angeles.
Ebrahim is the inventor of two international patents in the field of creative robotics. His creative/scholarly work has been funded by grants from the Knight Foundation, Alpha Micron Inc., UCI’s Jordan Center for Persian Studies, ESDRI, Tehran MOCA, Kent State University, and Architecture and Design (A+D) Museum in Los Angles, among others.
Ebrahim Poustinchi has completed his post-professional degree in architecture and robotics under Greg Lynn at UCLA and holds a bachelor's degree in architecture from the University of Tehran, Iran.
Vahid Vahdat is an assistant professor of architecture and interior design at Washington State University’s School of Design and Construction. His primary field of research is spatial mediation, with an emphasis on virtual reality and film. He is author of the book Occidentalist Perceptions of European Architecture in Nineteenth-Century Persian Travel Diaries. His co-edited book, Virtual Interiorities addresses how virtual media frame, filter, and manipulate our perception of the built environment. He is also co-editor of the books Architecture, Film, and the In-Between and Animate(d) Architecture.
Lisa Iwamoto
Translations
Toguchi Lecture
LISA IWAMOTO is Founding Partner of IwamotoScott Architecture which she leads together with her Partner, Craig Scott. IwamotoScott has received numerous awards including the Cooper Hewitt/Smithsonian National Design Award, induction into Interior Design Magazine’s Hall of Fame, the Architectural League’s Emerging Voices and Young Architects, Architectural Record’s Design Vanguard, over twenty AIA Design
Awards including a National Award, P/A Award and numerous other architecture and interior awards. Their work has been published in hundreds of journals, and exhibited in numerous museums and galleries. Lisa received her Master of Architecture degree with Distinction from Harvard University, and a Bachelor of Science degree in Structural Engineering from the University of Colorado. She is author of Digital Fabrications: Architectural and Material Techniques published in 2009 by Princeton Architectural Press and is Professor and Chair, Department of Architecture at the University of California Berkeley.