ARCHITECTURE IS ALL OVER
A transdisciplinary symposium examining the pathology, ubiquity and negentropic potential of architecture as it is and as it could be

Saturday, February 12, 2011, 9am-5pm

TIFF Bell Lightbox, Cinema Two
Reitman Square, 350 King Street West, Toronto, Ontario M5V 3X5

Co-presented by
OCAD University, Office of the President;
University of Toronto John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design

REGISTRATION:

This event is free of charge and open to the public. As seating is limited, advance registration is highly recommended.
To reserve your seat and for more information, visit www.work-books.org/events .

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Architecture is All Over is a one-day, international symposium featuring provocative papers from emerging thinkers and challenging conversations between established scholars both within and outside the discipline of architecture. All contributions will offer new ways to analyze, reimagine and foment architecture’s paradoxical contraction and expansion as it both affects and is affected by a larger milieu, and is situated within a range of spatial practices.

The first of three sessions, The Pathology of Architecture will explore architecture’s (in)ability to cope with the challenges and contradictions inherent in its own indeterminate identity. Mason White (University of Toronto) will discuss how other practices have poached terms and territory from architecture as a disciplinary agent. Jennifer Leung (Yale) will examine the architectural responses to existential external threats and internal weaknesses, focusing on the strategies of heraldry, camouflage and risk. A psychoanalytic conversation between the architectural theorists, K. Michael Hays (Harvard) and Andrew Payne (University of Toronto) will close the session.

The Nebulous and the Infinitesimal will survey architecture’s simultaneous tendencies to both expand and evaporate. Alexander Hilton-Wood (MIT) will present the case for smallness in architecture. Olga Touloumi (Harvard) will take on the surprising power of architecture as electronic media. To conclude this session, the historian of science, D. Graham Burnett (Princeton), and architectural theorist, David Gissen (California College of the Arts), will discuss alternative architectural approaches to environmental modification that recognize our dawning apperception of our agential extension.

Finally, Negentropic Machines will feature speculative proposals for architecture as it could become. It will include a presentation by Patty Heyda (Washington University in St. Louis) arguing for architecture’s emergence in the waste zones created by large-scale urban infrastructural development, and a provocation by Trevor Patt (EPFL) about the agonistic potential of a forgetful, generic architectural interface. A conversation between the architectural theorist, Sanford Kwinter (Harvard), and the historian and theorist of visual culture, Jill Casid (University of Wisconsin-Madison), will explore how architectural discourse might formulate new, critical and interpretive vantages capable of reimagining the monstrous actions we release into the world as possibilities rather than pathogens.

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PROGRAM

8:00am
Registration and check in.

9:00am
Introduction to Symposium

// SESSION 1: The Pathology of Architecture //

9:10am
Introduction to session + key issues
ESTHER CHOI & MARRIKKA TROTTER

9:15am
MASON WHITE, Disciplinary Thievery

9:45am
JENNIFER LEUNG, Heraldry, Camouflage, and Risk

10:15am
K. MICHAEL HAYS & ANDREW PAYNE, In Conversation

// SESSION 2: The Nebulous and the Infinitesimal //

11:30am
Introduction to session + key issues
ESTHER CHOI & MARRIKKA TROTTER

11:35am
OLGA TOULOUMI, Contentious Electronics | Radical Blips

12:05pm
ALEXANDER HILTON WOOD, To Be Small and To Remain Small Forever

12:35pm
D. GRAHAM BURNETT & DAVID GISSEN, In Conversation

// SESSION 3: Negentropic Machines //

2:30pm
Introduction to session + key issues
ESTHER CHOI & MARRIKKA TROTTER

2:35pm
PATRICIA HEYDA, A Call for Architecture’s Emergence

3:05pm
TREVOR PATT, Closing Performance: In Praise of the Possibility of Architecture

3:35pm
JILL CASID & SANFORD KWINTER, In Conversation

4:45pm
Moderated Q&A with Audience Participation

5:00pm
Closing remarks
ESTHER CHOI & MARRIKKA TROTTER

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SPONSORS and ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Organized by
Esther Choi and Marrikka Trotter of Work Books

Architecture Is All Over is co-presented by
OCAD University, Office of the President
University of Toronto John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design

We thank the generous support of
Social Sciences Humanities Research Council of Canada
Bohart

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE VISIT: http://www.work-books.org/events