24 Program

Biophilic Design & Rooftop Deck Systems: A Natural Connection

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From Walls to Communities

In this lecture Fernanda will showcase her latest built work in Mexico. She will present projects done in the past 5 years, focusing on different programs and scales, and addressing the collective implications of individual buildings. She will speak about the challenges of working in cities where 70% of buildings are informal, and where the usefulness of an architect is rarely acknowledged, demanding to explore new ways of relating people, buildings and the environment. She will explain how every project leads to further research. For example, how the project for a family home turns into the study of the ideas behind the concept of dwelling and the impact of houses in cities, and how that in turn becomes an excuse to expand the relationship between planning and inhabiting. Fernanda will focus on projects done in border cities in the Sonora desert, that deal with public space, scarcity of resources, and the need to create a sense of appropriation and identity.

Balanced Polarities: Portland International Airport Main Terminal Hall

In this talk, Gene will speak on polarities in architecture and embracing them toward a positive design impact in modern civic spaces, specifically those polarities at play in the new Terminal Hall at the Portland International Airport. An evolution of a vintage 1950’s airport, the new Terminal Hall design is an expression of polarities in balance: old/new, regional/international, specific/inclusive, practical/romantic, efficiency/innovation, and a new approach to airport modernization.

Activating Architecture with Code and Light

From gallery installations to the building, and even, the city scale, light artist Leo Villareal will present a chronolgy of his mesmerizing digital art displays—from dancing lights on the cables of the Bay Bridge connecting San Francisco and Oakland, to the Thames River in London, and recent public art punctuating significant new building projects in Tokyo and Rhode Island.

Continuity

Níall will speak about 5 projects built in historically significant environments, looking at how architecture creates a series of connections and continuity through time.

Material Operations

In 2010, following 30 years of conventional material practice, Patkau Architects initiated a formal research program into the use of commonly available construction materials which, in conjunction with modest but unconventional construction methods, would produce buildable, expressive forms with inherent structural capacity and evocative identities. Working directly with materials—bending and breaking them, feeling their texture, mass, and strength—provides a depth of understanding beyond simple visual observation. Material Operations begin with a relatively simple manipulation of a specific construction material and develop through reactions to the resulting transformation. At the most basic level, they follow the formula Material + Force = Form. Initial forms are found, not preconceived, in the way a specific material expresses stress through strain—flexing or failing in particular ways. Now 14 years on, this investigation has resulted in a number of pavilion-scaled projects (some hypothetical, some constructed), two large-scale, high-performance projects (one constructed, one unbuilt), and the Princeton Architectural Press publication Patkau Architects: Material Operations.

Panel Discussion: Mass Timber and a Low-Carbon Future

This panel of design and technical experts will explore mass-timber construction. In addition to discussing its environmental attributes, the session will investigate the system’s possibilities for structural innovation and formal expression, its potential to help grow a region’s economy, and challenges to responsibly expanding the material’s supply chain.

Building Now

RECORD editor in chief Josephine Minutillo talks with Innovation presenters Fernanda Canales, Níall McLaughlin, and John Patkau about the challenges and opportunities confronting architects building today and in the years to come.

Innovation in Record Time
Presented by Kingspan