Symposium to explore concept of applying architectural training outside profession

Symposium to explore concept of applying architectural training outside profession March 30, 2006Mary Kate O’Brienmcobrien@syr.edu

Syracuse University School of Architecture will present “Applications,” a one-day symposium, April 12 from 1-7 p.m. in the auditorium at The Warehouse, 350 W. Fayette St. The symposium is free and open to the public. For information on public parking at The Warehouse, call 443-8238.

This symposium presents work produced by designers and researchers who were trained as architects and now are devising innovative applications of disciplinary knowledge that explore architecture’s capacity to engage new constituencies or operate in new contexts.

These designers expand the discipline by applying specifically architectural techniques to problems and projects outside of, or marginal to, the typical domain of the profession. They realize the potential of architecture to address concerns that are not traditionally understood as the responsibility of the architect. These recent and emerging practices not only challenge professional norms, they are fundamentally altering and reorienting the role and ambitions of theory in architecture.

This so-called “post-critical” condition, or move into “theoretical practice,” does not reject or supersede the modes of theory and research that emerged and flourished in the last three decades of the twentieth century. Rather, today’s theoretically or speculatively inclined architects and scholars innovate ways to apply the insights, agendas and research of that era to pressing contemporary problems and opportunities.

Symposium participants will include Cory Clarke from Tender Design Group; Keller Easterling from Yale University; Brian Lonsway from Carleton University; Raymond Ryan from the Heinz Architectural Center; and Veronika Schmid from the Architectural Association and Arup AGU. Mark Linder, chair of graduate studies at the School of Architecture, will moderate.