Event: 'Future Cities: Dreams/nightmares Or Opportunities For A New Operating System' Print
  Greater Boston
Events taking place in the Boston area.
Date: Thursday, March 21, 2013 At 06:30 pm
Contact Info:
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Location:

Long Lounge, 7-429

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

77 Massachusetts Ave.Cambridge

 

 

Rem Koolhaas is moving to the countryside. The heroic defendant of the Metropolis, a paragon of Modernism, is perhaps warning us that there is no longer a challenge for architects in the city. Yet cities are popping up like mushrooms all over the planet, cities that accommodate nothing, cities that are left to rot, cities that are only the hope of those who commission them and not the ones that are to live in them.

The new fast economies of the Gulf region, South East Asia, India, China, and Africa are presenting us with the challenge of the century; how to develop land without urbanisation? What new models of cities can we invent to replace the shopping mall model invented in the 50’s? What future is there for Garden cities that rely on the importation of energy? Are utopias still a valid form of debate concerning societies and communities?

The lecture will extract through the debates of the last sixty years the questions that we architects need to urgently address.
Can we change the way we think, read, explore and design large pieces of territories?

 

Nasrine Seraji

Founding Partner, Atelier Seraji Architects + Associates; Director, National School of Architecture Paris-Malaquais

After studying at the Architectural Association and practising in London, Seraji moved to Paris in 1989 to establish her studio where architecture is treated as both a cultural debate and a practice. Since then, she has pursued a path constantly enriched by her simultaneous engagement in architectural practice, teaching, and research. She has lectured and exhibited her work widely in Europe and North America, as well as China and South East Asia.

Between 1993 and 2001, Seraji taught at Columbia University in New York, at the Architectural Association in London as Diploma Unit Master, and Princeton University as Visiting Professor. Seraji was Professor and Chair of the Department of Architecture at Cornell University from 2001 to 2005. In 2006, she became Dean of the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture Paris-Malaquais (formerly the École des Beaux-Arts). That same year, she returned to the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna where she held the position of Professor of Ecology, Sustainability and Conservation, as well as Head of the Institute for Art and Architecture.

Architect of the award-winning Temporary American Centre in Paris, Seraji has completed several notable buildings and projects, including apartment buildings in Vienna, student housing in Paris and an extension to the School of Architecture in Lille, the latter were both nominated for the Mies Van der Rohe Prize. She continues to participate in competitions of varying types and complexities, ranging from urban design master plans and institutional buildings to small houses and installations.

Current projects in progress include a building complex in Paris for the Paris Transportation Authority comprised of 212 housing units and a bus depot; a Cultural and Sports Centre as well as large-scale urban plans in the French cities of Besançon, le Rheu, Marseilles, and Pau; and a master plan for a 107-square kilometre ecological, mixed-use resort near Beijing.

Seraji first received the medal for Chevalier des Arts et des Letters from the Minister of Culture in France in 2006 for her role as an architect contributing to excellence in art and humanities. In 2008, she was awarded the medal of Chevalier dans l’Ordre National du Mérite by Presidential decree. In the same year she was also awarded the Medaille d’Argent by the French Academy of Architecture for her contribution to academic endeavours in architecture. Most recently, in July 2011, she received the Chevalier de l’Ordre National de la Légion d’Honneur, one of the highest degrees of honour in France.