Keynote Speakers
Ted Flato, FAIA
Lake/Flato Architects
Ted Flato was born
in Corpus
Christi and received his BA in Architecture from Stanford University.
Ted has received wide acclaim both nationally and internationally for
his designs, which evolve from an appreciation for the pragmatic
solutions of vernacular architecture, the honesty of modernism, and the
context of our rich and varied landscape. Sustainability is an integral
part of his design approach. Since founding Lake|Flato with his partner
David Lake in 1984, the firm has received numerous regional and
national architecture awards. For 2004, the American Institute of
Architects awarded Lake|Flato the prestigious Firm of the Year Award,
the highest honor an American architecture firm can receive. The firm’s
projects have been published extensively in architecture, design, and
general interest magazines and books. A new Lake|Flato monograph
published by Rockport Press came out in February of 2006.
www.lakeflato.com
Brian Mackay-Lyons, AIA
MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects Limited
Architect Brian MacKay-Lyons practices in Halifax, Nova Scotia. His firm has focused on houses, public buildings and urban design commissions, which have accumulated to form an extensive and consistent body of work in the Maritimes. His modern regionalist architectural language combines the use of archetypal forms with local building practices that grow out of material culture. As a result, the work has both a local and international audience, as evidenced by the more than 100 publications. In addition, his buildings have received some 55 awards for design including five Governor General's Medals and four Canadian Architect Awards. A traveling exhibition of MacKay-Lyons work is presently touring the United States and Europe. Brian has lectured or taught at over 100 schools of architecture, including Dalhousie University, where he is a professor.
www.mlsarchitects.ca
Lawrence Scarpa, AIA
Pugh+Scarpa Architects
The work of Lawrence Scarpa, and
the firm which he founded together
with Gwynne Pugh in 1991, Pugh + Scarpa, has redefined the role of the
architect to produce some of the most remarkable and exploratory work
today. They do this, not by escaping the restrictions of practice, but
by looking, questioning and reworking the very process of design and
building. Each project appears as an opportunity to rethink the way
things normally get done – with material, form, construction, even
financing – and to subsequently redefine it to cull out it’s latent
potentials – as Lawrence aptly describes: making the “ordinary
extraordinary.” This produces entirely inventive work; work that is
quite difficult to categorize. It is environmentally sustainable, but
not ‘sustainable design;’ it employs new materials, digital practices
and technologies, but is not ‘tech or digital;’ it is socially and
community conscious, but not politically correct. Rather, it is deeply
rooted in conditions of the everyday, and works with our perception and
preconceptions to allow us to see things in new ways.
Over the last six years Mr. Scarpa’s firm PUGH + SCARPA has received
thirty five major design awards including nine national AIA Honor
Awards, 2005 Record Houses, 2003 Record Interiors, 2003 Rudy Bruner
Prize, 2003 AIA COTE “Top Ten Green Building” Award and is a finalist
for the World Habitat Award, one of ten firms selected worldwide. In
2004 The Architectural League of New York selected him as an “Emerging
Voice” in architecture. His work is currently exhibited at the National
Building Museum in Washington, DC.
He has taught and lectured at the university level at numerous
schools including UCLA, University of Florida, Mississippi State
University and SCI-arc. He is the 2005 Max Fisher Visiting Professor at
the Alfred Taubman College of Architecture at the University of
Michigan, 2004 Freidman Fellow at the University of California at
Berkeley. He is a co-founder of Livable Places, Inc.; a nonprofit
development and public policy organization dedicated to building
mixed-use housing on under-utilized and problematic parcels of land.
Livable Places has received over $1,000,000.00 in grants from the
Irvine Foundation, Bank of America, the Fannie Mae Foundation and a
host of other public and private institutions.
www.pugh+scarpa.com
Aron Losonczi
LiTraCon
Light-transmitting concrete: The combination of normally opposing features heaviness/solidity and transparency in one and the same building material creates the possibility of a new architecture never seen before - Swedish architect Morten Johanson describes my invention, light-transmitting concrete, with such words. This essence condensed into one sentence is going to be contextualised in the following.
The word concrete is considered to have French origin. In lexicons it is explained as a very massive building material made of the mixture of water, sand, pebbles and cement. In some encyclopaedias concrete is defined as artificial stone. During the further deconstruction of its meaning concrete is associated with engineering achievements bridges, power plants, foundries -, while others merely think of blank high-rise blocks of flats and crumbled, rank parking places. Architects usually recollect the name of Scarpa or Ruusuvuori as the notion of concrete is heard. For this content has become more and more complex throughout history, it multiplies the significance of making concrete transparent/translucent. Not only a transparent, very compact building material, translucent stone comes into being, but also a tool of expression in hands of artists/architects incorporating the contrast of philosophical, visual and material signifiers.
Some ideas have already been offered in order to solve the problem of transparent concrete. The most well-known and realised method besides window is inventions made of transparent material which run through the whole width of the structure and transmit light. These insertions are mainly made of glass or plastic panels, blocks or other profiles. However these lighting eyes visually are isolated from the housing material, since every piece of them represents quite a huge surface. My development consists of a new transparent material besides the traditional concrete which transmits light, but this new material remains concrete in its general impression and appearance.
My invention, LiTraCon"! - Light-Transmitting Concrete is a new widely applicable building material. It is a mixture of optical glass fibres and fine concrete and can be used as prefabricated blocks or panels. Thousands of optical glass fibres form a matrix and run parallel to each other between the two main surfaces of every block. The proportion of the fibres is pretty small (4%) compared to the total volume. What is more they mingle in the concrete because of their insignificant size, they become a structural component as a kind of modest aggregate. The surface of the blocks therefore still reminds of homogeneous concrete. The glass fibres lead light by points between the two sides. Because of their parallel position the light-information on the brighter side of such a wall appears unchanged on the darker side. Propably the most interesting form of this phenomenon is the sharp display of shadows on the opposing side of the wall. Moreover, the colour of the light remains the same too. In theory, a wall structure built out of light-transmitting concrete can be a couple of meters thick as the fibres work almost without any loss in light up till 20 meters. Load-bearing structures can also be built of these blocks, since glass fibres do not have a negative effect on the well-known high compressive strength value of concrete. The blocks can be produced in various sizes and with embedded heat-isolation too.
~Áron LOSONCZI Architect M. Sc.
www.litracon.hu