STDELSCHULE ARCHITECTURE CLASS

ARCHITECTURE, ART & PAVILIONS PROGRAM & EVENTS 2008 - 2009

02

NEWSLETTER WINTER 2009

Dan Graham, Bisected Triangle, Interior Curve, 2002, at Inhotim. (Photo: Eduardo Eckenfels)

Architecture, The Pavilion and Museum: Instituto Cultural Inhotim, BRAZIL

For the academic year 2008-2009, the Stdelschule Architecture Class collaborates with Instituto Cultural Inhotim (Inhotim), one of the most important museums for contemporary art in Brazil. The collaboration sees SAC conduct a detailed study for the future development of the rich and complex cultural program of Inhotim. The study centers on the role of the museum in relationship to art and architecture and investigates the potential for a sustainable, social and cultural development of the museum on local, regional and national levels. With the work, SAC takes on one of the most interesting problems in contemporary architecture: the transformation of the museum typology. The project is planned in close collaboration with Jochen Volz, Art Director of Inhotim. Inhotims research and educational programs offer SAC the opportunity to extend and deepen its academic and research-oriented activities. For the design of select project proposals for Inhotim, the work will draw on previous and current research of SAC that engages with contemporary and advanced material systems in relation to sustainable building applications. The material systems comprise first and foremost fiber-reinforced polymer composites. SAC plans an academic exchange with the School of Architecture of The Federal University of Minas Gerais in Brazil and an extended seminar and workshop program on textile-reinforced composites. The latter includes collaboration with the Department of Metallurgy and Materials Engineering at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium. The research and design proposals will be presented to the public in two exhibitions: In the DeutschesArchitekturmuseum (German Architecture Museum) in Frankfurt, July 10 to midSeptember 2009; and in the Kunstverein Oldenburg (Oldenburg in Lower Saxony), October 30, 2009 to January 10, 2010.

3&6%7
;36/7

Map of Inhotim, Brumadinho, MG, Brasil

Pavilions allow very specific questions to be framed: they are Expanding knowledge systems.
David Adjaye

During the winter semester, accompanying the Inhotim collaboration, SAC has hosted a public lecture series addressing the pavilion typology in relation to architecture and art. The series has continued SACs endeavor to tap into and map the potent relationship between these two fields. The lecture series has posed a series of questions that begin to unravel the role of the pavilion as a formative and polemical architectural typology. The pavilion is the quintessential, pure embodiment of architecture, or, as Ben van Berkel put it in his lecture, in a subtle exchange with other projects in the office, the pavilions form the theoretical argument for the work. In addition to SACs own Dean Ben van Berkel, the series has hosted, amongst others, David Adjaye, Jrgen Mayer H, Tobias Rehberger, Beatriz Colomina and Frank Barkow.

Study for pavilion research by Farzad Akhavan

UNStudios Changing Room pavilion at Venice Biennale 08 (Photo: C. Richters)

Stdelschule ARCHITECTURE CLASS Staatliche Hochschule fr Bildende Knste - Stdelschule For further information, see: www.staedelschule.de/architecture Drerstrasse 10 D-60596 Frankfurt am Main Tel.: 0049 (0)69 60 50 08-39 Fax: 0049 (0)69 60 50 08-46 architecture@staedelschule.de

TO APPLY, PLEASE SEND A letter of motivation stating your interest in architecture and the program of SAC, Curriculum vitae (CV) and copies of school transcripts, Portfolio (on a CD/DVD and/or as a hard copy), 1-3 Letters of recommendation Mark the envelope: APPLICATION. Applications are reviewed periodically throughout the year. The two-year course commences in October each year. The deadline for applications is August 20th.

SAC Exhibits: AMPELPHASE Vitra Frankfurt, 14.08-6.09.2008 RUNDGANG Stdelschule, 13-15.02.2009

Since summer 2008, SAC has participated in two exhibitions. The first was Ampelphase, hosted by Vitra in Frankfurt. The exhibition included five exhibitors from the regional architectural milieu in addition to the DIploma Group09: Michele Albanelli, Abheet Deval, Christian Karl, Rashmi Katkar and Ata Mansuroglu. The SAC installation, a simple figure made of wooden, distorted frames that soared upwards from a base protruding out of the floor, was based on experiments referring to Kurt Schwitters Merzbau. The recent Rundgang, Stdelschules Open House exhibition, presented models by the members of the Architecture Class. The models present the respective authors thematic preoccupation and are the synthesis of the their attempt to construct an individual approach

to architectural modeling based on the topics that they havepursuedin theirindividualresearch.The models do not represent building structures. Instead each student has used his or her personal visions and spatial imagination to transform the given thematic and architectural conditions.

Above, left: Ampelphase 08/ View to the installation space in Vitra (Photo:SAC). Above, rigt: Rundgang 09/ Ben van Berkel in discussion with Tarak Mehta

The academic program for winter semester of 2008-9 has included a series of seminars, workshops as well as an end-of term review. In connection with these events, prominent visitors to SAC include an impressive line-up of American-based historians and theorists - all SAC guest professors: Mark Wigley, Beatriz Colomina and Sanford Kwinter. Between the three, much of architectural theory over the last 10-15 years is accounted for. Professor Mark Wigley is Dean of the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University in New York. He is also the author of the seminal books, White Walls, Designer Dresses: The fashioning of modern architecture (MIT Press, 1995) and Constants New Babylon: The Hyper-Architecture of Desire (010 Publishers, 1998).

VISITORS & EVENTS WS o8/o9

The pavilion is a diagrammatic experiment

Ben van Berkel

Beatriz Colomina is Professor of Architecture and Founding Director of the Program in Media and Modernity at Princeton University. Her latest book is Domesticity at War (ACTAR & MIT Press, 2007). Lastly, Sanford Kwinter is professor at Harvard University; his most recent book is Far from Equilibrium: Essays on Technology and Design Culture (Actar, 2008). The rounding off of the winter semester included a review of the student work on January 29 & 30. In addition to SAC faculty, the panel included Frank Barkow of Barkow Leibinger Architekten (Berlin), Professor Achim Menges from Stuttgart University and the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London, Dr.-Ing. Oliver Tessmann of Bollinger+Grohmann Ingenieure (Frankfurt am Main) and Nikolaus Hirsch, who is a guest professor in Stdelschule this year and co-author of SACs lecture series for the winter semester.
Frank Barkow examines his own work during his lecture, entitled Revolutions of Choice, and delivered January 29. During his visit to SAC, Barkow also attended the end-of-term review. (Photo:Siavash Jaraiedi)

With the current academic year, SAC is enjoying the return of two previous Stdelschule associates. To strengthen the faculty, Lars Nixdorff

back to SAC - 2008

(SAC05) has been appointed guest professor. Lars returns with wife and son to Frankfurt, wherefrom he comes, after two years with UNStudio in Amsterdam. In UNStudio Lars conduced a series of successful competition entries, including the MOMEMA Dubai, the tax office tower in Groningen, NL and the new theatre in Spijkenisse, NL. Lars is in the process of setting up his own practice, RNA, with Volker Rohde, and is responsible for teaching design and digital modeling in SAC. The other new face - or rather, faces, are no newcomers to Stdelschule. The engineering firm of Klaus Bollinger and Manfred Grohmann, Bollinger+Grohmann Ingenieure, will provide SAC with engineering consultancy and give seminars on various contemporay topics related to materials, structure and construction. Klaus Bollinger, professor at the Angewandte in Wien, and Manfred Grohmann, professor at University in Kassel, were guest professors for engineering in SAC under Professor Sir Peter Cook. Their office is world famous through various collaborations, including those with Coop-Himmelb(l)au and Sanaa. The efforts of Bollinger+Grohmann will be led and coordinated by Dr.-Ing Oliver Tessmann, an architect working for the firm and specializing in the processing of complex forms in relation to structural design.
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Klaus Bollinger Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Manfred Grohmann

Lars Nixdorff

Dr.-Ing. Oliver Tessmann