An Architecture of Social Intensification
29 April 2014 5:00 pm at SAUL Studio
Speaker: David J.Lewis, SAUL Adjunct Professor Inaugural Lecture
David J. Lewis is founding Principal of LTL Architects, PLLC and Associate Professor at Parsons The New School for Design in the School of Constructed Environments. David J. Lewis holds a Master of Architecture from Princeton University, a Master of Arts in the History of Architecture and Urbanism from Cornell University, and a Bachelor of Arts from Carleton College. At Parsons, he directed the Design Workshop program from 2007 to 2010, was on the faculty for the Solar Decathlon project in 2011 and served as Interim Dean from 2012-13. He has also taught at Cornell University, University of Pennsylvania, University of Limerick, and Ohio State University. He served as a member of the Advisory Board of the School of Architecture at the University of Limerick, Ireland and is currently a member of the Advisory Council of the College of Architecture, Art and Planning at Cornell University. David was appointed SAUL Adjunct Professor in 2014.
This lecture will present the challenges and opportunities of practicing architecture today. In a world increasingly defined by virtual social networks and isolating personal technologies (smartphones, iPads, etc.), David will argue for architecture’s unique capacity to intensify the social through the direct organization of space. New technologies are now inscribed into the material forms of cities, buildings, and dwellings. While these technologies seem to erode the dominance of social relations based on proximity and physical gathering, their pervasiveness has paradoxically placed increasing importance on the interpersonal and the corporeal. Responding to this paradox in ways formal and contingent, at scales large and small, David will argue for the amplification of social relationships by orchestrating embodied space.
