There is a Light that Never Goes Out – The Materiality of Glass

22 April 2014 5:00 pm at SAUL Studio

Speaker: Michelle Howard

Michelle Howard is an Irish Architect with a practice in Berlin and a Professorship in Vienna. She has spent much of her career collaborating with some of the most important Architectural practices in the world. Notably she spent 6 years from her 20s to early 30s collaborating with the Renzo Piano Building Workshop in both the Genoa and Paris office and then led the project with for the IMAX Cinema complex, part of the Potsdamer Platz urban ensemble in Berlin. In the next 6 years until the end of her 30s she led the construction of two seminal projects for the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, the Dutch embassy in Berlin and the Casa da Musica in Porto. „At last, so sighed the professional world, at last Rem Koolhaas makes with his Office for Metropolitan Architecture, which has had until now through polemic and theoretical furore an undisputed influence on world architecture, really really good architecture.“  Dietmar Steiner, Der Standard newspaper, Austria. Michelle continues to work occasionally with OMA in an advisory capacity.

Michelle Howard is a Professor of Architecture and head of the Platform for Construction, Materials and Technology at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. She currently working on a publication which documents the platform and its working methods, called Research, Observe, Make and is due to appear in the coming months.

In her office in Berlin, called constructconcept, she maintains a small structure where she can both contribute to other projects and gain support when her own activities demand it and believes that good architecture is the result of great teamwork. constructconcept is committed to the fusion of design, construction and environment in architecture, without compromise. The interdependency of these elements is constantly reasserted, while existing qualities are rediscovered and enhanced. Rather than searching blindly for solutions we stand back and search for the real questions, finding inspiration in what is already there.