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lecture series

Douglas Cardinal: The Language of Organic Architecture - Designing Learning Spaces that Touch the Human Spirit

Thursday, October 24, 2024

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A lecture followed by a conversation moderated by students of TSOA and ASU

1 AIA CE credit

Streaming

Lecture Series Sponsor
Swaback Architects + Planners

Event Co-Host
ASU Design School Architecture Program

Series Co-Sponsor
Arizona Architecture Foundation

For Douglas Cardinal, Organic Architecture is the discipline that creates spaces that come from the heart and touch the soul. Following his Indigenous teachings and Western masters such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Douglas Cardinal’s organic architectural process aims to manifest an ode to Mother Earth’s values, and the nurturing power of engendering creativity. Douglas Cardinal will share his unique Western and Indigenous education that has allowed him to blend the principles of Organic Architecture into his own signature style. He will showcase three projects to illustrate this point: St. Mary’s Project (1968), the National Museum of the American Indian (1998, 2004), and Gordon Oakes Red Bear Student Centre for the University of Saskatchewan (2016). * Shown in photo.

The Speaker

Born in 1934 in Calgary, Alberta, his architectural studies at the University of British Columbia took him to Frank Lloyd’s School of Architecture at Taliesin West, and to the School of Architecture at The University of Texas at Austin, Texas where he graduated with honours in 1963. His Western academic training corresponded with intense Indigenous teachings at Small Boys Camp and Wyoming. Following the blending of these two worldviews, Douglas Cardinal is a forerunner of all philosophies of sustainability, green buildings, and ecologically designed community planning. Indeed, his Organic Architecture springs from his observation of Nature and the understanding that everything works seamlessly together. His master plans for Indigenous communities and concept for Indian Control of Indian Education in the early 1970s brought early Indigenous schools such as Kehewin Elementary School and Diamond Jenness High School in Hay River which led to the First Nations University, and Gordon Oakes Red Bear Student Centre at the University of Saskatchewan. Perhaps best known for designing the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau and the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington DC, we cannot forget the smaller but pivotal Aanischaaukamikw Cree Cultural Institute in the Village of Ouje-Bougamou also designed by Douglas Cardinal. The major buildings of his early career in Alberta are extraordinary examples of organic architecture, namely the iconic St Mary’s Church, Grande Prairie College, the Alberta Government Services Building in Ponoka, Saint Albert Place, and Telus Science Museum. Also blending the best of Indigenous and Western approaches to architecture are his health centers, Meno-ya-win Hospital, Wabano Aboriginal Health Centre, and Goodyear Adelante Healthcare Center in Arizona.

In recognition of his visionary contribution to architecture, Douglas Cardinal has received many acknowledgments and awards including twenty-one Honourary Doctorates from several universities in Canada and the United States, the appointment as an Officer of the Order of Canada, Gold Medals in Architecture by the Royal Architectural Institute in Canada, and the Union of Architects of Russia, honourary fellowships in the Society of American Registered Architects and the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland, the nomination of Commander of the Order of the Civil Merit by the King of Spain, Felipe VI, and the declaration of being "World Master of Contemporary Architecture" as a Professor and Academician by the International Association of Architects. Douglas Cardinal was also an early recipient of the National Aboriginal Achievement Awards and is a deeply respected member of the Indigenous community as an Elder, Pipe Carrier, Lodge Keeper, and Eagle Headdress-Carrier of the Blackfoot Confederacy. Douglas Cardinal continues his holistic multidisciplinary architectural practice in Ottawa, Ontario where he currently resides with his wife and partner Idoia Arana-Beobide.

This event kicks off TSOA's 2024-25 Lecture Series

previous lectures

Down the Loss Landscape: Michelle Chang

Streaming

Thursday, March 14, 2024

5:30PM

Cattle Track Arts Gallery
6105 N Cattletrack Rd
Scottsdale, AZ 85250

1 AIA CE credit

Event Sponsor
Swaback Architects + Planners

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Michelle Chang presents the development of her research and practice, JaJa Co. She frames her work as a series of predictions, desires, gains, and losses.

The Speaker

Michelle Chang is an assistant professor of architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and the director of her independent practice, JaJa Co. Chang's design work experiments with architecture’s representational frameworks in the design of small buildings in U.S. suburbs and towns. In her research, she studies how technology and media paradigms translate to architecture through material and labor.

Our 2023-24 Event Series, Shapes of Pedagogy, explores the spaces, structures and practices of experimental pedagogy in architectural education.

Building Practice: Molly Hunker and Kyle Miller

Friday, February 16, 2024

5:30PM

Friday, February 16, 2024

5:30PM

Cattle Track Arts Gallery
6105 N Cattletrack Rd
Scottsdale, AZ 85250

1 AIA CE credit

Event Sponsor
Swaback Architects + Planners

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Molly Hunker and Kyle Miller present their new book, Building Practice, which features interviews with architects, designers, educators, curators, fabricators, strategists, critics, and activists who are advancing speculative design through the culture and politics of building, capturing critical and formative moments associated with building a practice. Each interview in the book reveals strategies for linking practical and theoretical forms of knowledge and evidences the active creation of unique approaches to contributing positively to both architectural culture and the built environment. Hunker and Miller articulate how architects today claim conceptual territory regarding form, space, order, materiality, and aesthetics, and push for design to have meaning and value in relation to cultural, environmental, political, and social concerns. The individuals and practices profiled in the book collectively partition themselves from previous generations of experimentally motivated practices while individually exemplifying their own inimitable affinities, techniques, and sensibilities. Building Practice shares the first acts of an emerging generation of practices and identifies the peripheral yet pivotal aspects of building a practice today.

The Speakers

Molly Hunker is a Wyoming-raised designer and educator and the co-founder of the award-winning practice, SPORTS, with Greg Corso. SPORTS focuses on creating compelling spaces that are catalysts for social activities and connection through the design, realization, and visualization of small interventions in the public realm. SPORTS is the recipient of a 2017 Arch League Prize from the Architectural League of NY, the 2018 Young Architect Award from The Architect’s Newspaper, and a 2017 and 2020 ACSA Faculty Design Award. Molly received a BA from Dartmouth College and a MArch from UCLA. She has worked for architecture studios and art workshops along the west coast including Talbot McLanahan Architecture, Doug Aitken Workshop, and The LADG. She previously taught at UCLA, Woodbury University, and The University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). She is currently an Assistant Professor at Syracuse University School of Architecture.

Kyle Miller is Associate Dean and Associate Professor at Syracuse University School of Architecture, Co-Founder of Possible Mediums, and Fellow (’19) of MacDowell. His design research has been supported by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and Syracuse University, and has been included in the AIA Emerging Professionals Exhibition and shown at the A+D Museum in Los Angeles, Harvard Graduate School of Design, and Yale School of Architecture. In addition to co-authoring Building Practice and Possible Mediums, Miller’s writing has been published in Log, Monu, Constructs, Pidgin, Project, Offramp, PLAT, Room One Thousand, and the Journal for Architectural Education. Miller was Architecture Program Director at Syracuse University in Florence (2016-2018), previously taught at the University of Kentucky College of Design (2009-2013), and worked professionally in Milwaukee, Los Angeles, and for Ben van Berkel and Caroline Bos with UNStudio in Amsterdam. Miller is a graduate of the University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning and the University of California Los Angeles Department of Architecture and Urban Design, where he earned his professional degree and was awarded the AIA Henry Adams Medal and Certificate.

Our 2023-24 Event Series, Shapes of Pedagogy, explores the spaces, structures and practices of experimental pedagogy in architectural education.

Michelle Millar Fisher: Craft Schools: A Cross-Country Odyssey in Search of Stories of Craft Education

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RECORDING

5:30PM, Friday, November 10, 2023

Cattle Track Arts Gallery
6105 N Cattletrack Rd
Scottsdale, AZ 85250

Join MFA Boston curator Michelle Millar Fisher as she shares the story of her journey across the United States on Amtrak to visit pivotal schools and sites (including TSoA) that have shaped craft in the United States over the last century. Where is craft taught? In what ways does place matter to craft learning? And how do we access these places?

The resulting project, "Craft Schools" is a multiyear project encompassing public programs with artists across the US, artwork acquisitions to enhance MFA Boston’s contemporary craft collection, and, ultimately, a publication framing modern-day craft as inclusive and alive—inside and outside the walls of museums.

Michelle Millar Fisher is the Ronald C. and Anita L. Wornick Curator of Contemporary Decorative Arts at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Previously, she worked at MoMA, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Guggenheim Museum. Her work focuses on the intersections of people, power, and the material world. At the MFA, she is working on “Craft Schools: Where We Make What We Inherit” which took her on a train journey across all 48 contiguous US states. She leads an independent team on a book, touring exhibition, and program series called “Designing Motherhood: Things That Make and Break Our Births.” She holds an MA and an M.Phil in Art History from the University of Glasgow, Scotland, and received an M.Phil from The Graduate Center at the City University of New York (CUNY) where she is completing her PhD. She is widely published, and has received numerous fellowships.

Open House: An Immersive Reintroduction to TSOA at Cattle Track Arts

Open House: An Immersive Reintroduction to TSOA at Cattle Track Arts

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4PM - 6PM, Friday, October 27, 2023

Starting location:
The School of Architecture Studio
7610 E McDonald Drive, Suite G
Scottsdale, AZ 85250

Ending/reception location:
Outside Cattle Track Arts Gallery
6105 N Cattletrack Rd
Scottsdale, AZ 85250

We are excited to welcome you soon to our Open House this Friday, Oct 27, 2023, starting at 4PM! As part of the event, we will be hosting a casual walking tour through the spaces according to the map provided, with an opportunity to meet our students, faculty, and the wider community of artists at Cattle Track along the way. Please also note the entry and parking locations for the event. If you are joining us after 4PM, please follow the dotted blue path to locate us along the walking tour.

TSOA Through the Decades: A Roundtable with President Chris Lasch, Dean Stephanie Lin, Dean Victor Sidy, Taliesin Fellow John Sather

Thursday, October 12, 2023

TSOA Through the Decades: A Roundtable with President Chris Lasch, Dean Stephanie Lin, Dean Victor Sidy, Taliesin Fellow John Sather

RSVP
RECORDING

5:30pm, Thursday, Oct 12, 2023

Cattle Track Arts Gallery
6105 N Cattletrack Rd
Scottsdale, AZ 85250

The School of Architecture is pleased to kick off our 2023-24 Event Series, Shapes of Pedagogy, at our new location at Cattle Track Arts Compound with a reflection on four periods of the school's history. Through a roundtable discussion, our invited speakers will expand on their individual experiences in shaping the school, while also exploring the through-lines, shared values, and structures of the school's program across different generations of leadership. Speakers will include:

  • John Sather, Founding Partner at Swaback Architects, Taliesin Fellow, Apprentice from 1974–1978
  • Victor Sidy, Principal of Victor Sidy Architect, former Head of School and Dean from 2005–2015, Class of '97 (BAS) and 2000 (M.Arch)
  • Chris Lasch, Principal of Aranda\Lasch, current President, former Dean from 2016–2020
  • Stephanie Lin, Principal of Present Forms, Dean from 2021–present

1 AIA CE credit

Event Series 2023-24: Shapes of Pedagogy

5:30PM

Our 2023-24 Event Series, Shapes of Pedagogy, explores the spaces, structures and practices of experimental pedagogy in architectural education.

TSOA Through the Decades: A Roundtable with President Chris Lasch, Dean Stephanie Lin, Dean Victor Sidy, Taliesin Fellow John Sather

RSVP
RECORDING

5:30pm, Thursday, Oct 12, 2023

Cattle Track Arts Gallery
6105 N Cattletrack Rd
Scottsdale, AZ 85250

The School of Architecture is pleased to kick off our 2023-24 Event Series, Shapes of Pedagogy, at our new location at Cattle Track Arts Compound with a reflection on four periods of the school's history. Through a roundtable discussion, our invited speakers will expand on their individual experiences in shaping the school, while also exploring the through-lines, shared values, and structures of the school's program across different generations of leadership. Speakers will include:

  • John Sather, Founding Partner at Swaback Architects, Taliesin Fellow, Apprentice from 1974–1978
  • Victor Sidy, Principal of Victor Sidy Architect, former Head of School and Dean from 2005–2015, Class of '97 (BAS) and 2000 (M.Arch)
  • Chris Lasch, Principal of Aranda\Lasch, current President, former Dean from 2016–2020
  • Stephanie Lin, Principal of Present Forms, Dean from 2021–present

1 AIA CE credit

Open House: An Immersive Reintroduction to TSOA at Cattle Track Arts

RSVP

4PM - 6PM, Friday, October 27, 2023

Starting location:
The School of Architecture Studio
7610 E McDonald Drive, Suite G
Scottsdale, AZ 85250

Ending/reception location:
Cattle Track Arts Gallery
6105 N Cattletrack Rd
Scottsdale, AZ 85250

Join us for an open house and interactive tour celebrating the latest iteration of the school, presented by students, faculty, and the artists-in-residence at Cattle Track Arts. The tour ends with a reception at the Cattle Track Arts Gallery.

Michelle Millar Fisher: Craft Schools: A Cross-Country Odyssey in Search of Stories of Craft Education

RSVP

5:30PM, Friday, November 10, 2023

Cattle Track Arts Gallery
6105 N Cattletrack Rd
Scottsdale, AZ 85250

Join MFA Boston curator Michelle Millar Fisher as she shares the story of her journey across the United States on Amtrak to visit pivotal schools and sites (including TSoA) that have shaped craft in the United States over the last century. Where is craft taught? In what ways does place matter to craft learning? And how do we access these places?

The resulting project, "Craft Schools" is a multiyear project encompassing public programs with artists across the US, artwork acquisitions to enhance MFA Boston’s contemporary craft collection, and, ultimately, a publication framing modern-day craft as inclusive and alive—inside and outside the walls of museums.


Carson Chan and Matthew Shaw: In Conversation

Thursday, March 23, 2023

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Photo Peter Rose

Carson Chan, Exhibiting Architecture at Full Scale: An Inventory of Strategies

At art exhibitions we see artworks, but at architecture exhibitions we see representations of buildings. How do we exhibit architecture? Curator and writer Carson Chan will discuss strategies throughout his curating career.

Carson Chan is an architecture writer and curator. He is the inaugural director of the Emilio Ambasz Institute for the Joint Study of the Built and Natural Environment at the Museum of Modern Art (New York), where he is also a curator in the Architecture and Design Department. He is co-founder of both Current: Collective for Architecture History and Environment, and PROGRAM: Initiative for Art and Architecture Collaborations in Berlin. With Nadim Samman, he curated the 4th Marrakech Biennale (2012), and was executive curator for the Biennial of the Americas in Denver (2013). His writing is widely published in periodicals like Avery Review, Frieze, PIN-UP, Texte zur Kunst, and 032c, where he was formerly editor-at-large. He holds degrees from Cornell and Harvard Universities. His doctoral research at Princeton University tracks the architecture of public aquariums in the US against the rise of environmentalism as a popular and political movement. He is currently preparing a large-scale survey exhibition on American environmental architecture at MoMA, set to open in the fall of 2023.

Matthew Shaw will discuss writing and criticism as a practice as well as his latest book American Modern

Matt Shaw is a New York–based author, editor, and columnist, whose work focuses on architecture as an instrument of political, social, and cultural shifts. He has been published in The New York Times, The Guardian, PIN-UP, Artforum, The Architectural Review, and Domus. His forthcoming book with Iwan Baan about Columbus, Indiana will be published by Monacelli Press in 2023. Shaw is also the co-founder of the experimental project space Hot Air in downtown New York. He has previously served as Executive Editor of The Architect’s Newspaper, where the online publication won an International Committee of Architectural Critics (CICA) honorable mention. He also teaches critical writing at UPenn, Indiana University, NJIT, and the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), and has served on a number of advisory boards, awards committees, and built project juries.

Please join us at 6PM on Thursday, March 23, at our Cosanti campus in Scottsdale, AZ for what promises to be a fascinating conversation.

RSVP here

The Built and Unbuilt Stories A Lecture by Jimenez Lai, The Bureau Spectacular

Friday, February 24, 2023

6:00 PM

Jimenez Lai was born in Taiwan, grew up in Canada, and lives in Los Angeles. Before establishing Bureau Spectacular, Lai lived in a desert shelter at Taliesin and resided in a shipping container at Atelier Van Lieshout on the piers of Rotterdam. Lai’s first book, Citizens of No Place: An Architectural Graphic Novel, was published by Princeton Architectural Press with a grant from the Graham Foundation. Lai has won various awards, including the Architectural League Prize for Young Architects, the Debut Award at the Lisbon Triennale, and the Designer of the Future at Art Basel. Lai represented Taiwan at the 14th Venice Architecture Biennale. Lai’s work is in the permanent collection of MoMA, SFMOMA, Art Institute of Chicago, and LACMA.

Watch the recorded lecture here.

A Lecture by Behnaz Assadi and Nima Javidi Ja Architecture Studio

Thursday, February 23, 2023

6:00 PM

Ja Architecture Studio is a Canadian practice based in Toronto and led by an Iranian-Canadian duo, an architect and a landscape designer, that combine the rootedness of a local architecture firm with the broad interests of an international design studio. From small to medium sized buildings that confront detail-level building constraints to ambitious international competitions that draw upon the collective repertoire of the discipline, the trajectory of the practice is based on a method of simultaneously working at the opposing ends of the professional spectrum. Taken as a whole, the studio’s work invests in larger questions of the discipline–namely how iconographic, geometric, formal, and tectonic pursuits relate to broader contexts such as contemporary art, politics, construction, landscape, and urbanism.

By engaging in thoughtful design conversations ranging from the role of public art internationally with curators, to the wood joinery of a three legged chair with local furniture makers, and the virtues of renaturalizing urban plots with neighbours, the studio aims to investigate the core of architecture by operating at numerous points around its periphery, connecting the themes and interests within the studio with those of the world at large. This approach was not chosen for its assurance of success but as a means for investigating the merit and relevance of Ja’s ideas across a wide variety of scales and contexts. Ja’s work has been published widely and exhibited both nationally and internationally.

Cat Cast Building
Cosanti
6433 E Doubletree Ranch Rd
Scottsdale, AZ 85253

Thursday, February 23, 6:00PM

Watch the recorded lecture here

1 AIA CE Credit

Get Out: A Lecture by Dong-Ping Wong, Food New York

Monday, November 21, 2022

On Monday, November 21, Food New York will kick off their visit at TSOA, beginning with a lecture by Dong-Ping Wong presenting recent work from the practice.

Dong-Ping Wong is the founder and Director of Food New York. Ongoing projects include a garden spa in the Cayman Islands, the 18,000sf New York headquarters for Hypebeast, and + POOL, the world’s first floating, water filtering pool. Before starting Food New York, Dong-Ping was a founding partner of Family New York with Oana Stanescu, which led the designs of contemporary art museums in Mantaa, Finland and Maribor, Slovenia, stand-alone stores for Off-White c/o Virgil Abloh in New York, Tokyo, Singapore and Hong Kong, the stage design for Kanye West’s Yeezus Tour, and residential projects for him and his family in Paris and Los Angeles. Dong-Ping earned his Master of Architecture from Columbia University and his Bachelor’s degree from UC Berkeley.              

Watch the recorded lecture here

Four Corners Studio: A lecture by Théodora Barat

Thursday, October 20, 2022

On October 20, 2022, visual artist Théodora Barat presented a new examination of industrial-scientific-military constructions, questioning their possible documentation and representation. She presented the outcomes of a workshop with TSOA students during her stay that reflects on the interaction between architecture and sculpture within the very particular staging of desert space.

Théodora Barat’s artistic approach combines film, sculpture and installation, and frequently incorporates architectural and site-specific contexts. She examines modernity figures and dissects its chimeras in order to question our future(s). She is currently a PhD candidate at RADIAN, developing a multidisciplinary project on the imprint of nuclear research on the Four Corners area.

Barat was a fellow at Villa Medici – French Academy in Rome in 2021-22. Her work has been shown at Sunken Plaza – K11 MUSEA, The Emily Harvey Foundation, The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, Cneai=, Nuit Blanche, La Friche la Belle de Mai, Vilnius Contemporary Art Center, Palais de Tokyo, The Centre Pompidou, The Boston Fine Arts Museum, as well as in several international film festivals.

Click here to watch the recorded lecture

Thamarit Suchart, AIA: Preoccupations

Thursday, September 22, 2022

On September 22, 2022 Thamarit Suchart of Chen + Suchart Studio presented the studio’s recent projects at The School of Architecture’s Cosanti campus.

Thamarit Suchart is a principal and co-founder of Chen + Suchart Studio.  He graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design (Bachelor of Fine Arts and Bachelor of Architecture 1997) and Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design (Master of Architecture in Urban Design 1999).  After working for numerous award winning architecture firms in both Boston and Phoenix, Thamarit officially established his own architecture firm in 2010 with his wife, Patricia Chen Suchart.  

Chen + Suchart Studio works at a variety of scales ranging from small well crafted projects and single family residences to larger scale urban design.  The practice is not interested in style.  The common thread between all projects undertaken in our studio is the integrity of design that transcends style.  The work of the studio is focused on the reinvention of known ideas, spatial experience, and the quality and craft of construction in all of our projects.

Since 2015, the firm has been the recipient of a total of nine AIA design awards, from both the AIA Arizona Chapter as well as from the AIA Western Mountain Region Chapter.  2015 also included an award from Residential Architect Magazine, where The Staab Residence was awarded the Design Award for a Custom Home over 3,000 SF.  In 2012, the firm was identified as “15 Young Firms to Watch: Chen + Suchart Studio” by Residential Architect Magazine.  Thamarit is a registered architect in the State of Arizona.

Thamarit has also served as a faculty associate and adjunct lecturer, teaching undergraduate and graduate design studios at both Arizona State University and the University of Arizona since 2010.  He is committed to sharing his knowledge with the future generations of architects.

Click here to view the recorded lecture.

LANZA Atelier - 7 Years

Friday, April 1, 2022

The architecture studio LANZA Atelier was founded by Isabel Abascal and Alessandro Arienzo and is based in Mexico City and Madrid. LANZA understands the architectural project as a constantly fluctuating process which is subject to various forces, and as a malleable element.

Their April 1, 2022, lecture and workshop at TSOA presented an overhaul of LANZA’s work, aims, challenges and experiences from their foundation in 2015.

Click here to view the recorded lecture

Joseph Becker: RAD/PED (Expanded Discourse)

Friday, March 4, 2022

March 4th, Joseph Becker, Associate Curator of Architecture and Design at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, conducted a workshop on radical pedagogy, exploring new ideas while engaging histories of aberrant modes of teaching, learning, and making.

Participants tested multiple formats and techniques of RAD/PED including flying an Aerocene tetra sculpture by artist Tomás Saraceno during this interactive and collectively driven workshop.

Joseph Becker is a curator, writer, and educator in San Francisco. He is the Associate Curator of Architecture and Design at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, where his curatorial approach focuses on creating an access point to tools, ideas, and issues surrounding the intersection of design and art, and the shifts between conceptual and production practice that blur these boundaries.

Becker has organized dozens of exhibitions at SFMOMA and has arranged important acquisitions and donations to the museum’s collection. He has regularly moderated and served on art and design panels, been an invited juror at many national architecture programs, led workshops on exhibition and experiential design, lectured internationally, been an invited consultant to public art and design projects, and contributed writings on art, architecture, and design to numerous publications. He received both his Bachelor of Architecture and his Master of Advanced Architectural Design in Design Theory and Critical Practice from the California College of the Arts, where he has taught interdisciplinary seminars on art and architecture.

His current exhibitions are Drawing the Line: Rael San Fratello at the U.S.-Mexico Border, which reimagines the architectural conditions of the border to bridge the cultures and communities it divides, and Tauba Auerbach: S v Z, a survey exhibition of 17 years of the artist’s multivalent and interdisciplinary work that connects ideas of structure, pattern, and gesture at intricate and vast scales.

Civic Callings: Restoring the Past, Claiming Rights in the Present

Thursday, February 17, 2022

This lecture, under the theme of “Global Narratives”, featured the CEO & Executive Director of The Cosanti Foundation, Elizabeth Martin-Malikian. Gathering knowledge from the postwar cities in the Levant, Martin-Malikian, who is also a tenured Professor and Chair of Thesis for the Department of Architecture at Kennesaw State University, explored the notion of “otherness” in her lecture at The School of Architecture.

By examining an oft-hidden issue concerning an overlapping aspect of the “Oneness” of the “Other” and the object over the philosophical explanatory power of alterity, Martin-Malikian has focused her research on the hybridity of the Levant (the area encompassing present-day Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, and Palestine).

Her unique background encompasses art, architecture, and academics, a rare combination that aligns fully with the unique mission of The Cosanti Foundation. Originally from New York, she has more than 30 cumulative years of experience as a practicing and principal architectural designer and more than 15 years of experience as an academic-practitioner teaching domestically and internationally as a professor of architecture and urban design.

Her lifelong commitment to her profession and to the creative community is evident in her service as part of dozens of commissions, committees, and councils, including the Urban Land Institute (ULI) Women’s Leadership Initiative, Metropolitan Public Art Coalition (MPAC), and AIACC Monterey Design Conference committee.

She has been awarded numerous grants, including, most recently, a NEA Challenge America Grant. Liz has also received a variety of honors, such as the AIA/ACSA Practice and Leadership Award (2019), AIAS Educator of the Year Award (2020), the ULI Atlanta “The Leaders” 2021 cohort, and most recently, an Journal of Architecture Education (JAE) writing award.

Click here to view the recorded lecture

Pluriverse Rising: Indigenous Design with Wanda Dalla Costa

Thursday, February 10, 2022

Dalla Costa, AIA, LEED A.P. is a member of the Saddle Lake Cree Nation. She is an architect and an Institute professor and a YBCA 100 2019 honoree, an award which celebrates people, organizations, and movements shifting culture through ideas, their art, and their activism. At Arizona State University, she is the director and founder of the Indigenous Design Collaborative, a community-driven design and construction program, which brings together tribal community members, industry and a multidisciplinary team of ASU students and faculty to co-design solutions for tribal communities. Dalla Costa was part of Unceded at the 2018 Venice Biennale where she joined 18 Indigenous architects from across Turtle Island to share an Indigenous vision of the future. Her firm, Tawaw Architecture Collective (www.tawarc.com) is based in Phoenix.

Click here to view the recorded  lecture on YouTube

In Conversation: Terrol Dew Johnson and Alexandra Cunningham Cameron

Thursday, December 2, 2021

TSOA is pleased to host discussions across artistic, design, and curatorial practices in our Expanded Discourse series this Fall and Spring.

Terrol Dew Johnson is a nationally-recognized, award-winning Tohono O’odham basket weaver, community activist and museum consultant. His baskets have won major awards at the Santa Fe Indian Market, Heard Museum Fair, Phoenix, and Southwest Indian Art Fair, Tucson.

Alexandra Cunningham Cameron is the Curator of Contemporary Design and the first Hintz Secretarial Scholar at Cooper-Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.

Click here to view the recorded lecture on You Tube

Sean Canty: Atypical Houses

Friday, October 8, 2021

Sean Canty is the founder of SSC, an architecture practice based in Cambridge, MA. The studio is interested in choreographing unconventional relationships between spaces of contemplation and collective gathering. The work of the studio engages formal combination and juxtaposition at a variety of scales—from objects to interiors—and explores a range of programmatic types—from domestic environments to cultural spaces. Canty is also one of the founding principals of Office III (OIII), an experimental architectural collective that spans New York, San Francisco, and Cambridge. Selected as a finalist for the 2017 MoMA PS1 Young Architects competition, OIII has completed a Welcome Center for Governors Island and exhibited work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Prior to founding these studios, Canty was a Project Designer at IwamotoScott Architecture in San Francisco. Canty’s work and writing has been published in domus, Harvard Design Magazine, MAS Context, and the forthcoming publications BLANK: Speculations on CLT and Inscriptions: Architecture Before Speech. Canty is the recipient of the 2020 Richard Rogers Fellowship. Canty is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. Prior to joining the faculty at the GSD, Canty held teaching positions at the Cooper Union, University California Berkeley, and California College of the Arts. In addition to architectural design, Canty has taught classes on descriptive geometry and design media. Canty received an M.Arch from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design and a B.Arch from California College of the Arts.

Click here to view the recorded lecture on YouTube.

Click here for more information about Sean Canty

Eddie Jones: Portable Regionalism

Tuesday, September 7, 2021

Eddie Jones of Jones Studio discusses the relationship of local climates, cultures and vernacular design, with and applied to other regions. Jones will present Sonoran responses in his studio’s work as explorations of  “Portable Regionalism: The Understanding of Common Denominators“.

For forty plus years, Eddie’s persistence and innovation have expanded the palette of materials and methods available throughout Arizona. His long-standing implementation of sustainability and environmental design, matched with an extraordinary sensitivity to the factors that create space, have made better human experiences and better architecture.

Under Eddie Jones’ leadership, Jones Studio has received 222 design awards including a National AIA and a GSA Design Excellence Honor for the Mariposa Land Port of Entry in Nogales, Arizona. In 2018 Eddie was awarded the AIA Arizona’s Architects Medal, the highest honor an individual practitioner of architecture can receive in the state. In 2021 Eddie was elevated to The College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects.

Eddie is a 2004 recipient of the Melvin R. Lohmann Medal (for career achievement in architecture) from his alma mater, Oklahoma State University. The Lohmann Medal is the highest honor bestowed on a graduate of the College of Engineering, Architecture, and Technology. Soon after, Eddie also became an inductee of the College of Engineering, Architecture, and Technology Hall of Fame. Although state rivals, the University of Oklahoma College of Architecture named Eddie the Bruce Goff Chair in 1999. For the fiftieth anniversary of the iconic Progressive Architecture Awards, he was specially selected to be a member of the esteemed jury.

Eddie was appointed in 2007 to the GSA Design Excellence Peer Review. He was named a Founding Board of Governors member by The School of Architecture at Taliesin in 2017. He is very active in Arizona Forward, Arizona’s premier organization for promoting sustainable design. Eddie also hosts many community events at the new office building, completed in 2016 to serve as a model of sustainability in desert environments.

There are currently 40 books, 227 magazines and journals, 29 TV shows, various radio programs, one Hollywood movie and one documentary film including the Studio’s works.

Click here to view the recorded lecture on YouTube.

Click here for more information about Jones Studio.

Cattle Track Arts Campus
7610 E McDonald Drive, Suite G
Scottsdale, AZ 85250
Mailing Address
8776 E Shea Blvd, #106-601
Scottsdale, AZ 85260
Speak with admissions
+1-480-750-4470
admissions@tsoa.edu
General Inquiries
+1-480-750-4470
info@tsoa.edu