Duo Dickinson, AIA, NCARB, CORACenterbrook Architects Lecture Series 2011 - 2012
Click here for directions to Essex Meadows.
Duo Dickinson, AIA, NCARB, CORA
Friday, December 2nd at 7 p.m. in the Essex Meadows auditorium, 30 Bokum Rd, Essex, CT
Our fourth year of the beloved Centerbrook Architects Lecture Series kicks off with a talk by Connecticut author and architect Duo Dickinson, who’ll speak about his new book, Staying Put: Remodel Your House to Get the Home You Want. In this era of staying put, the idea of remodeling is ever more attractive. Duo will share his passion for saving money without sacrificing good design, and show examples of his design philosophy as it was explained by the New York Times: “Design it small, make it as beautiful as possible, and practice every trick in the book to keep it as cheap as possible”. Pilar Viladas with the New York Times writes, "These pages are crammed with good advice (avoid gutters at all costs; add wide eaves instead) and realistic assessments of the way we live now."
Click here to see the video of Duo Dickinson's talk.
Joeb Moore, AIA - "House, Form and Culture"
Friday, February 3rd at 7 p.m. in the Essex Meadows auditorium, 30 Bokum Rd, Essex, CT
In architecture, designing houses is a proving ground. It is often the place where the best young architectural talent has the opportunity to push the art of architecture forward. Frank Gehry, and Frank Lloyd Wright, for that matter, started their careers by designing houses that changed the way we think about home. For adventuresome clients, their house is an opportunity to try something new. To be sure, everyone wants their home to be functional and comfortable – but we also aspire to something special.
Connecticut is lucky to have Joeb Moore. He has provided a decade of inspiration in how to design comfortable houses that also inspire us about what is possible. He is a perennial favorite in the Connecticut AIA design awards because even if you don’t want the house for yourself (it was not designed for you anyway) you are inspired by how interesting and beautifully crafted it is. Joeb will discuss how these houses were designed and built and will inspire us to think about our homes in a different way.
Mr. Moore is principal of Joeb Moore + Partners, Architects, an
architecture and design firm in Greenwich, Connecticut. Mr. Moore received his B.A. and M. Arch. degrees from Clemson University. He is the
recipient of more than twenty-five AIA New England, AIA CT, and AIA NY
Design Awards since founding his practice in 1993. Recent awards include
a 2010 AIA National Residential Honor Award; 2009 North American WOOD
Design Award; 2009 AIA New England First Honor Award; and “2009—Best of
the Year” Merit Award, Interior Design.
Before joining the Yale faculty
in 2007, Mr. Moore taught at Catholic University and Columbia
University. From 1996 to 2006 he was the assistant director of the
Barnard/Columbia Undergraduate Architecture Department. His background
is in the history and theory of aesthetics and systems of representation
in architecture. He has lectured and exhibited widely on his work and
research, which currently is focused on the history of the suburban
house and the legacy of the “Harvard Five” and the American mid-century
“Good Life” residential house and program.
Antoni Gaudi with Dr. Chuck Benson
Friday, February 24th at 7 p.m. in the Essex Town Hall
Dr. Benson has been teaching Art and Architectural History for more than twenty five years at various universities and colleges across the United States, and has led groups to explore and visit a variety of sites to Italy, England, Scotland, France, Spain, Austria, Germany, Greece and Turkey. He also has led art and architecture trips to New York City, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles.
His lecture credits include the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, MOMA, the Whitney Museum, the Getty in Los Angeles, the Art Institute in Chicago, and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. He studied the history of art and architecture at Yale as an undergraduate, and holds advanced degrees from Columbia University. He also has studied at Cambridge and Oxford, as well as the University of Goettingen in Germany.
Dr. Benson currently serves as the Director of Colorado Operations, and Head of Design for a Group that specializes in the architecture and engineering of Satellite Operations Centers and Mission Control Stations. He currently teaches as an Adjunct Professor at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, and has taught at the Colorado College and the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center. Our Essex Library audiences have enjoyed his lectures on Edward Lutyens and Gian Loernzo Bernini.
Landscape Designer Louis Raymond -
“Plays well with Plants: A Gardener’s Garden of a Lifetime, Fifteen Years & Counting”
Friday, March 23rd, at 7 p.m. in the Essex Town Hall
Raymond is a garden and landscape designer with clients nationwide; his own riotous garden in Hopkinton, Rhode Island will be the subject of an upcoming book. His exuberant designs have been widely published, including in House & Garden Magazine (on the cover), Metropolitan Home, and Design New England. In “Plays Well With Plants,” he’ll talk candidly about his garden’s successes and failures, and how his design philosophy has guided its creation. Overall, he is pleased with the fruits of his own labor: “So far, so good: The red borders actually do look red, sometimes triumphantly. The Belgian fence – of beeches, not fruit trees – is filling out its frame. Two of the pergolas are built and largely canopied. The double-ball topiary of hardy orange is the biggest and baddest on the continent. The Southern magnolias, so rare this far north, are almost as high as the roof.”
Raymond has been gardening for over 50 years, ever since, as a pre-schooler, he “borrowed” a number of geraniums from public gardens across the street from the family home. While he has always had a fondness for plants and gardening, Raymond took the scenic route to his current vocation. By the time he was 25, he had already earned baccalaureate degrees in chemistry, piano, and voice – and still found time for a couple of years of medical school along the way – before launching successful careers as an opera singer and a freelance writer. By 30, he had retired from both to take up the trowel fulltime.
For more information on Louis Raymond, visit www.RGardening.com or www.LouisThePlantGeek.com.
Carol Bentel, FAIA, - "The 3 D's: Design - Dream - Dine"
Friday, April 27th at 7 p.m., in the Essex Town Hall
Carol Bentel was born in St. Louis in 1957. She received her undergraduate degree in architecture at Washington University and her graduate degree in architecture at North Carolina State University. Prior to receiving her post graduate education in the history and theory of modern architecture at the Modern architecture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Venice (Italy). She is a fellow of the American Academy in Rome. She has taught at Harvard, MIT, Georgia Tech, and the Architectural Association in London. She has delivered lectures at Harvard, MIT, Yale, and the Centro Palladio in Vicenza (Italy).
Bentel & Bentel has received both international and national recognition including the recent induction of all the partners in the Hospitality Design Hall Of Fame in 2007. Their projects have garnered numerous awards for design excellence including the American Institute of Architects Awardfor Interior Design and the James Beard Award for Best Restaurant Design. Their restaurant projects include designing The Modern, located in New York's Museum of Modern Art, Craftsteak and Craft, as well as Eleven Madison Park--all in New York City.
Thomas Howorth, FAIA
May, 2012
In 1986, Tom Howorth moved from New Orleans to Jackson, Mississippi to form the partnership of Mockbee•Coker•Howorth Architects, a firm that won immediate critical recognition, such as a prestigious P/A First Award for architectural design from Progressive Architecture, and inclusion in the Domino’s Top 30 list of the world’s best architects. The firm also collaborated with other firms to win and successfully execute a number of multi-million dollar commissions.
In 1990, Mr. Howorth left that partnership to form Howorth & Associates Architects, providing architectural and interior design services for a wide variety of clients—governmental, corporate, not-for-profit, and private individuals—who consider their buildings investments rather than expenses.
Centerbrook Architects Lecture Series 2010 - 2011
Beverly Willis, FAIAPioneering female architect Beverly Willis kicks off the annual Centerbrook Architects Lecture Series with a talk and screening of "A Girl Is A Fellow Here" ~ 100 Women Architects in the Studio of Frank Lloyd Wright
A 15-minute film produced by the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation.
At a time when few architectural firms would hire women, Frank Lloyd Wright unhesitatingly employed women, giving them both training and the opportunity to practice. Ultimately, over 100 women architects and designers worked with Wright, many of them going on to remarkable careers of their own. In his studio in Oak Park and at both Taliesin Fellowships, Wright trained and practiced with women as draftsmen, designers, and fellow visionaries. "A Girl Is A Fellow Here": 100 Women Architects in the Studio of Frank Lloyd Wright focuses on six of those women – Marion Mahony, Isabel Roberts, Lois Gottlieb, Jane Duncombe, Eleanore Pettersen, and Read Weber. Through their work and their own words, they reveal what they gleaned from Wright and where they departed from his model. Who they were, how they came to architecture, what they learned from The Master, and where their careers ultimately took them emerge from filmed and audio interviews...and their own architecture. Under Wright’s guidance, from Oak Park to the Arizona Taliesin, they learned their craft and honed their ideas; they split wood and laid shingles; they dreamed and drew and designed. After they left Wright’s studio, they created thousands of projects across the country. Houses and hospitals, churches and libraries, theaters and wineries: from California to Florida, their architecture endures. They are Frank Lloyd Wright’s unknown legacy, and their practice forms a legacy for all women working in architecture today.
Beverly Willis, FAIA, is
President of the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation, which she
founded in 2002, following a 50-year career in architectural and design
practice, beginning as a multi-media artist. Among the award-winning
architecture projects in her extensive portfolio are the Union Street
Stores (1965), the Margaret Hayward Park Building (1978), and the San
Francisco Ballet Building (1983). She holds a fine arts degree from
the University of Hawaii and an honorary doctorate from Mt. Holyoke
College. Her art has been exhibited at the Cooper Hewitt Museum and
Honolulu Academy of Art. She authored Invisible Images—The Silent Language of Architecture, published in 1997 by the National Building Museum. She wrote and directed a short documentary film – A Girl is a Fellow Here” 100 Women in Frank Lloyd Wright’s Studio.
Presently, she lectures or participates in programs at universities,
such as Harvard, Notre Dame and University of Hawaii. The Beverly
Willis Architecture Foundation promotes research and public
understanding of women’s contributions to the fields of architectural
and environmental engineering, landscape design, the building arts,
urban planning and historic preservation, as well as architectural
history and criticism.
Nobel Laureate Dr. James Watson and William Grover, FAIA, Partner Emeritus of Centerbrook Architects.
Thursday, November 11th at 7 p.m., in the Essex Meadows auditorium, 30 Bokum Rd. Essex, CT
Click here for directions to Essex Meadows.
We are privileged to present “Making a Village for Science,” an overview of their collaboration at the renowned Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island.
The determination by James Watson and Francis Crick in 1953 that DNA is shaped like a double helix, or a gently twisting ladder, ranks among the greatest discoveries of the 20th century. Dr. Watson, who was 25 at the time, would go on to other important discoveries, to serve as Director of the Human Genome Project, to teach at Harvard, to write eight books, and to guide Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory into the forefront of research institutions as its Director from 1968 to 1994, and afterwards as President and Chancellor until 2007. He is now Chancellor Emeritus and an avid tennis player.
A
founding partner of Centerbrook Architects, William Grover worked on 25
building projects at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory from 1973 to 2007,
including the Watson School of Biological Sciences and the new Hillside
Research Campus. His body of work has garnered 45 design awards and
been widely published, in The New York Times, Architecture Digest, Life Magazine, and elsewhere. Now Partner Emeritus, Mr. Grover also was a visiting critic in architectural design at Yale University.
Click here to see Centerbrook Architects' video of the talk.
Dr. Victor Deupi presents “The Architecture of Andrea Palladio”
Friday, January 14th, 2011 at 7 p.m. in the Essex Meadows auditorium, 30 Bokum Rd. Essex, CT
Victor Deupi, architectural designer, teacher, and writer, presents “The Architecture of Andrea Palladio,” the 16th century Venetian who is widely considered the single most influential figure in all of Western architecture. Buildings from the United States Capitol to Monticello pay homage to his classic designs.
Dr. Deupi earned his Masters degree and Ph.D. in architecture from Yale and the University of Pennsylvania respectively and his teaching credits include Notre Dame and the Prince of Wales Institute of Architecture in London. He also is an active practitioner and design consultant, most recently with Pier Carlo Bontempi of Italy, and has written extensively about New Urbanism and the humanities underpinning classic tradition. Dr. Deupi is a watercolorist whose work has been exhibited here and abroad.
Dariel Cobb Presents “Inspiration and Authorship in the New Millennium”
Friday, February 18th, 2011 at 7 p.m. in the Essex Meadows auditorium, 30 Bokum Rd. Essex, CT
Dariel Cobb, an assistant professor of architecture at the University of Hartford, examines the role of creativity in architecture. Ms. Cobb studied architecture as an undergraduate at Berkeley and received her Masters degree in architecture from the Yale School of Architecture, where she has also taught. Ms. Cobb, who also runs a graphic design studio, teaches architectural design and advanced design theory to graduate and undergraduate students. Her professional experience includes working for Robert A.M. Stern Architects in New York and with Arquitectonica as a designer and project manager. Previously, she was the Assistant Director of the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation, which works to expand knowledge about the history of women in architecture. For more on Ms. Cobb, check out her thought-provoking blog.
Louis Raymond Landscape Designer Presents "Putting Everything in Perspective: Formality in Your Garden"
Friday, March 18th, 2011 at 7 p.m. in the Essex Meadows auditorium, 30 Bokum Rd. Essex, CT
Louis’ academic studies and artistic talents have yielded three baccalaureate degrees (in Chemistry, Voice and Piano), several years of medical studies at the University of Pittsburgh, a flourishing career as an opera and concert singer, and frequent assignments as a free-lance writer for New York glossies. Of course Louis Raymond loves plants. He's a garden designer. For six years, he was the designer for the annual New England Spring Flower Show, and his firm, Renaissance Gardening, creates showstopping landscapes for residential and corporate clients.
In American landscape design at the dawn of the new millennium, "formality" is as slippery a concept as "wildflower," let alone the ultimate nebulosity, the "English" garden. Some people will pronounce any garden with so much as a clipped hedge "formal," while others need a hefty dose of symmetry, expense, smartly-defined rectangles and pretension to set off their own particular Formality Alarm. We don’t question why Formality Alarms should exist at all, and why we should avoid setting them off.
It’s always revealing to try to fathom why anything at all goes in or out of fashion, be it shoulder pads or salpiglossis, cigarettes or cannas. The current American allergy to landscape formalism is all the more interesting, however, because the rest of the known gardening world thinks formalism (however it’s defined) is truly swell, as did most Americans themselves for much of our history. With the exception of Japanese and most current American design, the wider world notion is that if one perennial border is good, a perfect pair (or even an entire perennial parterre) is that much better.
In "Putting Everything in Perspective," Louis dissects some of America’s jitters that keep formality out of our landscapes and lives. After all, we don’t garden in a vacuum: there’s a lot of culture in horticulture. Pressures as diverse as native plant societies, the Arbor Day Foundation, advancing lawn-mower technology, anti-elitism and snobbism, automobile culture, sex roles and the prevalence of the putatively anti-city and pro-informality suburban life have all contributed to our Formality Phobia.
To see the video of this talk, click here.
Bill Grover, FAIA, Centerbrook Architects Partner Emeritus, Presents"Color In Architecture"
Friday, April 1, 2011 at 7 p.m. in the Essex Meadows auditorium, 30 Bokum Rd. Essex, CT.
Since 1973 Mr. Grover has designed more than 45 projects at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York under the directorship of Nobel Laureate Dr. James D. Watson. Over the years the Laboratory’s historic buildings have been adapted to meet the requirements of biomedical research while new buildings have been carefully inserted on campus. Mr. Grover has also been the architect for houses, academic buildings, and research and teaching laboratories for clients such as the Institute of Ecosystem Studies, Neurogen, Alexion, Vion, Dekalb, and Phillips Exeter Academy. In addition to architecture he also practices at painting watercolors, sailboat racing, and playing jazz on the cornet.
To see the video of this talk please click here.
Dr. Chuck Benson, Art & Architecture Historian
Friday, April 22, 2011 at 7 p.m. in the Essex Meadows auditorium, 30 Bokum Rd. Essex, CT
Professor Chuck Benson will explore
the work of Gian Lorenzo Bernini – the leading figure in Roman Baroque
architecture and art. Dr. Benson's talk includes a humorous look at some
of Bernini’s sculpture that is often bawdy and hidden from casual
observation. “Gian Lorenzo Bernini was one of the greatest of Roman Baroque artists, architects, and certainly sculptors,” Dr. Benson says. “It could be argued that his mastery of marble even exceeded that of his esteemed predecessor of the High Renaissance, Michelangelo. Without question, Bernini exploded on the art scene of the 1600’s in Rome as a luminous, transcendent talent.”
Dr. Benson has been teaching Art and Architectural History for more than twenty five years at various universities and colleges across the United States, and has led groups to explore and visit a variety of sites to Italy, England, Scotland, France, Spain, Austria, Germany, Greece and Turkey. He also has led art and architecture trips to New York City, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles.
His lecture credits include the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, MOMA, the Whitney Museum, the Getty in Los Angeles, the Art Institute in Chicago, and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. He studied the history of art and architecture at Yale as an undergraduate, and holds advanced degrees from Columbia University. He also has studied at Cambridge and Oxford, as well as the University of Goettingen in Germany.
Dr. Benson currently serves as the Director of Colorado Operations, and Head of Design for a Group that specializes in the architecture and engineering of Satellite Operations Centers and Mission Control Stations. He currently teaches as an Adjunct Professor at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, and has taught at the Colorado College and the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center.
To see the video of this talk please click here.
Rafael Pelli, AIA, Partner, Pelli, Clark, Pelli Presents
"It's Not Easy Being Green; Interesting Environmental Issues In Architecture From Around The World"
Friday, May 20, 2011 at 7 p.m. in the Essex Meadows auditorium, 30 Bokum Rd. Essex, CT.
Rafael Pelli is the Partner directing the Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects New York office, established in 2000. Since that time, he has directed the design for several of the firm’s New York projects. These include Bloomberg Tower, a 1.4 million-square-foot, mixed-use high-rise in Midtown that contains the new headquarters for Bloomberg L.P. and the residential condominiums One Beacon Court. Mr. Pelli was the designer of the reconstruction of the World Financial Center, and the lead designer for a new U.S. Federal Courthouse in Brooklyn. He was also the designer for three high-rise apartment buildings in Battery Park City: the Solaire, the Verdesian and the Visionaire. The three buildings have achieved significant milestones in sustainable design.
To see the video of this talk please click here.
David Greenbaum, FAIA, Vice President,
SmithGroup Presents "The Normandy American Cemetery Visitor Center Overlooking Omaha Beach"
Friday, June 3, 2011 at 7 p.m. in the Essex Meadows auditorium, 30 Bokum Rd. Essex, CT.
Click here for directions to Essex Meadows.
David B. Greenbaum is the leader of SmithGroup's Cultural practice. Driven by site and client mission, his work applies his philosophy of amplifying an institution's mission by creating powerful and memorable places. This has been most recently exemplified with the design of the Normandy American Cemetery Visitors Center, The International Spy Museum, and the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden Pavilion renovation.
Winning awards before it opened, this solemn yet powerful visitor center reverently encourages focus on the memorial cemetery it serves, deepening the tribute to those who served in World War II. With great dignity, the center draws visitors beyond the beach views and the cemetery's monumental axis to consider the landscape, sky and ocean. Its compact, deferent design offers cemetery views to reinforce its connection. Upon leaving, visitors are returned to that place of recognition and honor.
To see the video of this talk, please click here.