Austin: The Latest Architecture and News

Join The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture for a lecture with renowned artist and MacArthur Fellow Jorge Pardo, whose work explores the intersection of contemporary painting, design, sculpture, and architecture. The lecture will be followed by an on-stage conversation with Program Director for Interior Design, Igor Siddiqui. Free and open to the public.

Karel Klein is an architect and educator who has been working with various AI technologies since 2016. Her ongoing project is an investigation into crossbred image-objects produced using atypically trained GANs (generative adversarial networks) and their capacity for contemporary myth-making in architecture. In the same way that imaginative vocabulary and metaphoric style were primary, if literary instruments for the invention of new mythologies for the Surrealists, the strange and idiosyncratic qualities of images produced using AI are similarly a kind of matter metaphor-ed and made visible by the cyborg imagination. With these tools, Karel is interested in the re-enchantment of the architectural body—one that both foments and succumbs to sensual perceptions, and one that discovers new and unexpected relations to the world beyond the realm of the rational. Her work in this realm has been exhibited at the 2021 Venice Biennale; the FRAC Institute, Orleans, France; Des Lee Gallery, St. Louis; and SCI-Arc Gallery, Los Angeles. Recent essays in pursuit of this work include “Verto Pellis” in Offramp, issue 17; “Machines are Braver than Art” in “Rendering Fiction,” Paprika!, volume 7, issue 8; and “Machines À Rechercher,” in Log 55, summer 2022. Karel teaches currently at Washington University, University of Pennsylvania, UCLA, and the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc).

As the field of landscape architecture evolves to combat the issues of our time—climate change and just futures—how we practice matters. Through design research, experimental methods of design process and ideation, and provocative questioning, TEN x TEN challenges the normative environment of professional practice through process-oriented ways of working, engaging, and seeing landscape. Our agency as landscape architects to address the issues of our time is grounded in part by our ability to challenge the critical foundation of the design process itself and to practice modes of discovery as a generative act.

Addressing the crisis of housing, Lorcan O'Herlihy will present a number of projects that are tackling these important issues. 

Born in Toronto, Canada, Alex Josephson studied architecture at the University of Waterloo and in Rome. He co-founded PARTISANS in 2012 after dropping out of the Architectural Association School of Architecture (AA). Alex is the only Canadian to have received the New York Prize Fellowship at the Van Alen Institute, and he was named 2015 Best Emerging Designer by Canada’s Design Exchange. He currently lectures at the University of Toronto’s Daniels Faculty of Architecture. Alex is a registered architect in Ontario.

Michael Hsu Office of Architecture (MHOA) serves a broad audience, while specializing in materiality, detail, and design. The studio approaches everyday architecture and high design projects with a wide range of perspectives. In addition to offering architecture and interiors, the firm integrates branding, art curation, and landscape design services. This lecture will explore the firm's approach across a range of projects and will touch on the future plans of the studio, including our newly developed R&D team, established to ensure that we continue to push design forward. 

Tod Williams is a Founding Partner of Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects | Partners. Their practice is known for their humanistic approach to architecture primarily for institutional clients such as museums, schools, and nonprofits. Prioritizing experience above all, their designs choreograph light, texture, solidity, and a deep sensitivity to the places for which they’re built. While the work has grown in scale, the foundational principles of the practice remain intact: “to serve, to make good marks on the earth, to acknowledge the work comes from not just two hands, but many hands, and, fundamentally, architecture is an act of profound optimism.”

Join The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture for a lecture with Beate Hølmebakk, Institute of Architecture at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design, on Monday, November 9 at 12:30 p.m. at Goldsmith Hall (GOL 3.120). A recording will be available on the Texas Architecture YouTube channel following the live event.

Join The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture for a lecture with Rosetta S. Elkin Practice Landscape, Pratt Institute, on Monday, October 26th at 12:30 p.m. at Goldsmith Hall (GOL 3.120). A recording will be available on the Texas Architecture YouTube channel following the live event.

Join The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture for a lecture with J. Meejin Yoon and Eric Höweler, Höweler + Yoon, on Monday, October 3rd at 5:00 p.m. The event will be in person at the Jessen Auditorium.

Join The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture for a lecture with Liam Young, Tomorrow’s Thoughts Today, Unknown Fields, SCI-Arc, on Wednesday September 21st at 5:00 p.m. at Goldsmith Hall (GOL 3.120). The event is in person and a recording will be available on the Texas Architecture YouTube channel following the live event.