Critical Encounters

Some of the most provocative ideas in architecture have been expressed through drawing, as explored in the RISD Museum's new exhibition Drawing Ambience: Alvin Boyarsky and the Architectural Association.
Architectural drawing can be an activity where concepts are discovered, explored, and experienced—and through which the discipline can be expanded. This was the role of drawing at the Architectural Association during Alvin Boyarsky's remarkable tenure as chairman, and it is the role that will be examined in an afternoon of gallery conversations with architects, academics, students, and the exhibition's curators.
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1 pm: Introduction - Jan Howard and Igor Marjanović
co-curators of Drawing Ambience
1:15 - 2:45 pm: Drawing as Architecture
Galley conversations with:
Michael Webb, Friedrich St.Florian, and Chris Bardt
Perry Kulper, Carl Lostritto, and Beau Johnson
Heather Woofter, Kyna Leski, and Sarah Rovang
3-4 pm: Drawing Futures
Introduction - Pari Riahi
Presentations by:
Heather Woofter and Igor Marjanović
Perry Kulper
Michael Webb
Wrap Up - Chris Bardt and Jan Howard
Speakers:
Chris Bardt is co-founder (with Kyna Leski) of 3sixØ Architecture, which was named one of 10 leading vanguard firms worldwide by Architectural Record in 2002. He has over 25 years of experience as an architect and professor of architecture at RISD. His professional work includes furniture design, residential, commercial, and institutional commissions and planning studies. His academic research has concentrated on sun geometry, projection drawing, and material centered pedagogy. He has also been a visiting professor at Cornell University, the National Academy of Design and Art, Slovakia, and the China Academy of Art. He holds a bachelor of Architecture from RISD and a Master's of Architecture from Harvard University.
Jan Howard is the co-curator of Drawing Ambience and chief curator and Houghton P. Metcalf Jr. Curator of Prints, Drawings and Photographs at the RISD Museum. Prior to her arrival at RISD, she was the curator in the department of prints, drawings and photographs at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Many of her exhibitions and publications focus on modern and contemporary art including America in View: Landscape Photography 1865 to Now, 2012; Made in the UK: Contemporary Art from the Richard Brown Baker Collection, 2011; Pat Steir: Drawing Out of Line, 2010; Interior Drama: Aaron Siskind's Photographs of the 1940s, 2003. She holds a BA and MA from the University of Kansas.
Beau Johnson holds a bachelor's degree in Landscape Architecture from Iowa State University along with a Master's degree in Architecture from RISD. During his graduate assistantship with the RISD Museum he researched Drawing Ambience and contributed to the catalogue. His experience crosses between the disciplines of architecture, master planning, and landscape design. Prior to his time at RISD, Beau practiced professionally in London, for Foster + Partners, where he was first exposed to the AA's exhibition and lecture forum. In 2012, Beau attended the AA Visiting School, entitled Visioning Architecture, a course which investigated the intersection of analogue and digital drawing as a pedagogical means of exploration. His time at the AA was facilitated by a RISD Graduate Studies grant which, in conjunction with Drawing Ambience, considered the role of drawing within the educational lens along with the past and present academic environment at the Architectural Association.
Perry Kulper is an architect and associate professor of architecture at the University of Michigan. Prior to his arrival at the Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning he was a SCI-Arc faculty member for 17 years and held visiting teaching positions at the University of Pennsylvania and Arizona State University. Subsequent to his studies at Columbia University (M Arch) he worked in the offices of Eisenman/ Robertson, Robert A.M. Stern and Venturi, Rauch and Scott Brown before moving to Los Angeles. He works on the generative potential of representation and spatial visualizations, on the capacities of diverse design methods in the production of architecture, and in broadening the conceptual range by which architecture contributes to our cultural imagination.
Carl Lostritto is an assistant professor of architecture at RISD. He both teaches and conducts research in the area of computational design, with an emphasis on drawing and media within the discipline of architecture. He practices as both an artist and designer and he regularly exhibits drawings and conceptual work of architecture. He co-founded the RISD Code Studio, an interdisciplinary group of faculty and students devoted to the craft of computer programming in an art/design context. He earned architecture and design+computation degrees from University of Maryland and MIT.
Kyna Leski has invested her life in navigating the creative process. She has done this through her teaching as a professor of Architecture at RISD, her design work as a founding principal of 3six0 Architecture, and her practices as an artist, aspiring/practicing actor, and writer. She has spoken about the creative process throughout the U.S. and abroad and gave a main stage presentation at PopTech in 2009. She recently finished writing and illustrating a book, The Storm of Creativity, that will be published by MIT Press this fall. She is an avid rower who can be found most mornings before dawn on the Seekonk River and in Narragansett Bay in Providence.  
Igor Marjanović is the co-curator of Drawing Ambience and chair of undergraduate architecture programs at Washington University in St. Louis. His writings on the cultural agency of architectural pedagogy — and on Alvin Boyarsky's contributions in particular — appeared in numerous anthologies and journals. Trained both as an architect and architectural historian, he also earned a national education award in 2009 from the American Institute of Architects for his Florence studio and inventive use of drawing and printmaking in design teaching.
Pari Riahi is a part-time faculty at Rhode Island School of Design, where she has been teaching since 2007 in multiple capacities in the Architecture and INTAR (interior architecture and adaptive reuse) Departments. She has also taught at MIT and SUNY Buffalo. She completed her PhD dissertation at McGill University in 2010 in History and Theory of Architecture. Her thesis, which has been published as a book, titled: "Ars et ingenium: The embodiment of imagination in the architectural drawings of Francesco di Giorgio," investigates the reciprocity of drawings and imagination in Francesco di Giorgio's treatises on architecture. Her current research tracks the propagation of digital media and the effect of new technologies on architectural thinking and practice. She is a registered architect and founded her architectural office in Massachusetts in 2011.
Sarah Rovang is a fifth-year PhD candidate in the History of Art & Architecture at Brown University. Her dissertation explores the intersection of electricity, architecture, and the rural landscape in the United States during the New Deal and World War II. With a background in both studio architecture and architectural history, she was invited in 2013 to join the Prints, Drawings, and Photographs Department as a research assistant and catalog contributor for Drawing Ambience.
Friedrich St.Florian received his master's degree in Architecture from the Technische Universidad in Graz, Austria and a Master of Science Degree in Architecture from Columbia University in New York. He has been a licensed in the US since 1974. Friedrich is the founding principal of Friedrich St.Florian Architects located in Providence, Rhode Island. He has won numerous awards for his architectural achievements, and his work is distinguished by his landmark theoretical work followed by critically acclaimed residences in southern New England. The World War II Memorial in Washington, DC is the firm's most visible work to date. He is a fellow of both the American Institute of Architects and of the American Academy in Rome. His drawings are in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York along with the Georges Pompidou Centre in Paris. He has served as a chief critic of the European honors program and a dean of Architecture here at RISD.
Michael Webb is a currently a professor at The Cooper Union. In the past he has taught at Columbia University, RISD, and other schools. Originally from Henley-on-Thames, England, he studied architecture in London. In his fourth year of studies, he designed a project which found its way into the exhibition at MoMA New York in 1962 entitled "Visionary Architecture." In 1963, Webb joined the Archigram Group, a conglomeration of six young architects who rebelled against the then prevalent architectural scene. An exhibition of the group's work toured the world for eleven years; starting in Vienna, traveling to New York in 1998, Seoul, South Korea in 2003 and London in 2004. In 1965, Webb came back to the US and has taught architecture ever since. He is the recipient of grants from the New York State Council of the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts. He is currently writing a book on his projects thanks to a Graham Foundation grant.
Heather Woofter is a professor and chair of Graduate Architecture in the School of Architecture & Urban Design at Washington University in St. Louis, with 18 years of teaching experience. Heather has received her BArch from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and her MArch from Harvard University. She is a registered architect in the commonwealth of both Pennsylvania and Missouri and has taught at the Boston Architectural College, Roger Williams University, and Virginia Tech. She is also director of Axi:Ome llc of St. Louis with Sung Ho Kim; their practice has received both national and international design awards for Industrial Design, Master Planning, and Architecture.