This Saturday Kenneth Frampton celebrated his birthday by hosting a symposium at Avery Hall (Columbia). A day long event featuring lectures and discussions by five North American architects – most notable (to me) two Canadian offices: Shim + Sutcliffe and Patkau Architects. The list is rounded off by Rick Joy, Stanley Saitowitz and Steven Holl. The stamina required to endure an entire day in the stuffy basement auditorium of Avery Hall was beyond me, especially after last week’s reviews – a group of us however managed to find some aisle seats after sneaking in after Rick Joys talk. Being from Toronto I’ve seen Brigitte Shim lecture a number of times, being a professor at the University of Toronto. I’ve never however seen John or Patricia Patkau speak about their work, I was not disappointed. The work chosen spanned about three decades, of course their Strawberry Vale School was presented – and despite extensively studying it during my undergrad thesis I was still surprised. Steven Holl’s architecture of disobedience was also a great talk, although his constructed bad boy image was a little crowd pandering. Kenneth Frampton moderated the final discussion, peppering in some very personal anicdotes about himself and his friends.
