Each semester UWM’s School of Architecture and Urban Planning (SARUP) hosts a series of weekly lectures for the benefit of its students and the public, introducing them to both exciting national firms and occasional developments abroad.
On Friday they host "Disciplinary Transgressions" a lecture by Monica Ponce de Leon featuring selected works by the Boston-based firm Office DA of which she is one of the principals.
Of the SARUP lectures I’ve attended I’ve invariably come away with, if not always a great love for the work presented, a new addition to the vocabulary in which we can talk about architecture in our own city. The purpose of Ponce De Leon’s lecture appears to be to expand that vocabulary yet further to reflect the manner in which architects today, in order to survive in the exploits of massive developers and the public’s cheapened standards, must diversify their range of services and applications. I suppose its not just a matter of survival – perhaps it’s a return to true form, to an age preceding the current separation of the architects role as designer and master builder. One of Office Da’s purported roles is to do just that, and you can see it in their approach to the various projects they’ve completed nationally and as far a field as Korea, China and Sweden. You can see them do what some local firms like La Dallman are doing but to more intense pitch – experimenting with new materials and technology in order to create new forms like the Voromuro – an undulating sculpture installation made as part of an exhibition in Fort Warren, Boston, made of translucent acrylic panels and based on a mathematic model – while at other times creating elemental forms of traditional materials like brick as in the Tongxian Arts Center in Beijing.
Given the variety their work displays this should be a lecture worth attending. It takes place on Friday at 4:30 p.m. in Room 170 of the SARUP building (2131 E. Hartford Ave.)
