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This illustrated lecture traces the life and work of Sydney architect Harry Seidler (1923-2006), his key role in bringing Modernism and Bauhaus principles to Australia, identifies his distinctive hand, and explores long-lasting creative collaborations with leading visionaries of the 20th century, including with architects Marcel Breuer and Oscar Niemeyer; artists Josef Albers, Alexander Calder, Norman Carlberg, Charles Perry, Frank Stella, and Lin Utzon; engineer Pier Luigi Nervi, photographer Max Dupain, and developer Dick Dusseldorp, founder of Lend Lease Corporation. In almost sixty years, Seidler has realized over 120 of his designs—from houses to mixed-use multi-story towers and prominent government commissions—all over Australia, as well as in Austria, France, Israel, Italy, Mexico, and Hong Kong.
Apart from the architect’s creative achievements, the lecture will reveal a story of Seidler’s life, a fascinating journey from his motherland of Austria to England, Canada, the United States, Brazil, and finally, to Australia, where he settled in 1948, eventually becoming the country’s most accomplished architect. Among projects to be discussed: Rose Seidler House (1950), Harry and Penelope Seidler House (1967), and Australia Square (1967) in Sydney; Edmund Barton Building (Canberra, 1974), Australian Embassy (Paris, 1977), Hong Kong Club (HK, 1984), Shell Headquarters (Melbourne, 1989) and residential complex Wohnpark Neue Donau (Vienna, 1998).
John Hong, AIA LEED AP, introduces the recent work of his firm SsD through the rubric of ‘Psychedelic Architecture.’ By reflecting on the radical social shifts of the 1960's and early 1970's he draws uncanny parallels with the environmental and cultural changes taking place today. Where Metabolist and Situationist architecture of the '60's offered alternative forms of practice and discourse however, Hong calls for a current and more deeply engaged look at form and allegory (as opposed to form and function), that meets the global challenges of today.
"In this talk I will examine the idea of historical practices such as reconstruction, archiving, reenactment, and counter factual history (among others) within the context of architecture and landscape. Rather than simply forms of historical realism, I see these practices as possible techniques of agitation, speculation, and provocation in contemporary architectural practice. I'll briefly examine these practices in a few iconic examples from the history of architecture. Following this, I’ll discuss ideas of historical practices through a series of my own projects. My own work tends to further entangle the above forms of historical practice with socio-natural themes, the history of degraded environments, the history of urban radicalism, and the concerns of a future, liberatory mode of subjectivity."
Dean's Forum Lecture, Campbell Hall
Dr. Stephen Kellert spoke to participants at the Biophilic Cities Launch about the ethical and value changes that need to occur to achieve biophilic design in cities. He argued for a theory of cities (using his own city of New Haven as an example) that explains location, livability and future thriving based on natural features and conditions.
Dr. Jennifer Wolch, Dean of the College of Environmental Design at the University of California, Berkeley speaks about the tensions of implementing urban nature projects. Wolch challenges us to think carefully about the many different and often marginalized interests (people and animals) that must be taken into account, and the potential “collisions” she sees in the movement.
What would it mean to name pain not as alien to human existence but as one of the defining conditions of being human? In this presentation, three experts--in disability studies, bioethics, and the cultural study of pain and pain medicine--consider our complicated attitudes toward pain, especially as we regard it in others.
A John F. Anderson Memorial Lecture
Emily Levine does for science what Jon Stewart does for news: she critiques it, she makes it relevant, she makes it funny. She brings her experiences as a patient in search of a diagnosis and a curative path to physical health and notes that in order to regain metaphysical health, she had to enter a universe of randomness, uncertainty, and turbulence. She reasons that only quantum physics and chaos theory can make sense of this new universe, and possibly of medicine today.
A John F. Anderson Memorial Lecture
Viewing women through an androcentric lens, Western medicine from Hippocrates and Galen forward explained women's behavior from headache to "troublemaking" as unhealthful signs of "hysteria," a suffocating madness believed due to a wandering womb. Centuries, even millennia before Freud asked, "What do women really want?" medical men assumed they knew what women with hysteria needed, and that remedy was pelvic massage to "paroxysm." By the late nineteenth century, with manufacture of electrified massage instruments, doctors could deliver said therapy more quickly and efficiently. This medical treatment, the Victorian social milieu in which it was prevalent (and popular), and (mis)understandings of female sexuality, intimacy, and inequality are the subjects of young American playwright Sarah Ruhl's comedy, In the Next Room or The Vibrator Play (2010). This Medical Center Hour's panelists explore a rich mix of ideas having to do with women, medicine, and The Vibrator Play.
Offered in conjunction with LiveArts' production of "In the Next Room or The Vibrator Play", 1-23 March
With health care reform on the near horizon and other social realities (aging, immigration, chronic conditions, quests for prevention and wellness) dramatically changing health care in the U.S., what kinds of doctors will our health care system (and its patients) require? Clearly, not just medical school curricula but also the selection process for medical students will be key determinants of whether we have physicians fully prepared to practice as the 21st century progresses. This Medical center hour addresses transformational changes underway in the pre-professional preparation and selection of the nation's medical students, including a new version of the MCAT exam, which goes "live" in 2015. What does this new MCAT signal for premedical students as they prepare for medical school? How might colleges and universities offer their premedical students academic experiences that will better equip them for medical school and medical practice in the 21st century?
Co-presented with the Institute for the Humanities and Global Cultures, UVa
A John F. Anderson Memorial Lecture
We hear almost daily about the rapidly increasing rate of type 2 diabetes in the U.S. population. Many pronouncements are dire, proclaiming an "epidemic," and most make it sound as though this problem is relatively new-just three or four decades old. Yet almost 100 years ago a small group of U.S. health care professionals was already warning that diabetes was "a public health problem," fated to become worse if nothing was done soon. But what did they mean by this? Why had they grown concerned? And what measures did they recommend to try and reverse the upward trend in diabetes rates? In this Medical Center Hour, historian Arleen Tuchman asks what we can learn from history that might help us understand better how we are framing the diabetes "crisis" today, and why. How do cultural assumptions about diabetes, and about the particular populations believed to be most at risk, influence not only our understanding of this disease but also our efforts to gain control over it?
Co-presented with the History of the Health Sciences Lecture Series