Women in the Built World Symposium: The Men's Perspective

The third annual Women in the Built World Symposium was held this past February in Chicago, and was better than ever. Among the panels were lectures on terra cotta restoration, roofing best practices, the renovations in the Old Post Office, and panels on advocacy and women in construction. One of the more encouraging panels was The Men's Perspective, a panel discussion among principals and presidents of an architecture firm, an engineering firm, and two construction firms. "But wait," you ask, "I thought this event was Women in the Built World - why do we need to hear from more men?"

Monica Ponce de Leon at the Art Institute

The Art Institute of Chicago, with co-sponsorship by Chicago Women in Architecture, recently hosted Monica Ponce de Leon for a lecture to discuss her work and her approach toward architecture, particularly with respect to digital fabrication. Ponce de Leon took us through a sample of her body of work with particular focus on materiality and experimentation. This is an ongoing theme in her work that extends across the built spectrum from art installation to sculpture to building and back again.  What particularly captured my imagination was the idea of digital fabrication as a natural evolution and extension of hand craft, and the notion that architectural design can be an act of discovery through the exploration of materials.

Community and Diversity: A Dialogue

In response to this article at Atlantic Cities called "The Paradox of Diverse Communities", my fellow editor-architect onymously and I had a discussion/hashing out of ideas/questioning session via email that I think really helps illustrate the architect's lens of seeing the world.