Two internationally recognized architects will present their work early this month as part of the School of Architecture’s Monday Night Lecture Series.
Rafael Pelli, principal of Caesar Pelli & Associates in New York and a member of the U.S. Green Building Council, will speak on “Whole Buildings: Current Works With Sustainable Design” at 6 p.m. today in Kemp Auditorium in Givens Hall.
And Nasrine Seraji, chair of the Department of Architecture at Cornell University, will speak on “Thinking Matters of Architecture” at 6 p.m. April 7 in Steinberg Auditorium in Steinberg Hall.
Pelli has been a principal with Pelli & Associates since 1994 and has led the firm’s New York office since its establishment in 2000. Current projects include a 252-unit apartment building in Battery Park City, the first designed under new environmental design guidelines developed by the Battery Park City Authority and believed to be the first “green” high-rise residential building in the United States.
Other recent projects include the 136,000-square-foot Gerald Ratner Athletics Center at the University of Chicago; a master plan for the new campus of the Universidad Siglo 21 in Córdoba, Argentina; and a 1.6 million-square-foot mixed-use building in midtown Manhattan that will contain the headquarters of Bloomberg LP as well as housing and retail.
Pelli has lectured widely about sustainable building design since joining the U.S. Green Building Council in 1996. He has served as guest critic at Yale University, the University of Cincinnati, the Parsons School of Design in New York and the Southern California Institute for Architecture.
Articles about Pelli & Associates’ work have appeared in Metropolis, Wired, Grid, Sustainable Building and Designer/Builder magazines.
Pelli earned a bachelor’s degree from Yale in 1978 and a master of architecture degree in 1985 from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.
Seraji was born Tehran, Iran, in 1957 and earned a diploma from the Architectural Association (AA) School in London in 1983. In 1988, she settled in Paris, where she initially taught in the University of Toronto’s Study Abroad Program but soon founded her own studio, Atelier Seraji.
In 1991, she designed the Temporary American Cultural Centre in Paris, a building constructed entirely of prefab elements. It was dismantled in 1993, before the inauguration of Frank Gehry’s permanent center.
Other major projects include the Pavilion of the Caverne du Dragon in Chemin des Dames in Aisne, France (1996-98), commemorating one of the most famous battle sites of World War I, and housing complexes in Paris and Vienna.
Seraji’s work has been widely exhibited, at the Galerie d’Architecture in Paris, the Royal Insti-tute of British Architects in London and the Venice Biennale, among other venues.
Her work and writings have been featured in numerous international journals, including Casabella, Space, Building Design, Architektur & Bau Forum and AD: Architectural Design Profile.
Prior to joining the faculty at Cornell in 2001, she spent five years as professor and director of the Meisterschulen für Architektur at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Vienna, and also has taught at the AA in London and Princeton University.
Pelli’s and Seraji’s talks are free and open to the public and will be preceded by receptions at 5:30 p.m. in Givens Hall.
For more information, call 935-6200.