Kennon Symposium

The 2009 Kennon Symposium celebrates the completion of Lars Lerup's fifteen-year tenure as Dean of the Rice School of Architecture and welcomes architects such as Peter Eisenman and Sir Peter Cook. The modern city in its various manifestations, from vast suburbs to the megalopolis, comprises a new fluidity that defies old certainties with its endless archipelago of human activity, which shifts its energies continually. By expanding the menu of distances, the city has eroded all concrete limits. No longer contained by buildings, it is a place whose walls are horizons, whose spaces are zones, and whose atmospheres are miasmas. This city is no longer one shared perception, but a multitude of visions. Propelled by a restless mobility from computer search engines to automobiles to movements of capital everything has become vehicular. In this whirlwind, the architectural discipline and practice has had to rethink its own impulses. Wherever we go, however, we remain inside the vast interior of this global conurbation. We circulate in nested spaces, like Russian dolls, observing only one rule: everything must move. Friday, March 20 10:30 Kevin Kennon 10:45 Provost Eugene H. Levy 11:15 Luis Fernandez-Galiano 1:15 Panel Discussion: Architecture: The Practice of an Education Panelists: John J. Casbarian (moderator), Yung-Ho Chang, Kevin Daly, Alfred Jacoby, Carlos Jimenez, Stanley Saitowitz 2:30 Brett Steele 3:30 Panel Discussion: This is Not a Metropolis Panelists: Albert Pope (moderator), Christopher Hight, Bart Lootsma, Robert Somol 4:45 Everything Must Move, the book: Thumb Design 5:30 Peter Eisenman Saturday, March 21 10:00 Francisco Mangado 11:00 Sarah Whiting and Ron Witte 12:00 Panel Discussion: Globalization: How to Renew from Within? Panelists: Roemer van Toorn (moderator), Fares el-Dahdah, Ed Dimendberg, Jeffrey Inaba, 2:15 Lars Reutersward 3:15 Panel Discussion: Architecture/Life Panelists: Lars Lerup (moderator), Dawn Finley and Mark Wamble, Clover Lee and David Erdman, Mary-Ann Ray and Robert Mangurian 4:30 Sir Peter Cook 5:30 Closing remarks: Lars Lerup and John J. Casbarian; All-School Reception Rice School of Architecture