The Judson University School of Art, Design and Architecture offers this inaugural Symposium of Essays On Christ and Architecture. The symposium begins with a keynote address and discussion led by Yale University Noah Porter Professor of Philosophical Theology Emeritus, Dr. Nicholas Wolterstorff, widely regarded for his work in Aesthetics, Justice and Politics. Moderated essays and discussions by architects and educators who share faith in Christ shapes the second day of the symposium with themes of:

Work and Practice

Justice and Missions

Aesthetics and Design Trajectories

The symposium concludes with space for discussion and debate around an exhibit of student and faculty works in the Draewell gallery at the Harm A. Weber Academic Center.

The symposium is open to the public and is substantially underwritten by the Department of Architecture, Judson University and program sponsors. The outcomes of this symposium include: 1) Provide space for focused discussion of the intersection of living Christian faith and the discipline of architecture, 2) Engage faculty and students to participate in community building activities, discussion and debate, 3) Collaborate with guest speakers and participants including their contribution to the mission of the department, and 4) Refine the relevance and importance of the unique work of the department in the larger context of contemporary architecture education and practice.

The symposium program begins Thursday, March 15, 2012 at 7:00pm and concludes through Friday, March 16, 2012 5:00pm. Registration is $125.00 with all net proceeds directed to student scholarships.

PROGRAM

Thursday, March 15, 2012

7:00-9:00pm    Keynote Address and Audience Discussion, Herrick Chapel

Friday, March 16, 2012

8:30-9:00am     Opening Comments, Chapel

9:00-11:30am    Essay Panel A, Chapel

11:30-1:15pm    Lunch (provided)

1:30-3:00pm      Essay Panel B, Chapel

3:15-4:45pm      Essay Panel C, Chapel

4:45-5:15pm      Closing Comments, Chapel

5:15-6:30pm      Reception and Exhibit, Draewell Gallery, Weber Center

6:30pm-             Post-symposium Deans Roundtable (by invitation)

SPEAKERS

Nicholas Wolterstorff

Keelan Kaiser

Mark Torgerson

Darrel Cosden

Luke Lueng

Marc Schiller

Jae Cha

Stacie Burtelson

David Ogoli

Christopher Miller

John Hudson

Curtis Sartor

COST

The symposium cost is $125 which includes entry to each presentation and discussion, lunch on Friday, and one copy of the symposium proceedings. Registration is free to Judson community members and speakers. Guests can register at the Registration Portal.

ACCOMMODATIONS

The Courtyard Marriot has a block of rooms reserved for this event, priced at $75 plus tax. Please contact (847) 429 0300 for reservations and note the reference “Judson on Christ and Architecture.” The hotel is very close, though not walking distance from the University. Shuttle services are provided at no cost to participant.

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Fall 2011 Practice Symposium (Archive)

Post-Event Comments

2011 Symposium Participant Assessment

Symposium

The Judson University Department of Architecture invites you to a symposium on cultural interaction and recent trends occurring in the built environment in China. While the economies of much of the rest of the world appear to be in stasis, China continues to churn at a staggering pace. What can architects, designers and urbanists learn about the dynamic forces at play in China? What opportunities exist for engagement with Chinese culture and practices in the building disciplines? What histories and cultural lessons can be learned that can improve our engagement?

Program

The program features a keynote lecture on Thursday evening by Gordon Gill (Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architects), followed by an all-day Friday program. The Friday program is organized around cultural and educational themes in the morning session and Chicago area practitioners sharing work and approaches from their China practices in the afternoon. All presentations will be held in the University Chapel in the center of campus. The program concludes at 4pm with a reception in the Draewell Gallery, Harm A. Weber Academic Center. The gallery will exhibit work from the architecture programs at Judson University and Beijing University School of Civil Engineering and Architecture. Tours of the LEED Gold Harm A. Weber Academic Center will be available.

Download the full program here

Thursday, September 8, Keynote:

7:00pm, Mr. Gordon Gill (Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architects) – Designing buildings and urban master plans for the booming Chinese market presents both opportunities and challenges for American architects. Gordon Gill, partner at Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture and co-designer of several of the firm’s recent projects in China, will discuss the unique conditions related to working within this global superpower. He will discuss AS+GG’s designs for Wuhan Greenland Center, a 606-meter tower in Wuhan, China, and a new highly sustainable satellite city that will provide a vital live-work environment for 100,000 people on a 1-square-kilometer site. He will also discuss his design for Pearl River Tower, scheduled to open this fall in Guangzhou, China, as the world’s most sustainable supertall tower. Along the way, he will explain the AS+GG design philosophy, which begins with extensive environmental analysis, which in turn informs a range of passive strategies to maximize energy efficiency—including shading, natural ventilation and daylighting—as well as onsite energy generation from renewable sources, including sun, wind and geothermal. He will buttress these points with references to AS+GG’s greening and modernization of Chicago’s Willis Tower and the firm’s award-winning Chicago Central Area DeCarbonization Plan, a comprehensive vision to help the city meet its carbon reduction goals in the downtown Loop.

Friday, September 9 speakers include:

8:30am, Prof. Keelan Kaiser (Judson) – Professor Kaiser is developing international academic exchange relationships with a current focus on China, South Korea and Ghana. He will speak on the subject of University exchange programs, particularly the surging academic interests in Sino-US exchanges, and will also speak on the Canberra Accord, an international accreditation system recognition agreement between the United States and China for the portability of accredited architecture education credentials.

9:00am, Dr. Linan Liu (BUCEA) – Beijing, as the Capital of the People’s Republic of China, has a long history of urban construction that can be traced back to the 3rd century B.C. The fundamental figuration of city that today we can see out was formed as early as in the 13th century, when the Emperor Kublai Khan made the decree of building Beijing as the capital of his vast territory. Although the city has a length of depression period after the end of the Yuan Dynasty, it built again as the capital during the Ming (1421-1644 A.D) and the Qing (1644-1912 A.D) dynasties from the early of the 15th century. The urban figuration of Beijing was strictly planned and rapidly constructed according to the traditional norms and rites, which were mostly derived from the Confucianism. Today the urban scale, layout, texture, pattern and structure of the old cityscape can be clearly observed through the archive records. This lecture will show the old Beijing’s cityscape via those historic records, drawings and photos with exploring text, and present the dramatic changes of Beijing in the recent 200 years.

9:50am, Dr. Jhennifer Amundson (Judson) – Western architects have a history of engagement with China that dates back centuries.  Eighteenth-century designers from Charlottesville to Munich drew inspiration from Chinese aesthetics for picturesque gardens and exotic palaces.  In the next century their professional descendants took advantage of newly-opened trade routes and missionary activity to introduce European architectural styles in China with the construction of merchants’ offices and Protestant churches.  The recent rush of development can be seen in these historic terms, as contemporary architects contend with both the attraction of drawing from foreign tradition and the impulse to import their own conventions into a new setting.  This context, which illustrates both the promise and limitations of architects’ reaping and sowing in China, can be instructive to future waves of practitioners who travel abroad to take part in the maturing of global practice.

10:35am, Prof. Thomas Kong (SAIC) – Drawing from the rich and diverse forms of spatial appropriation, urban encounters and material improvisation in Hong Kong and other Asian cities, the presentation offers alternative strategies for a more socially attentive, broader and contingent practice of architecture in a Post Bubble age. His research and creative practice are centered on architecture as anthropological objects and the cultural geographies of Asian cities. He has written and lectured in international conferences on themes relating to the role of public spaces in Asian cities, and have received national and international recognitions for his research revolving around social and cultural concerns in design. Most recently, he was the third Jaap Bakema Fellow, a competitive international fellowship administered by the Netherlands Architecture Institute, a co-recipient of the Motorola Foundation grant for his joint interdisciplinary design studio based in Beppu, Japan and Chicago, and will be an invited delegate to the Urban Age Conference on Cities, Health and Wellbeing organized by the London School of Economics.

11:05am, Mr. Jan Klerks (Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat) – The tall building is a significant feature and phenomena of the new China, and the understanding of them is an essential part in understanding the overall state of art and future direction of architecture and planning in China.  Jan Klerks is responsible for creating knowledge on tall buildings by initiating and conducting research, editing books about this topic and by writing articles and reviews for CTBUH.  He is the editor of the CTBUH Journal and has built the online tall buildings database.  He is the author of several articles in professional magazines, and is a seasoned speaker at international conferences, including within the past three years, China, India, the Middle East, Europe, and North America.

1:00pm, Mr. Paul Sterner (Oculus Architecture)- Paul Sterner is the President and Founder of Oculus Architecture® based in metropolitan Chicago.  Oculus is a small but growing firm involved in both architecture and urban planning.  The firm recently established an alliance partner in Chongqing, and through this collaborative effort, won a limited competition for the master plan of a city district south of Guangzhou. Mr. Sterner will discuss his very recent experiences of entering the market and working in China.

1:25pm, Mr. Clark Baurer (McBride, Kelley Baurer Architects) – While directing the Beijing office of the firm for eight years, Mr. Baurer (and his wife) resided in and attempted to immerse themselves into the culture of China, and so his perspective is as someone living there nearly fulltime during those eight years, and his focus is Beijing. As the Director of China Operations for the firm, Clark led numerous civic and community based projects. Recent projects include the 2 million SF mixed use Xing Fu San Cun project in Beijing’s San Li Tun area and several buildings for the Western Academy of Beijing. In addition, the firm worked with UNESCO and donated design services for the new Peng Cheng School for the Mentally Handicapped in XuZhou, China; the Ma He School in rural Henan Province. Clark has been a Vice-Chair of the American Chamber of Commerce in Beijing and a member of the Western Academy of Beijing Design and Construction Steering Committee.

2:10pm, Mr. Travis Soberg (Goettsch Partners) – Mr. Soberg presentation will include his experiences and the ever-changing architectural challenges of integrating sustainable design into large projects located in nearly every region of China. Goettsch Partners has quietly and consistently built a strong practice and presence in China from the mid 1990s onward.  The firm has designed several dozen large mixed-use projects that have been completed in over two dozen cities.  Although primarily based in Chicago, for nearly a decade, Mr. Soberg has been traveling to China frequently to inter with clients and project teams.  This includes a staff of about a dozen based in the Shanghai office of the firm.

3:00pm, Mr. Luke Lueng (SOM) – Mr. Leung brings a very special and broad global perspective to this seminar.  He was born and raised in Hong Kong, which has given him a perspective from China.  He was educated in and lives in the United States, which give him an added perspective from the USA.  He is a mechanical engineer who has worked with several exceptionally noted and talent architectural designers, which gives him a unique perspective on the architectural process.  He is a mechanical engineer immersed in and responsible for sustainable design work all over the planet, and works to develop solutions that optimize passive opportunities as well as utilizing existing and advanced technology. The experience of SOM in China extends back to the late 1970s when the firm established an office in Hong Kong.  It continues today with a broad variety of architectural and planning projects both in design and under construction.  Mr. Leung has two decades with SOM, including significant involvement on a number of large projects in China, the USA, and in the Middle East.  Most notable is the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building.

ADMISSION FREE: KEYNOTE LECTURE THURSDAY NIGHT
ADMISSION $50: ALL DAY FRIDAY PROGRAM

(includes: 6.5 HSW/SD AIA CES and lunch for paid registrants)

Location

The Herrick Chapel Auditorium at Judson University will be the setting for the inaugural Fall Practice Symposium. Judson University is located at the intersection of I-90 and Rt 31 in Elgin, Il, 40 miles northwest of Chicago, Il, USA. At the conclusion of the symposium the Draewell Gallery in the Harm A. Weber Academic Center, steps from the Herrick Chapel, will serve as the venue for the closing reception of the symposium.