 Hi everyone, my name is Leslie Quo, I'm the Associate Director of Development and Alumni Relations, and I'm pleased to welcome everyone to the second session of the Global Symposium organized by the MSAD class of 2006. And this morning's session we heard from practitioners in the UAE, India and Taiwan, as they presented award winning solutions to social environmental and cultural factors important to their communities. This session we will hear from studios in Boston, New York and Miami in the United States and various cities in Greece, Spain, Germany and Portugal. Roger Lee Rotem will be moderating this session. She is the founding director and studio of Futurist, leading module module since its founding in 2012. Roger Lee directed the design of many projects, including the cloud seating plaza pavilion and the heart squared public artwork. Along with Fu Huang, she was awarded the 2017 Founders Rome Prize in Architecture, since 1897 and an annual prize to those who represent the highest standards of excellence in the arts and humanities. She has also been awarded the Merging Voices Award from the Architectural League of New York, and the US Japan Creative Artists Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Roger Lee holds a Bachelor of Architecture from Technion and Haifa and non-masters and advanced architectural design from Columbia of course. She currently teaches in Rhode Island School of Design and recently at MIT. Roger, fellow of the American Academy in Rome, a licensed architect in Israel and at LEB, a lead accredited professional in building design and construction. Thank you, Roger Lee. Thank you Leslie. Good afternoon and thank you for joining us for the second session of the Global Symposium of the class of 2006. I would like to thank Johnny Chu for organizing the event and for the support of GISA. My name is Achely and I will be moderating the session. On behalf of my colleagues and friends, it's good to be back, even virtually and connect with a new generation of students with the faculty and the public. This past year has been a year of reflection for all of us and just isn't time for our own 15 year anniversary. It is a great opportunity to look back on our work as individuals and as a collective. This afternoon session will include 10 presenters, 10 presentations, seven minutes each and if we are all on time and we're going to do it, we will have a Q&A session at the end. Upwardly enough, I'm going to start this sharing my screen. Just a moment. So I'm taking my own time seven minutes. Okay. So I'm a co-founder of Modu along with Fuang, who teaches right now at GISA. Modu is an interdisciplinary architecture and design practice based in Brooklyn, New York. Our practice is to connect humans to cities and natures through rethinking the relationship between the built and natural environments and between urban to interiors. The knowledge that we build in the office allows us to work in multiple typologies. I will present today two projects that show different engagements with the environment. Without seeding was the winner of an invited competition by the Design Museum Holon in Israel. The project rethinks the boundaries between the built and the natures through harnessing and visualizing the forces of wind. You can see on the left image the Holon Design Museum that designed by Ron Arad with an abandoned city square in front of it. Barren due to the extreme heat and strong reflections that are common in the Middle East. We were invited to provide ideas on how to reactivate the square. The basic idea was to provide a place with a shade. A shade that is provided by 30,000 balls deployed on a roof structure, balls in three different sizes to encourage their movement with the breeze. This image represents a scenario out of many, working with scenarios rather than with fixed conditions. Usually shade changes with the sun orientation while the object itself is still. In this case, the shade is a combination of movement of a Mediterranean light breeze and sun orientation. A thin upper landscape provides architecture as a pure manifestation of environmental forces. We used ready-made greenhouses structures that are typologies that is typical to the Israeli landscape and we deployed a thin mesh layer on top that allows for rain to go through but keep the balls moving throughout. The most challenging part of the design is to make the suspended mesh ceiling completely aligned to allow for a free movement of the balls from one side to another. We didn't design the programs below, instead allowing it to be flexible outdoor room in the city, used by the museum for different programs and by the residents themselves or even for children which display with a ball. The project was designed for variable scenarios and conditions but not for specific programs creating an architecture modified by weather but not vice versa. These are strategies that comes from landscape architecture deployed into an architectural project. A such interdisciplinary approach is also through borrowing strategies of design from different disciplines. The second project that I'll show is under construction, a ground-up building in Houston. Promenade is a retail and office center focused on visitors experience. It was designed pre-COVID but it's quite relevant to our times. Working with limited budget, we removed any decorations and symbols associated with the typology. Instead, we proposed to the developer to invest in 2% of the site area to become a green threshold. These green threshold are designed for human well-being allowing for direct access to local natures. Each unit is designed for a mini-garden, garden that extends horizontally and vertically with a unique microclimate and unique plants. Raw garden, tall grass garden, garden for pollinators, and a desert garden. Promenade connects multi-sensorial environments. We're leading the store to include both interiors and exteriors as part of the identity of the place and for their experience of the users. We also bake in the office as part of our research. In this case, we bake concrete panels and photograph them with thermal camera. This research on which 3D corrugated wall patterns will allow for the accumulation, will allow for accumulated heat to be released quicker. We call them as self-cooling walls. We deploy different wall patterns along the building depending on sun orientation. The architecture elements of Promenade, building envelope, vertical fiends, shading canopies, and corrugated wall patterns are all designed to allow for a variety of outdoor thermal comfort. The project is scheduled to finish construction this year. Thank you. Okay. Next, I would like to... I did I stop sharing? Yeah, I stopped sharing. Okay. Thank you. Next, I would like to present Amir Creeper. Amir is the founding principal of Creeper Studio that is based in Boston. He is working with commercial real estate and institutional clients nationwide. Amir most recently taught at Northeastern University. Thank you so much for Haley for the introduction. Let's share my screen. Everybody can see that? So 15 years ago, 2006, it was a strange time. After the excitement of graduation from the AID, I felt myself I was trapped in a labyrinth, quite frankly. It was a rough time. On a personal note, I broke up with my girlfriend for a long time. I didn't have a job line up when I finished Columbia, and I had student debt. So I was pretty stressful. And I didn't know what to do. But I was lucky enough that I was able to land a job early on in May, New York. And I started to work for Polshek. For those of you who don't know, Polshek was the dean at Columbia between the late 70s and mid 80s, just before Chumi. And it was a really interesting experience. It was a large office, like 185 people at the time, which very interesting work, a lot of attention to details, technology. But for me, I was interested in the operation of a large office that gets to build in New York, which sounds easy, but it's a fairly complex endeavor. And after spending time at Columbia, I really wanted to understand what does it take to get things built on a very difficult environment. And I was able to see that. And it was an amazing experience. By the end of the year, oh, six, I realized that I didn't want to stay in New York for the long term. I didn't have the work, the right work life balance that was aiming. So by February 07, I moved to Boston, where I'm still I'm here after 15 years. And I started to work for a firm called Machado and Silbeti. At the time, Jorge Silbeti was the chairman and the GSD. And the office was about 45 people just to give you a sense of scale. It was really interesting environment, very different, much more academic, a lot of conversations, discussions. We were able to work internationally. I was immediately given a lot of responsibility. So the project I'm going to show really briefly and actually this is across the board. I'm going to just show a slide. It's almost like I was thinking 15 years 15 slides. So really snapshot of what I was doing year by year but in a slide almost. So this is a very large development within Cairo, West of Cairo with a very complex program that includes hotel residences, a lot of urban design. It was interesting to work in a completely different country culture and coordinating that with another architect. It was an amazing experience. After that, this is a different change of space and scale. This is in Wisconsin in Madison. It was an addition to a modernist museum for the university. You see on the right side an existing building from the 60s and an addition on the left side for the Chasen Museum of Art. And my chance to Betty had an incredible attention to craftsmanship. Again detailing it's one of the most things that we spend time on and understanding, you know, the existing conditions and developing a dialogue between the old and the new. So I spent there about four or five years and at that time I realized it was a good time to take a risk and start my own studio, my own shop. I didn't have kids. I didn't have a mortgage. You have a wife. So I said why not. And that was almost 10 years ago. I started my own practice here in Boston. And at the beginning the projects were small interiors, bakeries shops restaurants. Funny enough, we were selling drawings. I know sounds weird but that's what we were doing. We were selling drawings for different uses and and then the project grew in complexity and scope, like the owners of those stores those restaurants hire us to do some exterior space plazas outdoors. And then in 2014 we got a commission to do a very large building, which is the CS Crescent building. It's a landmark in Boston, the oldest commercial building in Boston that survived urban renewal from the 60s. This is a very well known building downtown. It's an entire building that we got to renovate. And instead of adding to the building, the idea was to remove from the building. So we didn't add we just remove layers and layers of staco sheetrock tiles stuff that was added to the building. And that's something that we kind of, you know, develop as a part of the office being critical of what we add. And in some cases and architects it's all removing. There's nothing to add the building itself can speak for itself and it's about revealing the original building, the original beauty. Again, a lot of interiors we were doing. This is also downtown in Boston, working with a brilliant is building from the 60s and and trying to understand geometries and reconfigure them creating buildings that they are for new users. In this case, a technology company that was moving the headquarters to Boston. This is an interesting project, a fun project in a way. It's a dispensary for marijuana use. Our client got the first license for recreational marijuana in Massachusetts. So they wanted to have a flagship store. And the idea here was similar to other project that was an existing building that was dilapidated and we decided to preserve it and keep it and become a beacon for the brand. We came up with all the branding graphics and so forth. And that was very interesting as an experience that created their own brand and we were part of that. So that gives you an idea of the last 15 years what I've been doing in the office. We work with basically a lot of existing buildings that we restore. In this case, it's a residential building behind MIT from like 120 years ago, and we kept the interior shell and the whole building was renovated to the studs. And we have some graphics and key moments where we kind of mark that this building has been renovated. But besides that, it's a restoring and revealing the interior of the building. And besides working hard, we have also been busy at home. I have three kids. I have a wife and I'm happy to report that things are pretty well, even besides COVID. So I'm really glad to reconnect with everybody and I'm hoping that, you know, next time we see each other is in person and we're going to have to wait until our 23rd reunion we could do perhaps even sooner. Thank you. Thank you, Amir. Next, I would like to introduce Steven Morale. Steven is a practicing architect and agent professor based out of Miami and Columbia, his office plus works on mixed use multifamily commercial and high end residential project. Everyone, how's it going. So I'm trying to share the screen. Hi everyone, I'm Steven. So I'm originally from Columbia, South America, but I grew up in South in South Florida in Miami. I'm actually currently in Bogota at the moment. I went to school at CERC in California and I have a master's from University College London, the Bartlett, and I also graduated from Columbia University. I've been around at pretty good schools. And so a couple of years ago, basically we started our firm called plus originally called planning logistic urban solutions. Short, we called it plus we do architecture planning and design at plus we love to solve we like to make special places we strive for construction experts expertise. We love innovating. We love collaborating as well. We work as architects of record sometimes with a couple of firm one on firms as well. We have a very inductive approach to design, and we make very efficient decisions in terms of our design. We strive to concentrate on the solutions on the problem necessarily. So, here's a couple of sample projects. This is one of the first ones called separate, which was a competition. We were trying to extrapolate some ideas from the grid of the city and kind of merged technology. This is a competition that incorporated a railroad station and incorporated bus station as well and basically we tried to use the panels to kind of merge everything together and different parts of the city. So that first part was the track. This was kind of like the bus station at the very top. This was some connecting bridges in between the different parts of the product using the different panels and different technology. And this is the overall kind of a design that we were doing, again, merging the entire entire site which is very sporadic you even had a building that was detached from from the station itself. Here's another competition that we did in South America and Columbia. This was in BW Sancio, which is a smaller city close to Bogota. Basically this was an elementary school and the elementary school had the different classrooms open spaces. It had a more communal basketball courts that were open. It had the soccer field in the back. It had a closed basketball courts as well. Interesting thing about this project is that obviously during the day when the elementary school is open, the entire elementary school can use the entire site. In the afternoon, they would actually close the doors and this portion that was more communal would be actually open to the entire community for them to use it. So it was a pretty fun project that we did. In Columbia, most of the schools are designed with very passive designs. So we use these perforated facades and kind of very green materials and just creating these open spaces with these products. We also use a lot of the typology that was within the site. So there was like a river next to it and we kind of merged that into this particular type of design. This is another project in Lima, Peru. This was a competition. It was called the Mali Museum. Basically this was in 2016. Interesting thing about this project is that we were using local materials, local design to inform the project as well. Some type of studying like the Inca culture and the type of, I guess, drawings to incorporate into design. The other interesting thing about their project is that we tried to provide very open public spaces that had statues and that people can access. So the public didn't necessarily have to go into the museum to experience art. So we had artwork exposed throughout the entire thing. But we also allowed the public to view basically the artwork without necessarily going into it. It also had an educational component. So there was a direct link between the educational and the public portions. And so we provided access both horizontally going up to the rooftops and also sinking into the ground. And then this is an interesting project that we had with a client in South Florida. So as you know, most of South Florida is very much about having amazing parties, outdoor spaces, basically enjoying nature and enjoying a lot of the green area. And this particular client wanted to have this huge bar in existing kitchen, a 10 person pool, a fireplace, a place to really allow people to gather. This particular client has three huge parties, about 300 people per party, both for the Super Bowl, Halloween and for New Year's. So basically we were trying to create this huge cover. And the interesting thing about this is because we were trying to use kind of more modern design decisions, but we are also including the vernacular of Florida which is these awkward, you know, the Spanish Taurus. And so we were trying to give it another look. He's very Irish. And so this is a picture of the actual of the actual space. You can see there's a lot of people. And what's interesting is the client himself actually made a video. And we love that, you know, they actually enjoy this space so much. So like I said, there's these huge parties, a lot of people know about this space. Everyone's always invited if you guys can find it on on on Facebook there's all these huge invitations. And we love that the client actually loved the project so much that he did this video promoting it. So it's interesting. It's about the Super Bowl, and it shows the project and how it's actually occupied by people and how people appreciate it, which is great. That's our client right there. And it's really interesting because everything's interactive. Basically, we have a stage there where live bands come. It's connected to the columns that light up with the audio visual just, you know, it's like five person bar, bartender bar. And are you playing a video. Yes, so you guys seen. I'm actually not able to see it maybe you can drop a link to it in the chat of people can view it on their own. I'm not sure why it's not working had video in the last session. Sorry about that. All right, no problem. I'll switch on to another part. So another part of the practice that we've, we've done some consultancy. Basically, we connected with a firm called radio track. And we've been able to work on really amazing products. This was the Fine Arts Museum in Houston, basically fabricating some of the pieces, working through the clash detection. We also work on New World Symphony in Miami. Maybe I'm sorry Stephen to interrupt. You're, you might need to restart your presence. Actually advancing. All right. Yes, you know, No, maybe you need to sharing and then just share again. Interesting. So, like I said, we worked on New World Symphony in Miami, basically developing the surfaces on the fabrication and not necessarily on the design. So we had to model every single surface for this particular space. Throughout the years I've also consulted on educational products. This was the Miami date. I also worked as a consultant project manager on the Miami world center, which is a huge construction. This was about 700,000 square feet of mixed use retail and a huge amenity deck that is has started to open. Okay. All right. Yeah. No, basically, I've had a great experience and GSAP was was an amazing time that obviously allowed us to connect with different type of projects and different different type of firms. And glad to see you all. Thanks. Thank you, Steven. Your project definitely wants me kind of makes me want to travel again. Right. Our next presenters are a duo, Nicoleta Grigorudy and a rocket vehicle rocket Nicoleta lead kill architectos and architecture and urban design office that is based in Acronia, Spain. They work throughout the EU. They design and also develop project as part of their form of practicing. Hello, everybody. Hello, everybody. I'm going to present three projects to a small family houses and a big scale projects. And I'm not going to speak English, because my British accent is too strong for the American culture that I'm going to show just a slice and in order also to not to exceed the time. Okay. Okay. Best to say the screen. Okay. Do you see the screen? Yeah. Yes. Okay. Okay. Well, I have to go to the, not to the end to the beginning. Okay, guys, let's go. It's going to be a little bit weird to don't speak about the first one. That's the big, the escape project with a budget of 25 million euros. And it's very close home. It was a very, very big work. These pictures are from this morning. The second project is within us. The project is in La Corsica in France. That's a interesting project. We chose it because it's a product of back architectos that is a official from Argentina and the clients are from Paris. The project is in Corsica in the course, and the architects are Greek. The Argentinians, the designers and the project is signed by us, Greek and Spanish architects. We received this from the architects, back architectos. They are very famous in Argentina overseas. And we were doing all the construction plans and everything. We are the office, the associate office that signed the price in Europe. That was a work of Nicolette. Finally, it's one of the last project we're doing, sorry, under construction. That is close La Coruña in the end of the earth, in the end of the world. And here's Corcubion. That's the previous plans and the sketches. Revention, refurbishment. It's a very small house, 80 square meters into floors. That's all. Thank you very much. Thank you, Nicolette and Rocke. I think you could have started from the end and go to the beginning. You could have worked on both sides. Next, I want to introduce Jose Maria Cappellan. Jose Maria is a founder of a collective of many. Many architects and designers that originate in Madrid and New York. Many seek multiple influences to generate diverse responses to projects. Thank you, Rachel. My name is Jose. Hold on just a second. I'm just going to share my screen just a second. Well, we are many. We were originated basically in Columbia University. We were, I don't know if you can hear me. Yeah. Okay. We were basically originated in New York. My partner was David Del Vier, who was also a friend while we were in the university. And we started many, many stands for Madrid and New York. Once I came back to Madrid, we stayed working together and we started sharing projects and trying to do the best things we could. Right. I have brought two samples of work that we find we came up with them from 2016 basically one of them is a kind of a large scale. They're both in the private sector. One is a housing project. Hold on. Hold on a second. One it's a housing project. And the other one is a retail design and rollout. We are also like Rocky and Nicoleta in the retail sector, trying to do design and global rollout. The first project is a housing project. It's almost a social housing project in Valladolid in my hometown. It's a very small land plot as you can see here is close to the railroad. And it's also surrounded by several streets. There were two land plots. As you can see here, one is this one and the other one was this one that we tried to unify. It's a very small land plot of 20 by 20 that was very restricted in every way that you could see. I would say in construction way it was very restricted. The commissioner, our client was also the builder. So he was also asking us to build it in the old traditional brick building. So everything was very tight and we finally came up with, I believe is a very nice solution for social housing. We divided the building in two sides. One was underground and the other one was on top of the ground. The underground was built with concrete wall panels in order to be able to hold at least nine cars underground. And then on the top, there was like a tetris of housing of social housings that could work and all of them or most of them will try to have their own garden. If you can see them, right? This is kind of a building work trying to come down to the garage, right? To the building and this is like the connection between all the housings on the top, right? This was one of our goals was to try to build it in the traditional way of this hometown trying to find something different. So we tried to first have a very clean facade with the construction of the buildings trying to do something different in the brick itself. And for every three bricks, there's one coming to the inside, right? And that farther, when you see the sun coming into it, it's like a different shade, right? These are some pictures of the interior. It was the largest scale that we have had in the last 10 years, right? And another project, which is interesting, it's a retail project that is one project for 33 locations. So it has to have a very added value, I would say. I'm sorry I haven't spoken English like Rocket for a long time and my vocab, it's been, you know, awful. Anyway, once you come to, Sanicor is an orthopedic business. Once you come to an orthopedic in Spain, you find this. It's a lot of things, a lot of stuff, too many, like you see too many rooms, everything is like awful. You just want to run out of there. And these are two samples of locations that we worked on. We tried to find a better place. We tried to find an orthopedic space that could look for something that you would like to go, that you could see everything with a different face. Disabled people, like wheelchairs or stuff that is used for, let's say disabled, which are not. But like a more common space, more interesting space and also versatile enough to be able to work for 33 different locations, right. So this was the first one, you see their side furniture all around the sales area and then several stuff in the middle. You see this, it finally came out as a very nice location for the meaning of it. And it's also a clinical place where you can go to the doctor and have your own commission in there. This is another location. They like rolling out the same project, right. A third location. This is the first one is Seville. Second one is in Guelva, which is in South Spain. The third one is in Granada. And the fourth one was in Almería. And we're still working on them. We're trying to develop the same concept every day is coming to a new thing. These are like the place where you try the clothings on, the lockers. And this, this is a very ongoing project since 2015. We're still going on. We're working on the 10th location. And yeah, it's a very interesting. Thank you. Thank you, Jose for showing us 33 project in seven minute lecture. I think it's a world record. Our next presenter is Klaus Ransmeyer. Klaus is a partner and design director at the German architecture studio hen that is based in Berlin Klaus is leading award winning project worldwide that he will present today. Thanks for sharing my screen one second. So first of all, I have to thank also Johnny for organizing this I think that's a great idea that after 15 years we managed to see each other in this format and to share each other's work. It's been quite a while and I don't know if you guys know how I look like that's me. I didn't change too much I hope lost some hair but besides I still think I look the same. To be gradation from Columbia. I've moved actually to Berlin where I'm still base so I worked in New York for a few years after that that doesn't look architecture which I'm not going to go into now. But after that I moved to Berlin and I joined three close friends that actually founded the studio here in Berlin called hence to do be. Studio be for a reason because it was like the design studio in a very small scale for a larger office hen that exists already for multiple years. And hand itself is a big company. It's 360 employees for the nationalities a lot of different clients 360 plus realized projects and what actually my job when I joined the company was together with Martin who is sitting here in the front. That's me here and two other ones. One is here in the back and the other one is over there to basically give the whole office a bit of a new design direction and new conceptual direction, because it was actually going in a very, let's say, yeah, not so contemporary way. So what they actually focused on an expertise was basically all different policies you can think of from culture to high rise automotive industry that which was the core industry that we were working in health offices master plans leisure education science. So the whole portfolio. And what is actually interesting in Germany in contrast to some other countries that they not only basically provide all of the architectural services but also all the construction services so we have construction management quantity surveying all of that stuff in house so it's a quite heavy competence and full range of projects that we provide. And what actually combines all of those things is that we say we believe in the power and impact of ideas. So anything we do. We try to do with some unique ideas and some unique way of thinking for a project and what I picked to present is actually three different projects that show that approach in very different ways. All of those which I was leading from actually the first sketch to the end of construction and accordingly very different kind of scales and also typologies. The first one was actually the first one I worked on there was in the year 2009 when we started actually developing it. It was called the Porsche Pavilion in Wolfsburg Germany and what it is is actually a sculpture that's the former head of Volkswagen Mr. Ferdinand Piech who is the grandson of Ferdinand Porsche was actually the founder and developer of Porsche. So we're going to actually build this building for his 80th birthday and it needed to be something special and the way that we basically approached it is similar to a car body we developed the monocoque structure together with a Dutch company producing ships originally and produced to kind of like highlight a natural and luxurious product. Everything out of stainless steel. So the whole building that you see here that looks actually like concrete is out of stainless steel in some parts where the tension and the structure is heavy loaded about 10 centimeters thick thick. There was about 150 tons of stainless steel that was 3D welded and molded and grinded and sandblasted at the end. All of this kind of developing a shelf for an interior space where there's nothing displayed but all of the historic models that Porsche was actually designing up to this point and the latest and current models that are basically for sale now. All of this is embedded in a very large park in Wolfsburg where if you buy like a Volkswagen car you can pick it up here and basically drive out of it. So all of that backdrop was developed by the company I'm in now multiple years back. So this was the last remaining piece the last remaining brand to be basically represented in that park. The second project one that has been opened about four years ago is for the German based retailer at Salando. It's an online retailer which turns out to be the second largest online clothing retailer in Europe. I think it's just I think just Zara is bigger or something like that. So what they did was they were growing very heavily over the first years and they needed a headquarter which is actually based in Berlin and we want a competition that shows a very unique design basically in a way that it reinterprets the classic Berlin block that usually has like introverted courtyards and they basically cut out those courtyards to the outside to reveal the work environments that are happening to people that pass by to everybody around. And that also then leave the remaining block elements as some kind of like translucent shiny industrial glass facades. And what the specialty of this project was is that it actually combines the three disciplines that Salando is focusing on. So that's the design the branding and the technology and all of them needed a place where they can come together where they can exchange ideas. So that's why the whole interior atrium and the interior space is basically a place for people to hang out to also work in a very informal way and to not actually give a certain the building. Let's say design upon the employees but to allow the employees to brand and develop the space as they wish. So basically it's a very neutral backdrop when it comes to the color and material choice. And we allow people to basically then create their own work environments as to which so you see here on the left side seems to be that person is really into wooden boxes. That's how they basically then reshape and make it make it their own. And there is these so called special spaces living zones or living rooms actually as they call that's where you can get your coffee your your lunch and basically meet and greet people. The last project I show something that we opened about or finished about two years ago, a very complicated project but I think it turned out very nice it's for the pharmaceutical company Merck. And what they actually do is Merck is having a patent on liquid crystal, which is the substance that is used in all of LED and and screens basically right so they make a really tons of money with that and they need a space to get people and artists and people together to develop new products so that's why they approached us and said, we want to build an innovation center. And the way that we actually approached this topic is, we said, you need a building that is open that is actually not having walls that separate different functions is needs to be something that is a spatial continuum that is vertically stretching throughout the whole building so we came up with an idea of an origami model that you actually pull apart. And with this model, you generate platforms where people can work where people can also overlook other levels of, you know, the building where they can have certain visual connections between the individual teams that are working on new projects and new innovations and ideas in according to come up with the things that perhaps shape our society in the future. And accordingly, it's actually areas of concentration and communication that are in a very strong tension between each other. Here's a view of the central atrium that is actually stretching through the whole building is exposed concrete. All of the structure and everything is actually blast proof because it's next to a chemical factories in case the chemical factory explodes. The building needs to stay so all of the concrete you see here is packed with steel and everything you need to make it actually stable. Sorry about that. So for the last slide. Here's another view where you look at the building or here towards the work spaces and the view down onto the working areas. And the last view up through the big central state that connects all the levels. Thank you. Thank you. Cloud stands off for this complex project and scope. Next up with I can introduce Pablo of a carol. Pablo is an architect, artist and fabrication designer, his main interest is the innovation of modeling system of emergence and biological procedures. I forgot to switch out the microphone. Can you hear me okay. Okay. Let me put this for the screen. Basically, I, I wanted to start by saying that I started that I graduated from Columbia 2006. And then I decided to continue doing some some work in some architectural offices and then I moved to Barcelona to do my PhD here in Barcelona. And I finished 2006, and I've been teaching, and I wanted to show some projects that we have developed within some workshops of inside the master of bio digital where I'm been teaching. And then also with my partner, we have created a group inside in the Saloniki in Greece, that is about a combination of how do you get the students into the into the industry. Most of the time, what we see is also that they don't really have the right type of approach to get to see what type of services most of the companies for the fabrication is especially the undergrad and the master because students. So basically what what what we have created is like a type of a network of different companies which they offer their own fabrication services, like laser cutting the printing and different fabrication services so what what what we have combined is is like a series of workshops in this workshop we have a bring all of these companies to to to explain how they can give services to the students and which are the future clients as an architecture students. And lately, I'm also joining a group of research in in in Saudi Arabia, especially oriented on a fabrication design. And this is a professor that is a in mathematics and is completely experimenting with architecture projects, especially from the mathematics perspective and the geometrical perspective he is based on a south European cost and what I will be joining this team in next September. And let me just describe few few projects. This is a workshop that I have taught in 2014 in Athens, with my partner in which we have constructed this project. This project has been has been constructed within a workshop that we are organized with 28 students with, which is made of beams of aluminum. And Alucubon and steel laser cut extrusions and connectors. Then these are the pieces. This this was like 120 beams and 40 extrusions, which are folded with Alucubon and they connected with screws with between them. We had some problems in the in the legs that we have fixed with we have fixed with some connectors in the bottom because of the relaxation method that we have used for for the for the for the design. But, but basically we have a we have managed to get to get a construct at the end. Then the other project is associated with with the design procedure processes that are inspired by biological patterns. And this is especially the diffusion reaction, which is a paper that we have also written about how are you get to design base of of of the lead the limbs of the of the biology and how the the the stripes of these materials are are generated. So, basically what we have been doing is is to combine this a method of of of designing from biological perspectives, combining the structurality with it with with them. So, these are some strides strides more apologies a project that we have been also teaching in the surrounding with some projects by students. These are a strap, striped, like, methods to to construct a different type of designs. These are projects from students from different workshops that we have been teaching into Saloniki. Then, different type of designs. These are projects from students from different workshops that we have been teaching in the Saloniki. Sometimes they lamp, sometimes they design a furniture, they design buildings, which is something that we have been very open on these workshops with all of these students. This is very open to most of the architecture from the master degree or from the undergraduate students in the Saloniki architecture school. Then this is inside the bio-digital architecture master in which we have been teaching with my wife also in Barcelona, which is about connecting different materials. Here we are combining some CNC techniques on a base form and a 3d printed piece as a connector and then a laser cutter, laser cut strips with screw connectors. Basically these are methods of combining the striped morphologies to be able to construct very complex forms. This is a method that we have been teaching in the master for 35 years. Then this is the same method with different topologies, but in another year. Then we have been also invited to teach, to expose a project for the entrance of the art galleries, international art galleries in the center of the Saloniki. We have constructed these elements which grab their attention. Then this is by waving and connecting with 200 stripes with polypropylene, what we have to see is the most structural organization of the stripes. We are able to orientate the segmentation and this is the arc at the end. This is in the international contemporary art first. Pablo, we passed eight minutes if you can conclude some. Thank you. Basically, yes, this is what it is. Thank you very much. That's why it is. Thank you Pablo for connecting practice with teaching. Our next presenter is Nancy Saraki. Nancy is a principal of Archivirus, an architecture and design firm based in Greece that operates the research experimentation and dialogue with the environment. Hi guys. Hope you're all doing well. In these weird times, we're experiencing at the moment. Let me share the screen. Can you all see? Can everybody see? No, we cannot. I share the screen. Maybe try to start sharing and then we share. Okay, it's a PowerPoint presentation. So we're not able to see it Nancy, you can send it to me and I can help. Because now it's a full screen of me. Your connection is not great. I suggest that you can send me the presentation and we can get back to you. I can run the presentation for you and you will speak. Where are you? I'll send you an email in the chat and we'll move to someone else and I'll reintroduce you later. Does that make sense? Because we are not able to hear you well. Okay, so Nancy will get back to you. Send me the presentation. I'll send you my email address and I will help you run it. Okay, I apologize for this. We are moving forward with Ricardo Bastos Areas. Ricardo is the founding partner of Studio Ken that is based in the north of Portugal. They work across multiple building types including in the health care in the industrial sectors. Hi guys, nice to see you all. Thank you Rachele for the introduction. I'm going to go forward to my presentation. Can you all see? Could you see anything? Anything or no? No? No. Leslie, can you troubleshoot this please? The two presenters are not able to share a screen. Let me see. Let me try again. Options are okay. Let me see if you can. Yes. Now you can see? Yes. Okay, so if you're all... So, as I said, my name is Ricardo and after Columbia University when we left school, we stayed in New York, me and my wife Maria for the next two or three years. We came back in 2009 and we started this office called Studio Ken, which is me, Maria and another partner we have in Guimanaj. We have in Portugal, which is Miguel. And so 15 years past, we had through our office like 15 architects going through. It's a very small office or it's a nice office considering Portuguese size, but it's a small office considering Mumbai or New York. So in 15 years, we did about 150 designs and I'm going to show you 15 projects, 15 highlights on the projects that we've done starting from some small range to some other other bigger things, not as big as some projects that we saw already. So the first one I'm going to show you is this mountain cabin that we started doing it from a container ship. And we started cutting it to make this cabin in the woods in the north of Portugal. So the clients just wanted the cabin so they could go spend a weekend in the middle of nowhere. We did another private house and this is another private house within Portugal. The thing that we try to experiment with or we still do is with the materiality and the effect of the material on the context and on the purpose itself. So the other one, as you saw, the cabin, the surface was made out of cork. This one is this private house is based in Aveiro, which is a coastal town in Portugal. And what we did is we had built out of exposed concrete, deactivated exposed concrete that made it look like it was out of sand. This is another project we did, which is a renovation from an old farmhouse in the middle of a vineyard in the mountains also in the north of Portugal. It went from a farmhouse to a five-bedroom, no, seven-bedroom house. You can see the materials are local materials, local stone, concrete, again exposed concrete. Interiors are also exposed concrete floors, very brutal, it's very rough, we could say. Another farmhouse renovation we did. It's another house, it's very close to the seashore also in the north of Portugal where we're based. This was an old house with a factory and with a water mill because it's like in an island. So the chimney you see was from the older factory. For another client, we did Lego house. Lego house, which we started from a software that Lego has. And we started designing it on the software itself that they have it online. So the client said, okay, so then I want to purchase the model. I want to have it fabricated by Lego and have it purchased. So we started working with the model from the Lego software and then it ended up like a private residency project. Then we did a lot of restaurants. I want to show you a couple of ones. This is a restaurant in Porto, the city center of Porto in Portugal, which is a bar and a restaurant, which we transformed a small plot into to make it look like it's a bigger restaurant through the effect of an entire glass wall that doubles the space, as you can see on these pictures. So one of the walls is completely made out of glass. In glass, I mean, not glass, mirror. Another restaurant we did in Braga, another town in Portugal, Japanese restaurant, which was a collaboration with a Japanese artist that actually lives in New York right now. This building is also in the north of Portugal. This is like a, this is a hotel and a senior residence. This was already, we were already working on this project when we were at Columbia at the time. So the materiality, again, this is all clad with copper, non-varnished copper, so it would age with the building itself and being a senior citizen's hotel and residence. It's like a metaphor to the good aging. And we did the competition. It was not really a competition because we were the only competitors, but it was a client in Algeria. And we did this hotel shopping center and housing complex in Algeria when we went from the Algerian memories and the Casbah, the town itself. This was the plot that we had to work with. So this is the final project, which is a big complex with housing shopping center and the hotel. Some other apartments for study, for housing in Portugal. Some sketches. Then we're also working in renovation. This is an old castle in the north of Portugal. As you can see, this river separates Portugal from Spain. On the left side is Spain, right side is Portugal. This is a 700 year old castle fortress that was already a hotel and we are to renovate. It's under renovation now. Or no, we're still working on design development, but it's going to start soon. So this is an old castle and we had to introduce some things, changing inside, modernize it because it was a hotel from the 70s. We also work for food retail surfaces. So this is an example of a food retailer. This is the building under construction right now. This is a motel. We're working also on this project for a client. It's also here in north of Portugal. It's a project we're working on for the public project. It's a healthcare center. We're also working now. It's supposed to be built out of blue concrete. And in the end, you can also do your own house. So this is a project for us. This is an old factory that we renovated, an old storehouse. That me and my wife renovated for ourselves. So this is actually where we live. Also, I have some slides from the heritage that we got from the school and heritage from New York. From the school, we run an art space. We run an art space that has a restaurant, that has a gallery. We work with Yehuda Safran, a former faculty member of Columbia University of GSAPP. And we also got his library in our art center. So he comes here to visit sometimes. He gives lectures. We also participate in a book written by him. Yehuda Safran wrote a piece of work from us. In our art center, we have concerts, dance, performance, exhibitions. And what we inherited from the 6-on-6 at Columbia was also this. Street parties that we do in our building with the artist community and architecture community. Thank you. So I chose to present two interior projects, residential ones. Actually, the one was right after my graduation in 2007. And the other one, 10 years later. They are both of them quite particular because the client's demand, it was a little bit like very unique. So the Rump House, that was actually my first project, a realized project. The client requested a skatable habitat, whereas he could skate. And so I just wanted to make a Rump House and not a house with a Rump. So my goal was the skate element to be adopted in every possible way. And so I imagine the space in which straight lines would become curved and the flat surfaces would become rubs or balls. And aspects of daily life would adopt the feeling of acceleration, which is actually the main element of skateboarding. So the plan is like very simple, since it was like an addition to an already house or was in the top of a building. So the living room becomes a mini Rump and turns into a boat to create a partition with the bedroom and the bathroom. So we see here, like everyday elements, like cooking in the kitchen, can coexist with skating. We see the living room, people hiking out on the balcony. The living room becomes a skating park and behind the wooden Rump is revealed the fireplace and storage places. We see the partition with the bedroom and the bathroom, the fireplace. And actually the highlight of this project, which I'm really proud to get this email from one of the most famous skaters in the whole world, Tony Hawk, as you most have heard of him. So I had an email that he was visiting Greece for vacation and he found that there is this Rump house in Greece somewhere in Athens. So he contacted me and came to the house to skate it. So this was a little video. I hope you can watch it. I don't know if you can see. We found on the internet the Mitzpur house. I'm going to check it out. Here we are, the house of ramps and tractions. I don't think it's been written in the wild. And I'm kind of nervous about the dishes and the classical screens around. But... The administration ten years later was an apartment building that I said we're actually wanting to keep the feeling from the past and also blend elements. So there is a circular movement in the apartment. So this actually, this passage was transformed like a passage through different time periods. It didn't touch anything. It stayed unspoiled with the old wallpaper and the vintage furniture. And then walking into the living room where we kept the same floor. The fireplace was transformed with more modern lines. But we kept the same wood. The shelves were made from the same wood that we found back in the 70s. And then as we walk along the kitchen and dining area, there is this blurry point where the old meets the new. And the modern dominates the scene with a high-end kitchen. While we move into the more private areas of the house where we still find fragments of the past. So the sanitary and the mirror are all kept from the apartment that we found. And so there is this blend between the old and the new. The doors remain the spoil that you see. And also the bell, some parts stayed completely unspoiled. So the goal is that the final scene will keep evolving as the time passes. So that's my two projects with 10 years difference. Okay, thank you. We all want your clients. If you can stop sharing, please. I see myself multiple times. That's better. Thank you. Last but not least, Adriana Jacqui. We're going to try again. Adriana, can you hear me? We're not able to hear you. Adriana, are you there? Yes. Yes, perfect. And I can hear. And I hear myself too. Wow, it's going to be exciting. Okay, so let's see. Anybody ready to can see? Yes, it looks great. Okay. Well, what have I been up to for the last, wow, 15 years? When we left, I left New York. I moved to Detroit, Michigan because as all you know, I'm married. And he had to do residency. So I was kind of dragged to wherever he landed. Also, my story, it has a lot of immigration tied to it because I immigrated from Venezuela and I had to go through many visas to finally get a permanent residence, which took 10 years. I started working at a firm in Detroit then 2008 came, we all got laid off and everybody knows how 2008 went. I had my first kid, which is Julia, which you saw in the pictures, which is now 12. I lived in Washington State, Yakima, and it was a major producer of hops, which is one of the main elements for beer, which and this is a small town, by the way, 100,000 people. And the clients came to me at the time. I did a design build firm. I had a GC license because it wasn't an architect. And what I like to do the most was residential and commercial. I went through the GC licensing route and also because I love to control every aspect. So I had a lot of trades under me and that I had to coordinate. And so this project in particular was a client that was so we made the brewery that you could see it walking out from the street. So it's kind of an entertainment for the city to walk by. This is in the heart of downtown and you could see how here they made all the beers and you could see it through the windows as you pass by and then come in and we'll have a nice drink. Can you still hear me over, Heli? In that sense, I continued on with mostly residential, where I combined procurement of furniture and the tiles and every finish. So my business model became between a retail store, GC, and an architect. But in this country, I can't say a market tech because I'm still not licensed. So I'm an interior designer architect all rolled into one. This was the 4,000 square foot project that had, it was in a full house new build. Then we moved to Miami, Washington, I'm sorry, to Miami, Florida. This is my last project in Yakima, Washington. It was a design center for Lexar. Lexar builds homes and they wanted a design center for design center where they can bring their clients in and have all their finishes in the back and offices to meet their clients. So it's still almost finished. This is some before it got constructed. I'm going to skip this because I'm probably over time. This is Miami, Florida. We moved and I had to start basically from scratch because my network here is not that big. So it takes, as you all know, no time to build. I concentrated more on residential because here I do not have a GC license. I decided to pursue my architect license. So I've been studying for that and I paired up with many wonderful GCs down here. And I also procure furniture in this interior design business. As I was saying, I put all these rooms together with every single accessory and piece that you see in the photos. This was my last project. It was an office space for a branding company. They do marketing of all sorts of things. And they had a very tight, a lot of cubicles for them to work without being stuffy and have a center table for them to put all their graphics out when they needed or extra stations for their interns. I don't know if I'm in the eight minutes for heading out, but this is it. Thanks for the opportunity. It's wonderful to see everybody. It happens when I talk to myself, but thank you, Adriana. And you know, amazing that you work in multiple trades and very impressive. I'm glad that we all are able to participate. We don't have enough time. So basically, we're going to have one question that I hope that as many of you can answer. I guess is what again, the GSAP experience of 2006. What do you feel was the most important thing that you took back home and to build your practice? I can't hear anyone. Rocky or smile. There's an answer there. Can't hear it. Yes. Yes. I have the best thing from Columbia. It was Nicoletta. Come on, no way. Of course, no doubt. I think something great was being exposed to such great talent. Like everyone here, we've seen all the projects, right? And that obviously gives us confidence, you know, that we've been together and we've seen so many ideas come through. So I don't see that, you know, when we're doing projects, we don't stop. I just, I feed off of everyone's energy, everything that I was exposed to, all the conversations we had, the friendships and things. It was really, really good. I remember also to be in downtown with a party and with thinking, okay, I want to go to the school to work. This time in my life, because it was very nice, really, really. And the best thing, a part of Nicoletta, of course, it was the Greek parties. Yes. You know, something that's interesting, it was like a truly an incubator before the term was popular. When we were in school, nobody was talking about an incubator, but that's really what it is. It's a tight space, extremely compact, where you have so many people living there and testing different ideas. And that, you know, creates a friction of interesting things to happen. So I don't think at the time the term incubator was popular, but I think that's really the way I can think of it. The other thing that it was amazing when I look back is the lecture series that we had. And when it was superb, every Wednesday, to see some of, you know, growing up like an idol, you know, like whoever you were thinking of, you could see like, you know, 20 feet away from you. And that kind of in a way demystify the person, like say, think about, I don't know, Januvel, right? We, you know, he was presenting at our school, and he, you know, I know also you see his flaws. It wasn't actually a great presentation, and that's what I like about it. Like you say, hey, this is Januvel, and quite the presentation wasn't something amazing. It was a good presentation, but among others that we had. So we had the ability of having those lecture series that were unbelievable. Sahadid, you name it. Whoever you were thinking that we may have, it was available and there. Not to mention the, you know, the seminars, you know. So the talent, as Steven mentioned, in addition to also the faculty and guests that we had, it was out of this world. Fantastic. Also the last term, the travel, that was amazing. I think what we all have in common, and we still, I mean, at some point, we all stay in touch. We do have a WhatsApp group, either we talk or not, but you're there, you can see, you can talk, you can see where everybody is, what everybody is up to. We're still in touch through Facebook, Instagram, or whatever social network that it's on at the moment. And I think that is one of the great things of Columbia. We just, we created a network of people who actually, it was, you know, it was a connection of things. The year, the people, and then the availability to keep in touch, right? Yeah. I don't know. They got like a few years. Anyone else wants to join a conversation before we end? We have two more minutes. Yeah, I agree with all of them, and I just want to say that mainly, mainly all the connections and all the relationships that we formed while we were there, and the experience with being with each other. I think it was the most we got out of it. Of course, as you saw in my presentation, we got some connections with teachers that come to Portugal, with this library that we got from Yehuda. We got, even we had an exhibition of artists that we met in New York. So all those connections of being in the city and being at Columbia are still going through time. So I think all that makes a big difference. Yeah, I think New York is really important personally for me, the idea of this multicultural experience that got me introduced to all of you, but the city as a whole, the food, the variety of food, the variety of cultural experiences, lectures and galleries and shows, it's all kind of coming together into a really amazing experience. Wow, our session is concluding. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for the panelists. I hope we'll stay in touch. Yeah, thank you for joining us. Thank you, Rekli. Thank you very much. And we'd like to invite everyone to join Sessions 3, which will start at 7 p.m. Eastern Time. And Leslie, if you want to have concluding words. No, I just wanted to say thank you. Thank you so much. And I'm sure that our students and incoming students as well as alumni are enjoying to hear how you have insulated your time at GSAP into your thriving practices today and all the different countries that you practice in the different cities. So thank you so much for sharing. We will be uploading a recording of this and hope to stay in touch with you through either mentorship programs or other ways for you to contribute to life at GSAP. So I'll send an email to all of you following this. Okay, thank you. Thank you. See you at the next session. Thank you. Thank you very much. Bye-bye. Have a nice day over there. It's been nice to meet everybody. All right, thank you. Bye.