COLUMBIA ATELIER
After three years of brainstorming, coordinators and committees Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP) together with Arch. Asaf Gottesman is creating a new program that will be located at Columbia’s European Global Center at Reid Hall in Paris and will focus upon the potential of the architect as an artist.
The program will challenge the basic premise that architects offer a service rather than a product and will investigate through master classes, accompanying lectures and workshops the means by which architects may expand their own creative careers. Within the scope of the program will be an investigation of the state-of-the-art architectural and artistic fabrication technologies and how the boundaries that currently define Architecture within the marketplace can be expanded to integrate both the commercial and cultural domains of the art world.
The Paris Atelier Program will begin on the 3rd of June for a period of six weeks and will enable students to work with the remarkable architecture/artist Tomas Saraceno. The workshop will include guest speakers from within various domains of the Parisian Art world including museum, municipal and independent curators, gallery owners, auctioneers, dealers, journalists, art critics, bloggers, managers of art foundations, as well as, art collectors. The workshop will culminate in a symposium and an exhibition. After the exhibition, an annual Publication will be created at Columbia University that will become part of a larger publication at the end of the five-year initial study.
A vital aspect of architectural education is the study of the act of making. The Paris Atelier Program is designed to explore the role of the architect as a critical maker, a designer and an artist. The Program will foster research into the relationship between architectural production (both traditional and experimental) and allied artistic endeavors. It will also address the roles of architects, artists and designers within society & the marketplace and how architects may benefit from adopting additional roles. The Program’s primary target audience will be architectural students & practicing architects who are looking to broaden their creative potential either within the marketplace or within an advanced architectural degree program.
Columbia GSAPP is well known for its leadership role in driving the industry-wide shift to a Paperless Studio in the 1990s. What began, for example, as an experiment in educational methodology in architecture school quickly transformed the entire industry. The digital design studio that pervades the industry today was born at Columbia GSAPP.
The aim of the Paris Atelier Program is to set a pattern in place for a new educational model that will contribute to an expansion of the field of architecture and contribute to a new educational program with an international reach that will broaden the way architects address the scope and nature of the architectural profession and in particular its relationship to the Art World.
This post is also available in: Hebrew