The Department of Architecture at Bezalel is seeking to promote an updated and high-quality discourse on architectural thinking and practice. For that end, as part of its series of events and programs, it is planning a central event that will take place at the end of the academic year. During that event, the department will invite leading architects and designers from around the world to discuss their work through a shared theme with both the students and the wider public. The guests are planned to stay for several days in Israel and will take part, as critics, in final student reviews at the department.

This central event, scheduled for the end of June, will provide an opportunity not only to expose the public to the oeuvre of some of the world’s leading practitioners in their professional prime, but also to question and define the boundaries and characteristics of architectural culture in Israel vis-א-vis other geographies.

Format

The programme is built as a two-day event, in which the first day (June 23) is dedicated to reviews at the department in Jerusalem and the second day (June 24) in the morning hours, will be organized around a public panel in which participants will discuss their works in relation to this year’s theme, “realism”.

List of participants

Shohsei Shigematsu (OMA, New York)

Belinda Tato (Ecosistema Urbano, Madrid)

Henry Urbach (SFMOMA, San Francisco)

Shohei Shigematsu is a partner of The Office for Metropolitan Architecture and is currently director of OMA*AMO in New York. He is currently in charge of Cornell University’s new building for the College of Architecture, Art and Planning in Ithaca, NY, a Mixed-use High-rise Building in Jersey City, NJ, and a Residential Tower with CAA (Creative Artist Agency) screening room on 23 East 22nd Street in Manhattan amongst other projects. Shohei Shigematsu was project leader of winning design competitions such as the CCTV Headquarters in Beijing, the Koning Julianaplein Mixed-use Building in The Hague and the Shenzhen Stock Exchange Building. He has been a driving force in conceptual projects such as the Universal Headquarters in Los Angeles, the Whitney Museum Extension in New York, the Tokyo vertical Campus, the China National Museum and Prada Epicenters for Shanghai and London.

Belinda Tato (@belindatato) is a founding member of Ecosistema Urbano (@ecosistema) – is an innovative agency focused on the understanding of the city as a complex phenomenon, from a special point of view between architecture, urbanism, engineering and sociology. The team’s field of interest is defined by something they call `creative urban sustainability, from where to react to the present situation of cities through innovation, creativity and particularly action.

Since 2000, their work has been nationally and internationally awarded in more than 30 occasions. In 2006, they were awarded the prize of the Architectural Association and the Environments, Ecology and Sustainability Research Cluster. In 2007 they received the AR AWARD for emerging architecture in London. In 2008 the first prize NEXT GENERATION AWARD from the Arquia Proxima Foundation and in 2009 the Silver Award Europe from the Holcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction.

Henry Urbach is the Helen Hilton Raiser curator of architecture and design at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Urbach came to SFMOMA from New York, where he owned and directed Henry Urbach Architecture, a gallery of contemporary art and architecture that he founded in 1997. His past curatorial projects, in addition to more than 50 exhibitions at his gallery, include Latent Space at Netherlands Architecture Institute, Rotterdam (2002); 2 x 2 at Apex Art, New York (2004); and Paradise 8 at Exit Art, New York (1999). Henry Urbach Architecture represented and exhibited many important artists and architects, including Aziz + Cucher, Richard Barnes, Marco Brambilla, Stephen Dean, Diller + Scofidio, E. V. Day, Langlands & Bell, An Te Liu, LOT-EK, Le Corbusier, Neal Rock, Lindy Roy, Ezra Stoller, and Lebbeus Woods. Urbach also served on curatorial and advisory panels for Exit Art, Artists Space, the Storefront for Art and Architecture, the Architectural League of New York, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

web: http://www.bezalel.ac.il/en/events/item/?id=1004