Collection Overview
Curator's Statement
Internationally renowned speakers announced for ‘Building the Impossible: Architecture in Motion’
Retractable roofs, movable sports fields, screens that follow the sun, movable fences, interactive sculptures and toys and even the jetways that meet your plane: All were once impossible dreams, but no more. This “architecture in motion” is the topic of upcoming symposia and an exhibit at the University of St. Thomas.
Internationally renowned architect and educator Dr. Peter Eisenman, designer of the new Arizona Cardinals stadium and the Berlin Holocaust memorial, will give a keynote address to open the symposia at 6 p.m. Wednesday, March 2, in O’Shaughnessy Educational Center auditorium. A seven-member panel of engineers, architects and designers from all over the country will give presentations at a professionals’ symposium March 3, and University of St. Thomas students in art history and engineering will give presentations at a student symposium March 4 on the topic, “Building the Impossible: Architecture in Motion,” in O’Shaughnessy Educational Center auditorium on the St. Thomas campus in St. Paul.
The symposia accompany an exhibition of architectural drawings, photographs and models that cover the history of kinetic architecture -- buildings that move -- and the merger of architecture and technology that makes them possible. The exhibit will be on display from Monday, Feb. 28, through Monday, April 4, in the lobby gallery of O’Shaughnessy Educational Center. Works also will be displayed in Room 102 of nearby O’Shaughnessy-Frey Library Center.
Professional symposium panelists, who will give presentations from 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Thursday, March 3, include:
Michael Fox, architect and founder of the Kinetic Design Research Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and principal at theOcean Design Collaborative in Venice, Calif.
Larry Griffis, engineer and president of the Austin, Texas-based Structures Division of theWalter P. Moore engineering firm, which has won numerous awards for its projects, including, among others, a 2003 Honor Award from the American Council of Engineering Companies for Reliant Stadium in Houston, Texas.
John Kissinger, engineer and vice president ofGraef, Anhalt, Schloemer & Associates Inc., a leading U.S. engineering consulting firm located in Milwaukee, Wis. Kissinger’s large-scale project management experience includes the internationally acclaimed Milwaukee Art Museum.
Chuck Hoberman, founder ofHoberman Associates, a New York City firm that designs and builds “transforming” structures that smoothly transform their size and shape and appear in toy stores, museums and public spaces around the world. He designed theHoberman Arch, a centerpiece for the 2002 Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City. Other high-profile commissions have included a retractable dome for Expo 2000, the world’s fair in Hanover, Germany, and the Hoberman Sphere, a kinetic sculpture at Liberty Science Center in New Jersey.
Don Krantz, chief technology officer ofMTS Systems Corp. in Eden Prairie, Minn. MTS is a global supplier of testing products that help customers accelerate and improve their design, development and manufacturing processes. Civil engineers call on MTS to test the mechanical properties, strength and durability of a wide variety of structures from bridges and buildings to dams and roadways.
Joan Soranno, design principal with Minneapolis-based architectural firmHammel, Green & Abrahamson. Her latest work includes the Bigelow Chapel at United Theological Seminary in New Brighton; it was named one of the 10 best building designs in Minnesota last year by the Minnesota chapter of the American Institute of Architects.
Frank Worms, architect with Minneapolis-basedUni-Systems Inc., a leader in motion technology. Uni-Systems’ first retractable roof system was commissioned in 2000 for the Houston Astros’ home stadium, Minute Maid Park. The roof system covers an area of 6.5 acres, opens or closes in 12 minutes, weighs 9,000 tons and has 140 steel wheels.
Student symposium panelists, who will give presentations from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday, March 4, include:
Sarah Campbell, UST graduate student in art history, “Building Movable Bridges”
Nicole Watson, UST graduate student in art history, “The Nature of Kinetic Architecture: How Human and Plant Physiology Provide Mechanical and Aesthetic Inspiration for the Design of Movable Structures”
Kara ZumBahlen, UST graduate student in art history, “Building With Bytes: The Impact of Computer-Aided Design (CAD) on Kinetic Architecture”
Anna Jungbauer, UST undergraduate, “The Milwaukee Art Museum: The City Takes Flight”
Emily Place, UST undergraduate, “Standstill Movement: The Use of Architecture to Express Movement in the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center”
Michael Bindert, Caroline Engel, John Henderson, Pao Lor and Paul Venable, UST School of Engineering students, poster session on “Visualization of the Kinematics of the Hoberman Sphere”
Justin Gauthier, Henrik Impola, Kathleen McNulty, Jerry Murphy, Daniel Olsen, Donika Pentcheva and Stefan Yanovsky, UST School of Engineering students, poster session on “CAD and Rapid Prototyping in Architecture.”