Craig Scott lecture reaction - KSU spring 2009 lecture series

This last Thursday, April 2nd, Craig Scott of iwamaotoscott gave a lecture/presentation at the Micheal Schwartz Auditorium at Kent State University.

The lecture happily consisted of much more than a simple traipse through a project portfolio as Scott illustrated not only a series of projects ranging from art installations and large scale masterplan proposals, but also the rigor and trials that exemplified a well thought out and practiced approach.

An aspect that permeated the projects shown was an almost childlike sense of awe at exploiting the constraints of materials. Utilizing digital media to create electronic models, ideas were quickly studied and metrics of evaluation were formed. However, what makes iwamotoscott architects so very interesting is the then deliberate exercise in physically studying the material constraints and exploring the visual and tactile relationship of construction.

From the Voissuir Cloud installation at sci arc (which employed a rigorous structural study and painstaking craft of construction to execute) to the REEF ps1 proposal (which required a half scale model to verify that the inferred material properties would react in a predictable fashion) the love of crafting shines through. Somewhere through their history, Lisa Iwamoto and Craig Scott's desire to discover the pure truths of material exploration has ingrained itself richly within the partner's ideals and it is a testament to the tenacity of the firm that these explorations are so finely executed.

I suggest that greater attention is to be paid to the impetus behind these and other proposed projects including the Ordos 100 villa, Hydro-Net (designed for the History Channel's City of the Future, and the proposal for Battery Park South (whose images should be released soon) for each project, as diverse in construction or scope as possible, rely on a sense of desire to empirically explain the truth of and through materiality and then fashion the proper technique to celebrate it.

Craig Scott Lecture - Kent State University

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...sort of old news as the "happening" has been posted on the Kent Arch College website (danger resizes your browser cause it knows better than you) for a bit now, however it took me a while to get a poster that I could actually reference and verify and glean actual information from such as time and or place. Perhaps Kent State actually would like people to come to these once in a while. Sigh.