HITOSHI ABE
LTDW CHAIR, DIRECTOR OF THE UCLA PAUL I. AND HISAKO TERASAKI CENTER FOR JAPANESE STUDIES, CHAIR OF UCLA DEPARTMENT OF ARCHITECTURE AND URBAN DESIGN, PRINCIPAL OF ATELIER HITOSHI ABE
Since 1992, when Dr. Hitoshi Abe won first prize in the Miyagi Stadium Competition, he has maintained an active international design practice based in Sendai, Japan, as well as a schedule of lecturing and publishing, which place him among the leaders in his field. Known for architecture that is spatially complex and structurally innovative, the work of Atelier Hitoshi Abe has been published internationally and received numerous awards in Japan, including the 2007 World Architecture Award for SSM/Kanno Museum, the 2005 Good Design Award for Sasaki Office Factory for Prosthetics, the 2003 Architectural Institute of Japan Award for Reihoku Community Hall, 2003 Business Week and Architectural Record Award for Sekii Ladies Clinic, 2001 Building Contractors Society Award for Miyagi Stadium, and 1999 Yoshioka Award for Yomiuri Miyagi Guest House. Principal of his own firm, he worked with Coop Himmelblau in Los Angeles from 1988–1992 before founding Atelier Hitoshi Abe in 1993. Some of his key projects located in Japan include the Aoba-tei restaurant and the Sasaki Office Factory for Prosthetics in Sendai, the Miyagi Stadium in Rifu, SSM/Kanno Museum in Shiogama, the 9-tsubo House "Tall" in Kanagawa, and the Reihoku Community Hall in Kumamoto. His most recent works in progress include a departmental building on the New Campus of the Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU) which is currently in design development. A monograph Hitoshi Abe Flicker (TOTO) accompanied an exhibition of his work at the Gallery MA in Tokyo in 2005. His current monograph, Hitoshi Abe, was published by Phaidon in 2009.
HIROKI AZUMA
Writer and critic. Born in 1971 in Tokyo. Obtained a doctoral degree from the University of Tokyo Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in 1999. Awarded the Suntory Prize for Social Sciences and Humanities in 2000 and the Yukio Mishima prize in 2009. He has been serving several positions including Professor at Waseda University, Professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Tokyo, and Vice-Chairman at the Center for Global Communications in the International University of Japan. Attracting attention as a critic of a new era supported by a generation of young Japanese, he established the limited liability company Contectures LLC in 2010 to start publishing Shisouchizu beta. He is the author of many books in Japanese. Publications in English include Otaku: Japan’s Database Animals (University of Minnesota Press, 2009, original title Doubutsu-ka Suru Posutomodan). This book has also been translated into French, Italian, Korean and Chinese (planned).
MASATAKA BABA
Born in Saga prefecture in 1968, Masataka Baba graduated from Waseda University Graduate School of Architecture in 1994. After working for the advertising agency Hakuhodo, he returned to Waseda University for a doctoral candidacy in Architecture. Baba served as an editor-in-chief for the magazine 『A』. In 2002, he founded his own practice, Open A, and is involved in architectural design, urban/city planning, and writing. Recent works include THE NATURAL SHOE STORE as well as the Baba House and Annex in Bosou. He also leads Real Tokyo Estate, a web service that explores urban vacancies.
BENJAMIN H. BRATTON
Benjamin H. Bratton is sociological, media, and design theorist. He is Associate Professor of Visual Arts at the University of California, San Diego, and Director of the Center for Design & Geopolitics at the California Institute of Telecommunications and Information Technology, one of the premier applied research institutes in the application of supercomputing and very-large scale data visualization across the sciences, humanities and social sciences.
His work sits at the intersections of contemporary social and political theory, computational media & infrastructure, and architectural & urban design problems and methodologies. Current research interests include: the philosophical problematics of the interfaciality, digital urbanism & media architecture, contemporary continental philosophy & aesthetic theory, institutional technology transfer protocols and platforms, design research management & methodologies, classical and contemporary sociological theory, history of the social sciences, organizational theory, and interaction and interface design.Bratton has lectured widely, and is the author of many articles, book chapters, in both academic and popular publications.
Bratton has published widely, from AD:Architectural Design and Volume to BlackBook and Theory, Culture & Society, and has been an visiting lecturer and critic at Columbia, Pratt, Yale, Architectural Association of London, Penn, USC, UCLA, Art Center College of Design, Michigan, Brown, the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, among others. He was also co-chair of ambient:interface, the 54th (and final) International Aspen Design Conference.
He is a frequent advisor and consultant to public and private organizations. He is the former Director of the Advanced Strategies Group at Yahoo! in Sunnyvale and Burbank, CA, and former Director of Information Architecture at Razorfish in Los Angeles and New York. As principal of The Culture Industry, a strategic research and planning consultancy he has developed projects with Motorola, Microsoft, Imaginary Forces, the U.S. Conference of Mayors, among others. He splits time between Los Angeles and La Jolla with his partner, Bruna Mori and their son, Lucien.
RENE DAALDER
Rene Daalder has written and directed 6 feature films as well as numerous television and music related projects in Europe, the US and Canada. Often operating at the cutting edge of his medium and heavily involved with Academy Award winning special effects, software development and Grammy nominated music projects, Daalder has gained worldwide recognition as a pioneer of digital technologies.
Among his many other activities, Daalder has curated critically acclaimed art exhibits in California and Europe, lectured at universities and art schools in America and Europe, and written numerous essays on the future of digital cinema, the web, computers, art and architecture for major publications.
JOE DAY
Joe Day is a designer and architectural theorist in Los Angeles, where he leads Deegan-Day Design LLC and serves on the design and history/theory faculty at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc). In the spring of 2012, Day will teach at Yale School of Architecture as the Louis I. Kahn Visiting Chair. Deegan-Day Design explores the merger of new design methods and advanced projection technologies. Many designs map and reconfigure the fast-evolving visual 'economies' of privacy, surveillance, exhibition and display. Current projects include a Media Center at Columbia College Hollywood and residential work throughout southern California. He recently contributed a new foreword (to complement one by Anthony Vidler) to the 2009 edition of Reyner Banham's seminal study,Los Angeles: Architecture of the Four Ecologies (University of California Press, 2009).
NEIL DENARI
Neil Denari is an architect and principal of Neil M. Denari Architects (NMDA, Inc.), a globally recognized company based in Los Angeles. He studied at the University of Houston and Harvard University, and is a Professor at UCLA. Among many awards he has received, Denari was inducted into the Interior Design Hall of Fame and in 2009 was given a Fellowship from the United States Artists organization and in 2008, an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. At present, his office is engaged with projects of various scales in the US, Eastern Europe, and Asia. Denari is the author of two bestselling books, Interrupted Projections (TOTO 1996) and Gyroscopic Horizons (Princeton 1999). He is currently working on Speculations On, his forthcoming book to be released in 2011.
Neil M. Denari Architects is dedicated to exploring the worlds of architecture, design, urbanism, and global cultural phenomenon. Our award-winning office is based in Los Angeles and New York, and has been working across multiple continents since 1988, designing at all scales for a variety of clients and conditions. We seek out projects that demand new and innovative solutions to the complex issues facing the world today.
ELIZABETH DILLER
Elizabeth Diller is a founding principal of Diller Scofidio + Renfro, an interdisciplinary design studio that integrates architecture, the visual arts, and the performing arts. DS+R’s projects include the Lincoln Center expansion and renovation, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, the High Line in New York, the Museum of Image and Sound in Rio de Janeiro, the Blur Building in Switzerland, the Broad Museum in Los Angeles, and the recently awarded Columbia University Business School. DS+R are recipients of the MacArthur Foundation ‘genius’ award, the National Design Award from the Smithsonian, the Brunner Prize from the American Academy of the Arts and Letters, and numerous AIA awards. They are fellows of the Royal Institute of British Architects have been inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2003, the Whitney Museum of American Art held a retrospective of the studio’s work, recognizing DS+R’s unorthodox practice. Ms. Diller is a Professor of Architecture at Princeton University.
TIM DURFEE
Tim Durfee leads an interdisciplinary architectural practice based in Los Angeles, and directs amp: Projects in Media and Architecture, an initiative he founded last year within the Graduate Media Design program (MDP) at Art Center College of Design that experiments with new modes of research, expression, and application of ideas of contemporary relevance. Before joining the MDP in 2009, Durfee was on the core architectural design faculty and director of Visual Studies at SCI-Arc. He is a member of the noise ensemble Health & Beauty.
Durfee’s perspective on architecture as part of a social and cultural continuum, including and beyond built form, is rooted in his background in critical writing, experimental interface design, digital media, architecture, and exhibitions (with DurfeeRegn and Durfee Regn Sandhaus he has produced award-winning exhibition designs and installations for many museums including LACMA, The Hammer and The International Center of Photography.)
Projects, publications, and performances in 2011 include: design of new permanent galleries and exhibitions at Banning Museum and private residential projects (with Iris Anna Regn); with amp (then known as “LikeNow”) curated exhibition MADE UP: Design’s Fictions, and currently co-authoring a book of the same title (with Anne Burdick); installation “The Rather Large Array” featured in Wallpaper highlight of new American architecture; poster design for “A Few Zines” featured in upcoming edition of Design and Culture; collaboration on production with the David Dorfman Dance Company in New York; performances with Health & Beauty at SCI-Arc, Otis College, Ed Freeman Gallery, and A+D Museum; installations and drawings exhibited at Las Cienegas Projects, PDC/Superfront Gallery, WUHO Gallery, and Shoshana Wayne Gallery; work published in the book Art, Architecture, Pedagogy: Experiments in Learning, arCA Magazine, LA Times, BLDGBLOG, Abitare, Herman Miller Lifework, and The Architects’ Newspaper.
SOU FUJIMOTO
Graduated from the University of Tokyo, Faculty of Engineering, Department of Architecture in 1994 and established Sou Fujimoto Architects, in Tokyo in 2000.
He has won the awards for the following:
Spotlight: The Rice Design Alliance Prize (2010)
Wallpaper Design Awards 2009 – Best New Private House (Final Wooden House)
World Architectural Festival 2008 – Private House Category Winner (Final Wooden House)
Japanese Institute of Architecture Grand Prize 2008 (Children’s Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation)
AR Awards 2006 “Grand Prize” (Children’s Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation)
Sou Fujimoto's featured projects include:
-Dalarna Library Project (Dalarna, Sweden / 2010 - Present)-Contemporary Art Museum Project (Shanghai, China / 2010 - Present) -Pavilion Project (Cologne, Germany / 2010 - Present)
-Private Art Museum Project (South France / 2009 - Present)
-Musashino Art University Museum & Library (Tokyo, Japan / 2010)
-House before House (SUMIKA project with Tokyo GAS) (Tochigi, Japan / 2008)
-House N (Oita, Japan / 2008)
-Final Wooden House (Kumamoto, Japan / 2008)
-Children’s Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation (Hokkaido, Japan / 2006)
BEN HOOKER
Ben Hooker is a multimedia artist and designer who divides his time between creative practice, consultancy, and teaching. His work explores new experiences and aesthetic situations which arise from the intermingling of the phenomenal and intangible worlds of physical materiality and electronic data. As daily life contains ever more windows into electronic virtual spaces, and virtual realities increasingly occupy our minds, he is interested in envisioning how bespoke systems, materials, spaces, objects can enable idiosyncratic lifestyles that rely on a more profoundly blurred distinction between physical and telematic boundaries. Hooker is Associate Professor at Art Center College of Design's graduate Media Design Program. Before joining Art Center, he was visiting faculty at Intel Research in Berkeley. Previously he was based in London where he taught graphic and interaction design in London at Central Saint Martins College and at the Royal College of Art.
MACHIKO KUSAHARA
Machiko Kusahara is a scholar in media art, digital media culture and media history. She is a professor at Waseda University, Tokyo, and holds a Ph. D. in Engineering from University of Tokyo for her theoretical study on interplay between media culture, technology, art and society.
She came into the field of digital media in early 1980s as a curator, critic and theorist in computer graphics and digital art. Since then she curated, organized, gave lectures and wrote internationally in media art and digital culture, serving as a jury for SIGGRAPH, Ars Electronica, ISEA, Japan Media Arts Festival, International Animation Festival Hiroshima, among many others. She was also involved in launching Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography and NTT InterCommunication Center in Tokyo.
Currently Prof. Kusahara’s major activities are on two related fields: Device Art and Japanese history of visual entertainment from the 19th century. Device Art is a project that focuses on developing and theorizing a new form of media art that connects art, technology, design and products, with five-year grant from JST (Japan Science and Technology Agency). In the field of media history her research topics include magic lantern (utsushi-e) and panorama among others. The interplay between art, technology, culture and society has been the theme of her research.
Her major publications in English include: “Telerobotics and Art -Presence, Absence, and Knowledge in Telerobotics Art” (The Robot in the Garden, MIT Press 2000), “From Ukiyo-e to Mobile Phone Screens - A Japanese Perspective” (Migrating Images, House of World Cultures, 2004), ” They Are Born to Play: Japanese Visual Entertainment from Nintento to Mobile Phones” (Art Inquiry, 2004), “Panorama Craze in Meiji Japan” (Panorama Phenomenon, Mesdag Panorama, 2006), “Device Art: A New Approach in Understanding Japanese Contemporary Media Art” (MediaArtHistories, MIT Press, 2007), “Device Art: Media Art Meets Mass Production” (Digital by Design, Thames and Hudson, 2008), “A Turning Point in Japanese Avant-garde Art: 1964 – 1970” (Place Studies in Art, Media, Science and Technology, VDG Weimer), ““We Will Open the Panorama-kan”: The Beginning of the ‘Panorama Craze’ in Meiji Japan” (The Panorama in the Old World and the New, International Panorama Council, 2010), “The “Baby Talkie,” Domestic Media, and the Japanese Modern” (Media Archaeology, UC Press, 2011), “Assembling Art, Design, Technology and Media Culture: The Challenge of Japanese Device Art” (Coded Cultures, Springer, 2011).
SYLVIA LAVIN
Sylvia Lavin is Professor of Architectural History and Theory in the Department of Architecture and Urban Design at UCLA. Her most recent book, Kissing Architecture, was just published by Princeton University Press. A leading figure in current debates, Lavin is known both for her scholarship and for her criticism. She is working on her next book, The Flash in the Pan and Other Forms of Architectural Contemporaneity and a series of exhibitions on design culture of the late 1960s. Her Form Follows Libido: Architecture and Richard Neutra in a Psychoanalytic Culture was published by the MIT Press in 2005. Ms. Lavin is the recipient of a 2011 Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
QINGYUN MA
DEAN OF THE USC School of Architecture
Qingyun Ma was named dean of the USC School of Architecture and holder of USC's Della and Harry MacDonald Dean's Chair in Architecture effective January 2007. After practicing architecture with Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates in New York City, Dean Ma founded the Shanghai architectural firm MADA s.p.a.m. (for strategy, planning, architecture and media) in 1996, creating award-winning projects such as the Longyang Residential complex in Shanghai and the Silk Tower in Xian. He also coordinated Rem Koolhaas's first Harvard Project on Cities, which yielded the 1993 book The Great Leap Forward. The two collaborated on the Central China TV headquarters in Beijing and the Stock Exchange Building in Shenzhen as well. Dean Ma’s other buildings include Qingpu Community Island in Shanghai, Centennial TV and Radio Center in Xian and Tianyi City Plaza in Ningpo. His work has been exhibited around the world, and his honors include a Design Vanguard award from Architectural Record, Phaidon's Emerging Design Talents designation and a New Trends of Architecture designation by the Euro-Asia Foundation. Dean Ma has served as a visiting professor and critic at Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University as well as at ETH in Zurich, Switzerland; Berlage Institute in the Netherlands; Universität Karlsruhe and Berlin Technical University in Germany; and the École Speciale d’Architecture in Paris.
NICHOLAS DE MONCHAUX
Nicholas de Monchaux is an architect and urbanist whose work examines the intersections of nature, technology, and the city. de Monchaux’s design work and criticism have been published widely, including in Architectural Design, Log, 306090, the New York Times, and The New York Times Magazine, and have been supported by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and the Macdowell Colony. He is the author of Spacesuit: Fashioning Apollo (MIT Press, 2011), an architectural history of the Apollo 11 Spacesuit. He is currently Assistant Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at UC Berkeley.
And Many More!!!