Agenda

10:00 - 11:30

TAG-23 Opening: Architecture that Endures: “The 2073 Architecture Awards”

• Session Presenters: Column Mulhern, Craig Hamilton, Duncan Stroik, Hugh Petter, John Simpson, Mark Wilson-Jones, Nir Buras, Pablo Alvarez Funes, Phil Esocoff, Roger Jackson, Roger Jackson, Ruben Hanssen, Milly Main.

Not since the Classical Councils of the early 2000s has a traditional architecture or urbanism event focused on larger projects and the firms most likely to impact the public realm in the long term. The focus of this opening session is devoted to buildings built recently that will look good in 50 years. Following a short presentation of the recent Sydney is Beautiful Competition, the panel will exhibit exemplary work, recognizing that time, use, patina, and weathering that increase attractiveness elevate human well-being and the potential for adaptive reuse.

11:45 - 12:45

Day 1 Keynote: An Essential Portfolio: Towards a Reconstructive & Philological

• Session Presenter: Lucien Steil

The challenges we face today include war, disruptions to democracy, pandemic, and climate change. These directly impact the built environment. When contemplating building a better, more equitable, more beautiful and more diverse world, Léon Krier’s call to a moral and ecological task of reconstruction is crucial, fundamental, and essential. As a teacher and practitioner, Lucien Steil considers the whole body of his work as ‘didactic’. It combines to define best practice as a whole in terms of the architect’s particular commitment to the ideals of ‘Good Life’ as guiding principles of an ethical, creative and fertile ‘Vita Activa’. He identifies in his talk the balance between the practical and artistic, the intellectual and poetic, the theoretical and pedagogical, insisting that both design and construction have to be equally informed and enhanced with such algorithmic ideals. This session discusses the challenges, the scenarios, and the toolkits for enduring fabric.

13:00 - 14:00

The Future of Architectural Education

• Session Presenters: Joseph Jutras and Nadia Everard

A beautiful environment is essential to human wellbeing. Beauty is complex, but it is essential for the architect and designer to understand. An architect equipped with this knowledge can make informed and discretionary choices in selecting appropriate design elements for the best health, safety, and welfare outcomes. Traditional design education focuses on generating designs from the desired experience of the people who make use of the space within the science of human responses as well as historic precedent towards making beautiful architecture. The multifold environmental, social, cultural, and economic concerns and issues are addressed head on by programs that focus on delivering holistic approaches, concepts, tools, and philosophies. A critical analysis of the current architectural education and pedagogy landscape indicates the necessity to reshape it to more relevant and useful for the 21st century challenges than what standard professional curricula provide.

14:00 - 15:00

Original Green and Roman Construction

• Session Presenters: Steve Mouzon and Matthew Bronski

Steve Mouzon (The Original Green) and Matthew Bronski (engineer expert on ancient Roman construction materials and methods) discuss the relevance to contemporary design and construction the traditional and sustainable construction methodologies and in architecture. Architects have to take leadership in promoting sustainable, healthy design. Obviously, training the next generation of architects is directly germane to the public welfare. Architects have to know to specify design standards and materials and systems that at the very least support a healthy environment and individual mental and physical wellbeing. They have to be educated to avoid materials and techniques— however innovative—which are known to damage the environment, are heavy users of energy in their production, and extremely costly in their maintenance. Anything reducing public stress and increasing sustainability on this planet is centrally benefits the public good.

15:15 - 16:45

21st Century Fabric and Urbanism

• Session Presenters: Phillip Esocoff,  John Simpson, and  Raymond Loïc Chan

This session engages equally weighted experts in an open discussion among peers. International architects, they share how they have generated measurable and predictable outcomes in their work. Their shared mission is the making of Good Places, “kalotopias” as opposed to “dystopias”. The best places benefit the public as they interact with the man-made world. The importance of a holistic understanding of the mind, spirit, and physical self is emphasized, as well as the benefits of multidisciplinary collaboration. Phil Esocoff (Washington DC), John Simpson (London) and Raymond Loïc Chan (Paris) discuss and compare the poetics of fabric in the service of community building—making beautiful and meaningful places and spaces.

10:15 - 11:15

Day 2 Keynote: The Re-Creational Dialog: Today's Challenging Realities

• Session Presenter: Philip Esocoff, FAIA

After the heroic beginning of the modernist movement, disregard for human experience and having all its eggs in the technological basket make it analogous to a ship at sea without a rudder. Today we know that recent design promotes anxiety and masks strangeness and “WOW” as progress, while actively working against beauty. On the backdrop of the exigencies of pandemic and global warming, Washington, DC architect Phil Esocoff FAIA re-creates a genuine dialogue to support human community, thriving in life, and human well-being in the built environment. Esocoff presents significant design at the intersection of the construction methodologies and its Height Act in Washington. The use of flat plate post tensioned concrete structural systems that it drives, combined with the allowance to project forward of the front property line will be explained. How to use this allowance in creative ways to enrich the character and quality of the public realm will be explained and illustrated.

11:15 - 13:15

Deep Green – 21st Century Well-Being

• Session Presenters: Alejandro Garcia Hermida, Colum Mulhern, Passiv Haus, Cory Rouillard, and Steve Tilly; Vetter Stone.

An international panel of architects, designers, urban planners, and craftspeople who practice around the world discuss their work to promote sustainability, local context, tradition, technology, and trades through their professional practice of design and construction. The ascent of Passiv Haus and New Traditionalism from fringe to establishment is noted, along with the opportunities for adapting many of its principles world-wide. Such efforts have already established a supportive academic and professional context for regional technology, design heritage and skills development . Topics will cover the intersection of designand the building arts; the place of craftsmanship in the Machine Age, traditional passive solar adaptations and their usefulness today, the Passiv Haus playbook, and the Christopher Alexander playbook.

13:25 - 14:25

"5-Ring Architectural Neuroscience Circus"

• Session Moderator: Ann Sussman
• Session Presenters: Alexandros Lavedas, Nir Buras, Aenne Brielmann, and Michael Mehaffy

While most architects are oblivious to neuroscience developments, the car companies have been applying the research results for some decades now. This session discusses the latest research on neuroscience and evidence-based design in architecture. Architect and researcher Ann Sussman presents using modern eye-tracking software to analyze the human unconscious response to architectural facades and urban settings. Such software is used effectively by marketers and can be an asset to the architectural profession in designing attractive spaces. Alexandros Lavdas will discuss his ground-breaking research on VAS analysis. Prof. Richard Tylor of the University of Oregon will discuss the implications of the fact that memory is locational. Max Planck Institute researcher Aenne Brielmann will discuss the hand-eye-brain nexus and suggest its applicability in architecture and construction. Architect and author Dr. Nir Buras will bring for the first time in public new research.

14:25 - 15:55

Fabric in Motion: Create Streets, Port Grimaud, Penn Station, Cayala

• Session Moderator: Maria Sanchez (Cayala)
• Session Presenters: Robert Kwolek (Create Streets), Damu Radashuar and Cezar Nicolaescu (Rebuild Penn Station), Bernard Durand-Rival (Val D’Europe).

A new generation of architects are returning to their cultural and locational roots for inspiration. The “New Traditionalists” offer fresh perspectives with a primary focus on the human experience in architecture. They consider architecture to be a holistic discipline, strongly integrated from the urban scale to the details of construction. This community of designers are cosmopolitan and diverse, favoring a plurality of local traditions over an “international style”. New Traditional principles offer the promise of innovative architecture which sustains diverse local traditions. It promotes human-scale built environments for increased human wellbeing, safety, and performance.

16:00 - 16:50

AI and the Future of Architecture

• Session Moderator: Nikos Salingaros
• Session Panel: Zac Kane, Johan Recen

A new challenging dilemma has emerged: Architecture by people or by computation machines? This session focuses on a discussion to understand the arguments for both. Do traditional methods matter if modern technology can produce design by way of automation? Is computer-driven and machine made just the same because someone somewhere has to plan it and execute it? Is there a discernable difference? Does one mean more than the other? Is there a cost difference? Do people still know how to do this kind of work? Architects and their projects are now challenged by BIM, chatbots, AI-design programs, and other type of automation. But what is the real challenge in light of science repeatedly pointing to the facts that traditional forms still make the most holistic buildings and spaces for people? Without negating any technology per se, this session discusses the value and meaning of human-wrought design as opposed to computer-driven machine-made work.

16:50 - 17:50

Leading-Edge Architectural Training: Educational Intent and Design Results

• Session Moderator: Pablo Alvarez Funes
• Session Presenters: Ruben Hanssen and Flavio Diaz Miron (Utrecht Summer School), Nadia Everard (Table Ronde d'Architecture), AGHermida (INTBAU Spain).

For the world to bring human well-being back to the center of architectural and urban design, it requires an education the does just that – teaching of materials and methods that support this theme and the wielding of architecture and design to improve the human condition. This session will discuss current trends in architectural education and contrast the “usual” education in modernist-based schools, and the education available in the new traditional architecture-based educational programs. We’ll celebrate the latest achievements by a group of outstanding students.

11:00 - 12:00

Day 3: Celebrating Founders: Foundational Algorithms for 21st Century Fabric

• Session Moderator: Nir Buras
• Session Presenters: Leon Krier, Robert Adam, James Stevens Curl, Andres Duany and Lizz Palter- Zyberk, Richard Cameron, Anne Fairfax, Richard Sammons.

The New Traditional movement was initiated by Henry Hope Reed in the US and kept alive by its union with the Institute of Classical Architecture, founded by Donald Rattner, Richard Cameron, Anne Fairfax, and Richard Sammons in New York. In continental Europe and internationally, Leon Krier more than anyone led the traditional architecture and urbanism movement. Robert Adam has led it in the UK; and Prof. James Stevens Curl. Back in the US, Andres Duany and Lizz Plater-Zyberk have been the central figures of the Congress for the New Urbanism, the first US organization to address planning and urbanism from a humanistic perspective. Together, these individuals are among the most notable to have carried the torch promoting the best environments for human well-being since World War II.

12:00 - 13:00

Young Leadership Meets the Challenges of the 21st Century

• Session Moderator: Maria Sanchez (Cayala)
• Session Presenters: Nadia Everard (La Table Ronde de l’ Architecture, Belgium), , Michael Diamant (Architecture Uprising, Sweden), Ruben Hanssen (Aesthetic City, Netherlands), , Milly Main (Street Level, Australia), Alejandro Garcia Hermida (INTBAU Spain).

New and emerging voices are working around the world to foster and continue the vision of a beautiful, sustainable, and equitable built environment. These young practitioners are the people who will take us into the future. The “New Traditionalists” offer fresh perspectives with a primary focus on the human experience in architecture. Architecture is considered as a holistic discipline, strongly integrated from the urban scale to the details of construction. This community of designers is cosmopolitan and diverse, favoring a plurality of local traditions over an “international style”. Attention is paid to the use of local, low-tech, sustainable materials in the development of authentic regional architecture.

13:00 - 15:00

Closing Keynote: Why Ornament Matters: Lecture and Response Panel

• Session Presenter: Witold Rybczynski (U Penn)
• Session Panel: Dan Morales, David Andreozzi, Elizabeth McNichols, Matthew Bell, Phil Esocoff, Alexandros Lavdas, Nir Buras.

While writing his book The Story of Architecture (Yale University press, 2023) Prof. Witold Rybczynski recalled that ornament has always had a central role in architecture. Though not a prescriptive lecture, Prof. Rybczynski’s talk suggests that ornament is not simply a frill, but that it rather adds important dimensions to a building. The second part of the session will consist of a panel which further bridges the contemporary understanding of ornament with the its rich, utilitarian past—and inspirational future.

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TAG is a free event open to all. Help fund it with a minimum donation of $25 - $100; ideally $250 - $500