News & Events 12/2004

December 2, 2004
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.-World-renowned architect Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas will speak in Stirn Auditorium at Amherst College at 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Dec. 8. His talk and a reception to follow at the Mead Art Museum are free and open to the public.

One the world's preeminent architects, Koolhaas is a professor in practice of architecture and urban design at Harvard University, where he conducts the Project on the City, which researches the effects of modernization on the contemporary city. In 2000 he received the Pritzker Architecture Prize, architecture's most prestigious international award.

In 1975 he founded the Office for Metropolitan Architecture in London (OMA), which created the Netherlands Embassy in Berlin, a campus center at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, the Public Library in Seattle and the Prada Epicenter in Los Angeles. Currently, OMA is engaged in its largest project ever: headquarters for China Central Television (CCTV) in Beijing, to be completed in time for the 2008 Olympic Games.

A former journalist and screenwriter, Koolhaas studied at the Architectural Association in London and was a Harkness fellow with O. M. Ungers at Cornell University. Koolhaas has taught at the University of California at Los Angeles, Columbia University and the Architectural Association and has been a visiting design critic and juror at universities worldwide. His books include Delirious New York: a Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan (1978), S, M, L, XL (1995) and Content (2004).

The President's Initiative Fund for the Urban Imagination, the Georges Lurcy Charitable and Education Trust, the Mead Art Museum and the Departments of European Studies, Fine Arts and German at Amherst College are sponsoring Koolhaas's talk.

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December 10, 2004
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.-Uwe Steven Brandes will speak on "Memorials and the Urban Landscape: The Anacostia Waterfront Initiative" on Monday, Dec.13, at 4:30 p.m. in the Pruyne Lecture Hall (Fayerweather 115) at Amherst College. The lecture, the second in a series on "The Urban Imagination" that began last week with architect Rem Koolhaas, is free and open to the public.

Brandes is an urban designer specializing in the expansion of the public realm of cities. He is currently project manager for the Anacostia Waterfront Initiative, a partnership between more than a dozen federal agencies and the District of Columbia to recapture the shores of the Anacostia River in Washington, D.C. Brandes has held teaching positions at Harvard University and the Pratt Institute, and has lectured widely on urban design and public space topics. He will speak on Washington's recently constructed memorials and its rapidly transforming public realm, and explore the necessity to redefine the relationship between commemorative works, public open space and urban redevelopment in the nation's capital.

The President's Initiative Fund for the Urban Imagination, the Eastman Lecture Fund and the Department of German at Amherst College are sponsoring Brandes's talk.

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