DISCUSSION: Saturday, Sept 20th, Greene Gallery, 1-3pm.

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“PRACTICE MATTERS”

On Saturday September 20 2014, the Rensselaer Positions Series inaugural event “Practice Matters” took place in the Greene Gallery, with New York City-based architect Bika Rebek contributing her unique insight to the discussion as a guest speaker. The topic “Practice Matters” encouraged participants and observers to examine critically the current state of architectural practice, its future, and the ways in which it can be improved upon.

Allison Clark (M. Arch I) kicked off the event with a look into the role academia plays in preparing aspiring architects for their futures as practitioners in the field. She placed a special emphasis on the exchange between experience gained in the academic realm and how it can be extrapolated and transferred to correlate the skills needed in a professional setting. Carlos Felix (B. Arch.), Rensselaer NOMAS Chapter President, focused on diversity issues embedded in the profession. He addressed the underrepresentation of women and minority groups in the workplace, and provided strategies to attempt to resolve said issues. Miguel Lantigua-Inoa (B. Arch.) examined the roles of alternative architectural practices and their ability to engage areas uncommon to mainstream practice, and argued that an education in architecture should be seen as much more than a prerequisite to licensure.

Guest speaker Bika Rebek concluded the presentation portion of the afternoon with experiential insight into various types of architectural practices, from standard, to curatorial, to emerging young practices. Rebek addressed the challenge of considering the kind of practice in which to engage oneself, and the instrumental role that recent small-scale constructs have begun to influence her much larger body of work. Rebek is a New York City based architect practicing within heterogeneous formats – as an integral part of her work criticism, performances and installations act as catalysts for experimental architectural thinking. She is currently writing her thesis focusing on digital design methodologies as well as teaching advanced design studio as an assistant to Lise Anne Couture at Columbia University. In the past she has worked for Asymptote Architecture in New York, Graft in Berlin, RHE architects in London and Isochrom in Vienna. Rebek holds an Mag. Arch. degree from the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, where she studied under Professors Wolf Prix and Greg Lynn.

Following the hour-long collection of presentations was a roundtable discussion that expanded upon notions brought up regarding practice.

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