Governor General "Art Matters Forum"

[Image from the Governor General's website]

Yesterday, the Pit was transformed to host the Governor General Michelle Jean and panelists David Hughes, president and CEO of Habitat for Humanity Canada, Jean-Claude Marsan, architect and urban planner (U of Montréal), and Sheryl Boyle, assistant professor from Azrieli School of Architecture (Carleton), for a discussion of sustainability: "How do we sustain buildings? How do buildings sustain us?". I encourage you to read the framework for last night's discussion on the Rideau Hall blog. You can also watch the entire podcast of the event from the website.

Ted.com

I've just discovered this great website Ted.com which is a pretty big collection of interesting talks taken place in Monterey, California about art, culture, sustainability, design, architecture, science etc. Have a browse for yourself, it's worth it. Here's a sample, on suburbia.

Forum Lecture Series 2007/2008

Pit Lecture

Malcom Quantrill is the opening lecturer for the Pit Lecture Series. Quantrill is a British architect and highly accomplished writer with an interest in Finnish architecture and cultural studies. He has written about Alvar Aalto and Reima Pietila, but has also published books on Norman Foster and our own Canadian success Brian Mackay Lyons (Halifax). Quantrill is co-author of The Architectural Project with our own director Marco Frascari.

Feel free to pop into the Architecture Building anytime between 6 and say, 7:30 tonight.

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Post-Lecture Thoughts:
There were a lot of provocative quotes by Louis Kahn and references to various masterpieces of architecture with an undercurrent theme of timelessness in buildings (i.e. stripped of style). It was however, rather confusing on the topic of 'otherness' which is the central thesis of this lecture. The silence at the end of the lecture was testament to a lot of hovering question marks over peoples' heads. Otherness seems to have alluded to light and history as the instruments that make a building take on this quality. "The sun does not know its power until it hits a building".

Copenhagen Consensus

Credit to Dave Viitala for posting this on his facebook page, but I thought it was really interesting and wanted to hear what you thought about it. This was a lecture that reflected discussions at the Copenhagen Consensus 2007, this particular topic a counter-argument or at least a readjustment of where we should stand regarding climate change. Bjorn Lomberg is head of the Consensus meeting and his talk is very persuasive so I'm extra skeptical...