School of Architecture announces 2024 Spring Lecture Series

Clemson University’s School of Architecture has announced its 2024 Spring Lecture Series, “The Third Place,” continuing its theme from Fall 2023.

The spring series will feature five distinguished speakers, two of whom will present at the Clemson Design Center in Charleston.

“The Third Place,” refers to spaces for socialization separate from the usual environments of home and work, and it represents a rapidly changing landscape. Traditionally, third places have included churches, community centers, neighborhood bars and coffee shops. However, recently, there has been an increase in the use of non-traditional systems and alternative spaces serving as third places.

This series will examine how the disruption of social, political and economic structure is reframing our society’s relationships with traditional third places. From theoretical proposals and critical practices to historical analysis, The Third Place series will also discuss the intersection of identity, cultural expression and social interaction and the impact gentrification, displacement and creative production have on our communities.

Upcoming Events

“The Third Place” series will take place throughout the Spring semester:

• January 31, Clemson, Lee 2-111, 2:30 p.m.: Javier Arpa Fernández
  Javier Arpa Fernández is the Research and Education Coordinator of the Why Factory at the Faculty of Architecture of TU Delft. The Why Factory is a think-tank led by Professor Winy Maas that explores possibilities for the development of our cities by focusing on the production of models and visualizations for cities of the future. Fernández currently also holds a position of lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. He has been a lecturer at Harvard and Columbia Universities in the U.S., ENSA-Bellevile and ENSA-Versailles in France and IE University in Spain. Fernández was Editor in Chief for a+t research group, one of Europe’s leading publishers in architecture and urban design. He is the curator of the exhibition “Paris Habitat,” held at the Pavillon de l’Arsenal in Paris and is the author of the monograph “Paris Habitat: One Hundred Years of City, One Hundred Years of Life.” In 2013, he co-organized the conference “The City That Never Was” in cooperation with the Architectural League of New York. This event used the recent economic and urban crisis in Spain as a lens through which to consider future global patterns of urbanization and settlement. As a lecturer and researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, he is currently conducting the research project “Africa: An Atlas of Speculative Urbanization” and curated the exhibition “African Speculations” at the Kuala Lumpur Architecture Festival.

• February 21, Clemson, Lee 2-111, 2:30 p.m.: Richard O’Cain Lecture – Boonserm Premthada
  Architect and artist Boonserm Premthada is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Architecture at Chulalongkorn University and founder of Bangkok Project Studio. Premthada’s work has won many international awards including the ar+d Award for Emerging Architecture in 2011. He has also been shortlisted for the Aga Khan Awards for Architecture 2013, the Grand Prize International Brick Architecture 2014, Overall Winner of The Plan Awards 2017, Acknowledgement Prize, Regional LafargeHolcim Awards 2017 Asia Pacific, the Global Award for Sustainable Architecture 2018, the Royal Academy Dorfman Awards 2019, The Winner of 2021 Wallpaper* Design “Best Sanctuary” Elephant World and The Golden Madonnina 2021 of The Design Prize in the category Social Impact, Italy. Premthada has lectured and exhibited at the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), Cite de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine (Paris), the Hongkong Pavilion as part of 16th International Architecture Exhibition (Venice), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), University of Tokyo, University of Hong Kong, National University of Singapore, The Bartlett School of Architecture – UCL and several other international universities. His pavilion, “The House for Human and The House for Elephants,” represented Thailand at Biennale Architettura 2021.

• February 28, Clemson Design Center Charleston, 12:30 p.m.: Mithūn Architecture
  Mithūn is an integrated design firm dedicated to creating positive change in people’s lives. As a national practice with offices in Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles, Mithūn is a unified design studio with an open and collaborative spirit founded on a process of inquiry and listening. Mithūn’s team of architects, landscape architects, interior designers, urban designers and planners creates seamless experiences that are unique expressions of each client, community and place. The company works in a wide range of typologies and scales – with a focus on urban environments and places where people live, work and learn. Mithūn is an internationally recognized leader in sustainability, combining exemplary design with a focus on building and site performance, human health and social equity. Since the inception of the practice in 1949, Mithūn’s work has been recognized with hundreds of peer and industry awards including six AIA Committee on the Environment Top Ten project honors as well as ranking among the nation’s top design firms.

• March 27, Clemson, Lee 2-111, 2:30 p.m.: Rebecca Popowsky
  Rebecca Popowsky has been a practicing landscape architect with the OLIN Partnership since 2009, where she has contributed to a wide range of the studio’s project work. Projects include the design and construction of Canal Park in Washington, D.C., Dilworth Park in Philadelphia and collaboration with the Army Corps of Engineers on Potomac Park Levee on the National Mall to restore the FEMA floodplain. Prior to joining OLIN, Popowsky worked as an architectural designer in Florence, Italy, as a timberframe home builder in Vermont and as a professional trail builder with the Adirondack Mountain Club. Popowsky earned dual master’s degrees in Architecture and Landscape Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania, a Bachelor of Arts in Architecture and Urban Studies from Yale University and participated in an Education Abroad Program in Italy through Syracuse University.

• April 3, Clemson Design Center Charleston, 12:30 p.m.: Frank Harmon, FAIA
  Frank Harmon, FAIA, has designed sustainable modern buildings across the Southeast for 30 years. He discovered architecture as a child, playing in the streams and woods of his native Greensboro, North Carolina. His work engages pressing contemporary issues such as placelessness, sustainability and restoration of cities and nature. The buildings he designs are specific to their sites and use materials such as hurricane-felled cypress and rock from local quarries to connect them to their landscapes. Airy breezeways, outdoor living spaces, deep overhangs and wide lawns embody the vernacular legacy of the South while maintaining a distinguished modernism. Frank Harmon is a graduate of the Architectural Association in London and a professor at the North Carolina State University College of Design. He has taught at the Architectural Association and has served as a visiting critic at Harvard, the University of Virginia and Auburn University’s Rural Studio.

The Third Place series is curated by David Franco, co-director of architecture graduate programs and Rachel Glanton and Connor Smith, editors of the student journal Inter-.  Inter- will produce its first issue this summer, coordinated with and informed by the lecture series. The lecture series is sponsored by the Clemson Architectural Foundation. Clemson campus lectures will be streamed on Zoom for those unable to join us on campus. They are free and open to the public unless otherwise noted.