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Panel Discussion: On Exchange and Other Balancing Acts

In collaboration with the MAK Center for Art and Architecture for the occasion of Soft Schindler, on view at the MAK through February 16th, 2020

MAK Center for Art and Architecture at the Schindler House
December 11, 2019 at 7:00pm
December 11, 2019 at 9:00pm
Still room installation by soft Schindler


Chilean curators and designers Pedro Ignacio Alonso and Hugo Palmarola join SCI-Arc faculty members Marrikka Trotter (History + Theory Coordinator) and Marcelyn Gow (MS Design Theory and Pedagogy Coordinator) in conversation about the role of cultural and material exchange in architectural history, curation, and design. In 2014, Alonso and Palmarola were awarded the Silver Lion 14th Venice Architecture Biennale for Chile Pavilion, Monolith Controversies. Choreographies, their video diptych that looks at the representation of building construction across the US-Soviet divide, is included in Soft Schindler, now on view at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture. Moderated by Soft Schindler curator and SCI-Arc faculty member and Alumna Mimi Zeiger (M.Arch, '98).

Pedro Ignacio Alonso is an architect and MSc in architecture, PUCCh, 2000, and Ph.D in Architecture, AA 2008. He is Associate Professor at the Universidad Católica de Chile, Visiting Professor at the Architectural Association, and Princeton-Mellon Fellow 2015-2016 at Princeton University. Together with Hugo Palmarola he was awarded a Silver Lion as curator of the Chile Pavilion, Monolith Controversies, at the 14th Venice Architecture Biennale (2014). His publications include Panel (London: AA, 2014), Monolith Controversies (Hatje Cantz, 2014), and Space Race Archaeologies (Berlin: DOM, 2016).

Hugo Palmarola is a designer at The Catholic University of Chile (2004), MA in Theory and History of Design at The National Autonomous University of Mexico (2010). Together with Pedro Alonso he was awarded a Silver Lion as curator of the Chile Pavilion, Monolith Controversies, at the 14th Venice Architecture Biennale (2014). His publications include Panel (London: AA, 2014) and Monolith Controversies (Hatje Cantz, 2014) which was awarded a DAM Architectural Book Award from the Deutsches Architekturmuseum (2014). Palmarola won the Student Essay Prize awarded by the Design History Society (2018). He is Assistant Professor at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.

Marrikka Trotter is a Los-Angeles-based architectural historian and theorist. She is co-editor of the contemporary architectural theory collection Architecture is All Over (Columbia Books on Architecture and the City: 2017), and her writing has appeared in publications such as Harvard Design Magazine, Log, AD, and AA Files. She holds a PhD in Architecture, Landscape and Urbanism from Harvard University, and her work has received funding from the Paul Mellon Centre, the Graham Foundation, the Canadian Centre for Architecture, and Sir John Soane's Museum, among others. Recent projects include a fresh take on Giovanni Battista Piranesi's Diversi maniere d'adornare i cammini, an examination of the geological significance of Robert Adam's landscape watercolors and late 18th-century "castle style," and a discussion of the individuating potential of certain "discrete" architectures. Trotter teaches at SCI-Arc, where she heads the history and theory department.

Marcelyn Gow is principal of servo los angeles, a design collaborative invested in the development of architectural environments integrating synthetic ecologies with shifting material states. servo’s work has been exhibited at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Venice Architecture Biennale, Centre Pompidou, Archilab, Artists Space, the SCI-Arc Gallery, the MAK Center for Art and Architecture, the Storefront for Art and Architecture and SFMoMA. Gow received her Architecture degrees from the Architectural Association and Columbia University, as well as a Dr.Sc. from the ETH Zurich. Her doctoral dissertation Invisible Environment: Art, Architecture and a Systems Aesthetic explores the relationship between aesthetic research and technological innovation. Gow has lectured internationally and contributed to numerous journals including Perspecta, Via and AD. She is the coeditor of Material Beyond Materials and Onramp 4. Gow was the recipient of a 2012 Graham Foundation Grant to Individuals and a 2014-15 City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs Visual Artist Fellowship. She currently teaches design studios and critical theory seminars at SCI-Arc.