Are we There, There…?!

While context is often understood as reading the present built environment, today the global dissemination of imagery produces new context(s) that are composites of architectural elements and styles. The ‘Are we There, There!?’ lecture investigates this design phenomenon that has broader ramifications and represents current challenges in architecture and urban design. The lecture will question analogies that create a new context from imagery, that create a character of a There. Nicole McIntosh will show selected Architecture Office work, that is informed by the offices’ interest in using representation and reconfiguration to actualize images that distinguish form and type from their cultural associations as means of producing new forms of architecture. One example, is their current exhibition Swissness Applied. Collectively, the projects support architecture’s unique capacity to not be static and singular, but to simultaneously engage and refresh the things around it.

BIO

Nicole McIntosh (MSc. Arch, ETH SIA) is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at Texas A&M University. Together with Jonathan Louie, she is the co-founder of Architecture Office, a design practice and research Lab located in Texas (USA). Amongst other recognitions, the office was the recipient of the Architecture League of New York Young Architect’s Prize (2017) and ACSA Faculty Design Award (2020) for their contributions to design and research.
McIntosh is a licensed architect in Switzerland and a member of the Swiss Society of Engineers and Architects. Prior to teaching and practicing in the US, she studied at the ETH Zurich in Switzerland. In 2014-2015, she was a Teaching Fellow at the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture, Taliesin West. Her research and teaching focuses on image appropriation and image theory. She is the curator of Swissness Applied, a traveling exhibition that was previously exhibited at the Yale Architecture Gallery and at the Kunsthaus Glarus in Switzerland.