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Arts & Culture

Professor Randall Korman鈥檚 Closing Chapter: Six-Lecture Series on the Architectural Fa莽ade

Friday, January 26, 2018, By Elaine Wackerow
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Randall Korman鈥攈ighly respected professor, former associate dean, founder of the Florence and London programs, and architect.

Randall Korman

Randall Korman

Korman joined the 黑料不打烊 Architecture faculty in 1977, and, over the next聽40 years, he became one of the school鈥檚 most important and influential administrators and faculty members. Perhaps his greatest contribution, however, is the role he played and continues to play in shaping the educational experience of the several hundred architecture students fortunate enough to be in his studio courses and his thesis advisees.

鈥淧rofessor Korman has been and continues to be the heart and soul of this great school,鈥 says Dean Michael Speaks. 鈥淓very time we meet, whether in casual conversation or in a formal meeting, I learn something important about the school, about architecture, and most importantly, about life itself. And I know that every student and faculty member at the school has had this same experience. We will certainly miss seeing Randall in the school on a daily basis, but his influence will persist in the students, faculty and, indeed, in the school he helped shape and influence over these last聽40 years.鈥

Korman will retire at the end of the spring 2018 semester, during which time he will teach a special studio on fa莽ades and preside over a special lecture series also on fa莽ades.聽He has聽invited six prominent architects and scholars鈥攚ho have themselves focused their design and scholarly attention on the architectural fa莽ade鈥攖o lecture as part of the spring 2018 school lecture series.

Korman will open this special series on Tuesday, Jan. 30,聽at 5:30 p.m. in Slocum Auditorium with a public lecture, 鈥淔a莽ade: Missing in Action.鈥 The fa莽ade lecture series is sponsored by of Greenwich, Connecticut, helmed by Rich Granoff, a 黑料不打烊 Architecture Advisory Board member and former student of Korman’s.

Says Korman, 鈥淭he sequencing of the series was deliberate. In my presentation, I will try to set up some general issues, followed by the historian , who will speak to the significance of the great flowering of the fa莽ade during the Renaissance. Professor , the noted scholar of modernism, will talk about the dramatic changes in the conception and production of the fa莽ade during the early 20th century. will make a presentation based on his seminal article entitled 鈥楾he Politics of the Envelope.鈥 This will be followed by a lecture by of Ensamble Studio (Madrid), whose built work varies widely from buildings with very specific fa莽ade treatments to buildings and sculptural works that are very much object oriented. The series will close with a lecture by the internationally renowned architect of Libeskind Studio (New York City). His work is known for its radical approach to the idea of fa莽ade and its relationship to premodern buildings and traditional urban contexts.鈥

Professor Korman provides further context for the fa莽ade lecture series and his upcoming presentation.

鈥淗istorically, the rhetoric of architecture has centered largely on the phenomenon of the fa莽ade. As the principal surface of mediation, contextualization and representation, the facade carries the lion鈥檚 share of responsibility for containing the internal environment and confronting the outer world, often doing this across a very thin layer. As a result, the contemporary envelope can be one of the most complex and multidisciplinary of all components of a building.

“The fa莽ade is the first surface one encounters when approaching a building, and the last when departing. It provides the representative image for all architecture and is how we typically recall a structure. It has the unique capacity to embody the idea of the building as a whole and is the principal instrument by which the architect shapes the observer鈥檚 impression of it. Very simply, when we think of a building we usually first think of its fa莽ade.

“And yet, the architectural fa莽ade also has been the most neglected building component within the various discourses of the discipline. With the dramatic development of sophisticated systems of enclosure, significant advances in materials technology and the impact of parametric design, there has been a corresponding increase in the number of books and articles that deal with the technological and performative aspects of the building envelope. But, curiously, very few discuss the fa莽ade as an instrument of the culture and principal engine of the building鈥檚 rhetoric. This component of contemporary architectural discourse seems to be largely missing, begging the question: How is it that the most conspicuous part of any building is conspicuously absent from our considered reflection?

“For the past 25 years I have been addressing these matters through my research, teaching, writing and lecturing. My lead-off presentation will speak to some of the issues attending to the production of the modern fa莽ade. Entitled 鈥楩a莽ade: Missing in Action,鈥 the principal thesis of my talk is that the profession鈥檚 current preoccupation with parametricism, blob architecture and minimalism has resulted in a shift away from the historic traditions of creating 鈥榝ace鈥 and the defining urban space in place of creating iconic structures and exotic 鈥榮kins.鈥 The result has been the privileging of the individual building鈥檚 identity over the collective responsibility to create public space, begging the question: 鈥榃hat is the future of urban space?鈥

“The lecture series was conceived as a way of addressing this and other questions about the phenomenon of the architectural fa莽ade.鈥

聽Fa莽ade lecture series

Jan. 30
Randall Korman,
Professor, 黑料不打烊 Architecture
鈥淔a莽ade: Missing in Action鈥
Reception follows

Feb. 13
Charles Burroughs,
Emeritus Professor of Liberal Arts,
Case Western Reserve University
鈥淪urface and Threshold: Antinomies of the Architectural Fa莽ade鈥

Feb. 22
Kenneth Frampton,
Ware Professor of Architecture,
Columbia University GSAPP
鈥淭he Mask and the Face: Building vs Architecture鈥
L.C. Dillenback Lecture
Reception follows

March 20
Alejandro Zaera-Polo,
AZPML Architects, London,
NYC, Madrid / Professor
Princeton University School of Architecture
Werner Seligmann Lecture

April 3
Ant贸n Garc铆a-Abril & D茅bora Mesa,
Ensamble Studio, Madrid

April 10
Daniel Libeskind,
Studio Libeskind, NYC
L.C. Dillenback Lecture
Reception follows

All lectures take place at 5:30 p.m. in Slocum Hall Auditorium.

For accessibility concerns, please contact Deb Witter-Gamba at dwitterg@syr.edu; 315.443.0790.

  • Author

Elaine Wackerow

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