Presidential Lecture: Sarah Wigglesworth and Karen Kubey on Building for Aging

Sarah Wigglesworth was educated at Cambridge University and graduated in 1983 with a Distinction in the Diploma in Architecture. She was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship in Architecture in 1991 and set up practice in London in 1994. Since then, she has developed extensive expertise in green and sustainable design and masterplanning, which was recognized in 2004 when Sarah Wigglesworth Architects received the RIBA Sustainability Award for their mixed use house/office in north London, occupied by the practice. The practice has extended its approach to low-energy design through a wide range of project types and now specialises in design for education, housing, masterplanning, and community projects.

Sarah Wigglesworth Architects has won numerous awards and has attracted debate both inside and outside the field. Recently awarded projects include the Sandal Magna Community Primary School, which won a RIBA Award and three awards in the Northern Network Awards; Takeley Primary School, and Mellor Primary School. Wigglesworth’s work has been published throughout the world. In 2003 she was awarded an MBE for her services to architecture and in 2010 she was (briefly) made a CABE Commissioner. She was awarded Royal Designer for Industry by the RSA in 2012. She is a CABE Built Environment Expert, a member of the Oxford and Kingston upon Thames Design Review Panels, and a member of the LLDC Quality Panel. 

Wigglesworth is recognized as a pioneering influence in British architecture. Her work is characterised by careful theorizing of the issues unique to each project and close engagement with clients and users. Wigglesworth was a teacher for 32 years, pioneering design as a legitimate research activity. Her most recent appointment (in 1997) was as Professor of Architecture at the University of Sheffield, where she set up the PhD by Design program in 2003. Between 2014 and 2016, she led the Designing for Wellbeing in Environments for Later Life (DWELL) research project, a three-year, fully-funded participatory design project exploring neighbourhoods and housing suited to older people.

Karen Kubey is an urbanist specializing in housing and health and a Fellow in Design for Spatial Justice at the University of Oregon. She is the editor of Housing as Intervention: Architecture towards Social Equity (Architectural Design, 2018) and served as the first executive director of the Institute for Public Architecture. Kubey co-founded the New York chapter of Architecture for Humanity (now Open Architecture/New York) and co-founded and led the New Housing New York design competition. Holding degrees in architecture from the University of California, Berkeley and the Columbia University Graduate School for Architecture, Preservation and Planning (GSAPP), Kubey began her career as a designer of below-market housing. She has received support from the New York State Council on the Arts and MacDowell.

 

Barry Bergdoll, currently President of the Board of Directors of the Center for Architecture, is a historian and curator of modern and contemporary architecture. He is Professor of Art History at Columbia University, where he has taught since 1985, and served from 2007 to 2014 as Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art. At MoMA he pioneered a format of interdisciplinary design workshops leading to exhibitions on central issues of contemporary practice of architecture and urban planning. The 2009-10 exhibition, “Rising Currents: Projects for New York’s Waterfront,” which addressed sea level rise and climate change, is the model for the RFP that will be relaunched in the wake of this inaugural Presidential Lecture Series.

About the Center for Architecture Presidential Lecture Series:
This summer the Center for Architecture is launching its inaugural Presidential Lecture Series. Spearheaded by Barry Bergdoll, Center for Architecture Board President, the series is tied to an exhibition that will display responses to an RFP on new modes of conceiving inclusive environments, from dwelling to workplace to the public realm. The RFP will be relaunched in early autumn with the exhibition to follow by the end of 2021. The lecture series and the RFP explore design’s role in envisioning new dynamics of living and community.  

The series will be organized as multi-disciplinary conversations between an architect and a practitioner from another field, moderated by Bergdoll. The conversations are intended to inform work to be commissioned for the exhibition next fall. The basic hypothesis is that contemporary American culture and society have long been, and are increasingly disconnected—fractured even—with people divided by needs, generations, and beliefs, as well by race and income level. In the face of social isolation, the exhibition will explore how environments that foster cooperation, interaction, and mutual assistance can be an antidote to the intense divisions in American life. Issues of equity, health, aging, and racial disparities are among the vital issues at stake.

Other Lectures in the Series:
Presidential Lecture: Mindy Fullilove and Ron Shiffman on Main Streets, Monday, July 24, 2 PM   
Presidential Lecture: Dagmar Richter and Marc Norman on Cooperative Housing, on Monday, August 10, 2 PM 
Presidential Lecture: Victor Pineda and Kat Holmes on Capabilities and Mismatch,  Monday, August 17, 2 PM 
Presidential Lecture: Peter Robinson on the Work of BlackSpace, Monday, August 24, 2 PM