Presidential Lecture: Peter Robinson on the Work of BlackSpace

*This event is occurring as a live webinar. Registrants will be emailed a link to access the program.*

Peter Robinson will present on the work of BlackSpace Urbanist Collective with a focus on their work in Brownsville, Brooklyn. After engaging the local Brownsville community in heritage conservation efforts BlackSpace produced a tool kit recounting the experience and lessons learned. 

Speakers:
Peter Robinson, Board member, BlackSpace Urbanist Collective

Moderator:
Barry Bergdoll, Hon AIANY, Board President, Center for Architecture

Peter Robinson, was born in Kingston, Jamaica and raised in both Kingston and New York City. He received a Bachelors of Architecture degree from Cornell University and a Masters of Science in Architecture and Urban Design from Columbia University. Peter has held teaching positions at Cornell University, Parsons School of Design at the New School, Syracuse University and Barnard College at Columbia University. His research focuses on cultural subjectivity and the city, broaching parallels and interferences among architectural/urban design, planning and cultural theories as a means to engage/inform social action.

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: Sarah Wigglesworth and Karen Kubey on Building for Aging, Monday, August 3, 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