Book Talk: Occupation: Boundary – Art, Architecture, and Culture at the Water

Cathy Simon and Laurie Olin will discuss the book Occupation: Boundary Art, Architecture, and Culture at the Water (ORO Editions, 2022) in a conversation moderated by Ashley Simone. The book examines the social, political, and cultural factors that have and continue to influence the evolution of the urban waterfront as seen through art and design production. Reaching beyond the disciplines of architecture and urban design, Occupation: Boundary distills the dual roles art and culture play in relation to the urban waterfront, as mediums that have recorded and instigated change at the threshold between the city and the sea.
 
Featuring contributions by critic John King, the architect and urbanist Justine Shapiro-Kline, and the landscape architect Laurie Olin, the instincts, reflections, and works collected in Occupation: Boundary evidence the role of art and design in the creation of an equitable and inviting public realm.

Speakers:
Cathy J. Simon, FAIA, architecture and urbanism consultant
Laurie Olin, FASLA, Emeritus Professor in Practice, University of Pennsylvania
Ashley Simone, Founding Director, EDITRIX:; Adjunct Associate Professor, Pratt School of Architecture

About the Speakers:

Cathy Simon, FAIA is an architect and a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects whose practice has spanned five decades, focusing on transformative design at all scales. Her award-winning work includes design for higher and secondary education, civic and commercial buildings, reinvention of historic structures, waterfront projects, and urban planning schemes for numerous post-industrial waterfront sites in and around San Francisco.
 
She is the founder of SMWM, a celebrated women-owned architecture and urban design practice that opened offices in San Francisco and New York during the mid-1980s. In 1999, after 15 years of practice, SMWM became the youngest firm to be honored with the AIACA Firm Award, which the American Institute of Architects awarded for the consistent production of distinguished architecture. Her firm later joined Perkins + Will, where she served as a senior consulting design principal before retiring in 2018. Having gained expertise in the revitalization and resiliency of the post-industrial waterfront, she is currently an urban design and architecture consultant to a multi-firm engineering team developing the Waterfront Resiliency Program for the Port of San Francisco.
 
Educated at Wellesley College and the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD), she has served as the President of the GSD Alumni Council and spent several terms on the GSD Visiting Committee. She has taught architecture at both Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley, where, in 1996, she was the Howard Friedman Distinguished Professor of Architecture in Practice. In 2015, she was the William A. Bernoudy Architect in Residence at the American Academy in Rome. A speaker, design juror, and critic, she is a member of the University of Washington Architectural Commission and the University of California Berkeley Design Review Committee. The Dutch organization Orange Goes Green named her board chair in 2016, and in 2017-2018 she became a Research Advisor for the Bay Area Resilient by Design Challenge.

Laurie Olin, FASLA is a distinguished teacher, author, and one of the most renowned landscape architects practicing today. From vision to realization, he has guided many of OLIN’s signature projects, which span the history of the studio from Bryant Park in New York City to the Washington Monument Grounds in Washington, DC. Recent projects include the AIA award-winning Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Simon and Helen Director Park in Portland, Oregon, and Apple Park in Cupertino, California.

He is Professor Emeritus of Landscape Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, where he taught for 40 years, and is the former chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture at Harvard University. Laurie is a member of the American Academy of Arts and letters and received the 2012 National Medal of Arts, the highest lifetime achievement award for artists and designers bestowed by the National Endowment for the Arts and the President of the United States.

Ashley Simone is a New York City-based editor, writer, curator, and educator. She is the founding director of EDITRIX:, a curatorial and editorial practice that operates at the intersection of architecture, art, and culture, and an associate professor at the Pratt School of Architecture. Ashley is the editor of numerous books that include Michael Webb: Two Journeys, A Genealogy of Modern Architecture (Lars Müller Publishers, 2018), In Search of African American Space (Lars Müller Publishers, 2020), and Kenneth Frampton’s The Other Modern Movement (Yale University Press, 2022). Her recent essay “Value and the Metaphor of Phenomenology in the Representation of Built Form” appears in Modern Architecture and the Lifeworld: Essays in Honor of Kenneth Frampton (Thames and Hudson, 2020).

This event is offered in person; COVID-19 vaccinations and face masks are strongly encouraged for all visitors. Read our full Health and Safety Protocol here.