Pratt Session: Johnston MarkLee

Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee will join GA/LA/UD Chair Andrew Holder to present a canonical project from their practice as part of the Department’s series of Pratt Sessions. Johnston MarkLee was one of the first American practices to turn away from formal complexity toward the generic, shape, and a broadly inclusive appetite for the history of Modernism. As their work grows in scale and complexity, the office confronts new challenges to discourses that initiated their early career. If JohnstonMarklee projects at the scale of houses combined exterior shape with interior organization to great effect, how do these traits survive the translation to much larger plans and cultural programs?

Pratt Sessions are a format for discourse at the Department of Graduate Architecture, Landscape, and Urban Design. The sessions seek to refine and intensify the event-structures commonly found in the design academy. Whereas lectures desire general audiences for broad overviews or introductions, Pratt Sessions focus on just one piece of work by a single author or practice. Whereas juries convene faculty to critically engage student work at the end of a project, Pratt Sessions gathers colleagues to support the intellectual project of a figure we mutually admire.