2024-2025 Lecture Series

Fall Lectures

• Tenna Florian | August 23 @ 2:30 p.m. | Brooks Center for the Performing Arts

  Tenna Florian is a Partner and co-leader of the Lake|Flato’s Eco-Conservation Studio. Tenna finds purpose in creating architecture that promotes environmental stewardship through high performance design that strengthens the essential bond between humans and nature. Over the past 25 years, Tenna has earned a national reputation for creating designs that adapt to the effects of climate and thoughtfully engage the landscape. She is a skilled collaborator who is committed to an integrated design process that seeks to fully realize the client’s aspirations and goals. Her passion for innovative, sustainable design has led to several award-winning projects including Naples Botanical Garden, the AIA Honor Award-winning Confluence Park and the Dixon Water Foundation Josey Pavilion—the first certified Living Building Challenge project in Texas. Tenna’s career exemplifies a long-term commitment to, and passion for, sustainable design.

   

   

   

• Jonathan Tate, OTJ Architects | September 4 @ 12:30 p.m. | Clemson Design Center Charleston

  Jonathan Tate is principal of OJT (Office of Jonathan Tate), an architecture and urban design practice in New Orleans. The office engages in numerous design-related activities, including applied research, opportunistic planning, strategic development and conventional architectural practice. Their work has received numerous awards, including National AIA Housing Award and the National AIA Honor Award in Architecture. The office has been recognized as a 2017 Emerging Voices by the Architectural League of New York, a Next Progressive by Architect Magazine and a 2018 finalist for the international Architecture Review Emerging Architect Award. Tate is the recipient of the 2020 Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

   

   

   

• Callison Lecture - Janet Loebach, Ph.D., P.Eng , Cornell University | September 25 @ 2:30 p.m. | Lee Hall 2-111

  

  Dr. Janet Loebach is the Evalyn Edwards Milman Assistant Professor for Child Development in Human Centered Design at Cornell University.  Her research efforts focus on the development of inclusive, child & youth-friendly environments and examining the impacts of built and natural environments on young people’s behaviors and healthy development. Dr. Loebach has particular expertise in the design of outdoor play and recreation spaces, and capturing children’s play and learning behaviors through innovative methodologies including behavior mapping. Much of her work also engages children and youth directly in participatory assessment and co-design of their everyday spaces such as playgrounds, schools and community spaces.

  Dr. Loebach is the Chair of the Children, Youth & Environments Network of the Environmental Design Research Association and sits on the Editorial Board of the journals Children, Youth & Environments, Cities & Health and PsyEcology.

   

   

   

• Vishaan Chakrabarti, PAU | October 2 @ 12:30 p.m. | Clemson Design Center Charleston

  

  With over thirty years of experience investigating, designing, and implementing urban architecture, Vishaan Chakrabarti is the Founder and Creative Director of Practice for Architecture and Urbanism | PAU , where he leads the firm’s growing global portfolio of cultural, institutional, and public projects. Chakrabarti’s past roles—including Principal at architecture firms SHoP Architects and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, President of the Moynihan Station Venture at the Related Companies, Director of the Manhattan Office for the New York Department of City Planning in the Bloomberg administration, and the William W. Wurster Dean of the College of Environmental Design at UC Berkeley—have given him a uniquely well-rounded perspective on how cities and their architecture function and what they need to flourish.

  While serving under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Chakrabarti successfully collaborated on the now-realized efforts to save the High Line, extend the #7 subway line, rebuild the East River Waterfront, expand the Columbia University campus, and reincorporate the street grid at the World Trade Center site after the events of 9/11. This deep-seated experience of implementing landmark urban designs under bureaucratic confines drives PAU’s innovative yet practical approach to creating vibrant, resilient, and cross-cultural urban environments that uplift the experience of everyday people.

  PAU’s process begins with a search for emotional, social, and cultural connection, which inspires bespoke design solutions that deploy material, tectonics, light, and space to foster a sense of serendipity and community. Integral to PAU’s philosophy is developing a robust understanding of the daily lives of a diverse spectrum of urban dwellers, allowing the team to create multi-functional spaces that stimulate civic delight, promote environmental justice and cross-cultural pollination, and improve how people interact with the city and with each other. Current projects of note include the expansion of the I.M. Pei-designed Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, the planning and redevelopment of downtown Niagara Falls, and the conversion of the historic Domino Sugar Factory on Brooklyn’s waterfront into a contemporary office complex, to open this summer.

  Chakrabarti is the author of the highly acclaimed book, A Country of Cities: A Manifesto for an Urban America (Metropolis Books, 2013), and The Architecture of Urbanity: Designing for Nature, Culture, and Joy (2024, Princeton University Press). He taught at Columbia for more than a decade and serves on the boards of the Architectural League of New York, the Regional Planning Association, the Norman Foster Foundation, The World Around and Prometheus Materials. Chakrabarti has degrees in architecture, urban planning, art history, and engineering.

  This lecture will also include a book signing.

   

   

• Richard O'Cain Lecture: Heidi Beebe and Doug Skidmore | October 23 @ 2:30 p.m. | Lee Hall 2-111

  

  Lecture Title
  
  Uncertain Buildings
  What happens when architecture is lived in differently than how it was imagined? Insights from recent projects with design strategies for our unpredictable future.

   

  Bio
  Beebe Skidmore Architects is a two-person studio based in Portland, Oregon, with
  commercial and residential projects throughout the Pacific Northwest. The firm is the recipient of six AIA design awards, including an AIA Northwest and Pacific Region Honor Award. Their work has been published in a range of platforms including Häuser, Gray, Frame, Dezeen, The New York Times and Dwell.

  Heidi Beebe and Doug Skidmore established their practice in 2007 with the intention of working on crafty, focused, design-driven projects where they can be involved in all aspects of the work, from concept to realization.

  Heidi holds a Master of Architecture from Princeton University and Doug holds a Master of Architecture from Cranbrook Academy of Art. Key projects include the 30,000 s.f. Swift Agency Headquarters, recipient of an American Architecture Award and The Outpost Co-Housing, profiled in Metropolis Magazine.

  Exciting projects on the boards or under construction include a residence on San Juan Island in Washington state, a tasting room for Granville Wines in Dundee, Oregon and a residential overhaul in Boise, Idaho’s North End Historic District.

• Jason Griffiths, University of Nebraska | November 13 @ 12:30 p.m. | Clemson Design Center Charleston

  

  Jason Griffiths is the PLAIN Director, Associate Professor at The College of Architecture, UNL and the W. Cecil Steward Professor.

  PLAIN Design-Build is an architectural collective that creates buildings from renewable resources of wood.
  
  PLAIN promotes all types of timber construction, ranging from advanced forms of engineered lumber to small-scale forestry and local fabrication. Renewable resources include undesirable trees discarded by insect borer infestations or the by-product of forest fire fuel mitigation. Our projects support material flows that sequester carbon and reduce the embodied energy of construction. Our buildings establish circular economies by learning from vernacular forms of architecture and regional forestry ecosystems. We empower students through a co-creative educational model of experienced-based learning and hands-on construction.