Link to the video recording
Alejandro Aravena is the Executive Director of ELEMENTAL, a socially motivated architectural practice based in Santiago, Chile. His lecture «The Power of Synthesis» will inaugurate the NSL lecture series as an annual presentation of exceptional work under a rotating theme determined by the inviting professor. To begin, Prof. Dr. Marc Angélil from the Institute for Urban Design has organized Mr. Aravena’s lecture to relate back to «De-Localize», the Urban Mutations on the Edge semester topic.
Work in Chile, China, Teheran, or Texas always has something in common: coordination and synthesis – not money are the true scarce resources. Through various projects by elemental, Mr. Aravena will show how much time his practice spends “designing the question” and how form is then used to synthesize complexity. In other words, this lecture will examine how paying attention to a specific, local case can give common sense, globally applicable answers.
