Co-Conveners: Preston Scott Cohen and Erika Naginski
The Return of Nature is the first of four Harvard GSD Symposia on Architecture, an annual series of events which brings together architects, historians and theorists to consider the question of architecture’s autonomy in relation to contemporary debates.
The Return of Nature: Organicism Contra Ornament
Participants:
Sylvia Lavin is Professor of Architectural Theory and History at UCLA where she served as Chair of the Department of Architecture and Urban Design from 1996 to 2006. Her books include Form Follows Libido: Architecture and Richard Neutra in a Psychoanalytic Culture (2005) and the forthcoming The Flash in the Pan and Other Forms of Architectural Contemporaneity.
Robert Levit is Associate Professor and Director of the Urban Design Program at the University of Toronto. He is a partner in the design firm Khoury Levit Fong. His projects and writings have appeared in numerous publications. Essays include “Contemporary Ornament: The Return of the Symbolic Repressed” (2008).
Farshid Moussavi is Professor in Practice in the Department of Architecture at the GSD. She is an architect, co-founder of Foreign Office Architects (FOA) together with Alejandro Zaera-Polo, an international practice with projects in Europe, Asia and North America. She is author of the forthcoming The Function of Form (Sept 2009) as well as The Function of Ornament (2006).
