NEW YORK (November 28, 2005) - On Thursday, December 15, Parsons The New School for Design will present the second in the season's At the Parsons Table, when visionary designer Bruce Mau joins Parsons Dean Paul Goldberger for a lively discussion that will address some of the most topical issues in the field of design. Presented before a live audience at The New School's historic Tishman Auditorium, At the Parsons Table features today's leading voices in the fields of art, architecture, and design in conversation with Dean Goldberger, one of the nation's preeminent architecture and design critics. In addition to Mau, this season's series has featured Chuck Close (October 27), and upcoming guests Michael Graves and Donna Karan.
"This season, At The Parsons Table had an auspicious start with Chuck Close, a groundbreaking artist who has also demonstrated the powerful role of artist as civic leader," said Dean Goldberger. "Bruce Mau also represents this new breed of design visionary, with an oeuvre that cannot be easily categorized or defined yet has grappled with the power of design to affect societal change. The role that art and design can play in impacting everyday life is central to Parsons' mission. At the Parsons Table provides a rare opportunity for our students and faculty, and the general public, to learn how these innovators think and respond to the world around them."
Mau is known for his collaborations with Rem Koolhaas and Frank Gehry, and most recently Massive Change, a book and exhibition exploring the intersection of design, technology, culture, science, and civilization. Dean Goldberger will discuss with Mau his thoughts about the designer as social entrepreneur, as presented in his most recent work Massive Change, and some of the more politically charged topics addressed in this book and related touring exhibition, from genetically modified organisms to the design of economies and financial markets. Dean Goldberger will also discuss with Mau the collaborative process between designers, as he has experienced in his work with Koolhaas, Gehry and other leading designers.
The program on December 15 begins at 6:30 p.m., and will be held at Tishman Auditorium, The New School, 66 West 12th Street, New York. Tickets are $15 for the general public, and are available via the New School University Box Office, 66 West 12th Street, or via telephone at 212-229-5488. Box office hours are Mon. - Thurs. 1-8 pm, Fri. 1-7 p.m. Advance ticketing is strongly advised.
Editor's Note: A limited number of press passes are available to the event; for information on securing a press pass, please contact Deborah Kirschner at 212-229-5667 x4310 or [email protected].
About Bruce Mau
Bruce Mau founded his studio in Toronto in 1985. Since then, Bruce Mau Design, Inc. (BMD) has grown to a staff of forty and has gained international recognition for its expertise and innovation across a wide range of projects achieved in collaboration with some of the world's leading architects and institutions, artists and entrepreneurs, writers, curators, academics and businesses.
Collaboration is the studio's wellspring. Clients come to BMD with ambitions that can be built on, whether in book design, visual identity and branding, environmental graphics, programming and exhibitions, or product development. BMD approaches these collaborations not as accounts, but as ongoing projects. Current projects include environmental graphics for the Art Gallery of Ontario and the new headquarters of Barry Diller's InterActiveCorp, both in collaboration with Frank Gehry; the communications and experience design for the New York Sport and Convention Center, in collaboration with the New York Jets; a line of commercial carpeting, in collaboration with flooring giant Shaw Contract; and the development of a new vision for Guatemala, in collaboration with leaders of the country's business, education and creative sectors.
In resisting the simple solution in favor of the real opportunities inherent in a project BMD has produced a boundary-busting portfolio that includes such recent projects as Tree City, Canada's first national urban park, Parc Downsview Park in Toronto; Puente de Vida, a museum of biodiversity in Panama City; and the Institute without Boundaries (IwB), a studio-based postgraduate program in partnership with George Brown - Toronto City College. The IwB, formed out of the conviction that the future demands a new breed of designer, became the engine to produce Massive Change, an ambitious, multi-venue exhibition on the possibilities of design culture. Massive Change is a project by Bruce Mau Design and the Institute without Boundaries, commissioned and organized by the Vancouver Art Gallery. The exhibition is currently on tour.
Massive Change is also a book, the second BMD volume to be released worldwide by Phaidon Press. The first, Life Style, published in 2000, documents the studio as a place of study in service to its projects. In 1995, the studio garnered considerable attention for the award-winning and critically acclaimed S,M,L,XL, a 1300-page compendium of projects and texts generated by Pritzker Prize-winning Rem Koolhaas' Office for Metropolitan Architecture, designed and conceived by Bruce Mau with Rem Koolhaas.
Bruce Mau studied at the Ontario College of Art & Design in Toronto, but left prior to graduation in order to join the Fifty Fingers design group in 1980. He stayed there for two years, before crossing the ocean for a brief sojourn at Pentagram in the UK. Returning to Toronto a year later, he became part of the founding triumvirate of Public Good Design and Communications. Soon after, the opportunity to design Zone 1|2 presented itself and he left to establish his own studio, Bruce Mau Design, Inc. Bruce remained the design director of Zone Books until 2004, to which he has added duties as co-editor of Swerve Editions, a Zone imprint. From 1991 to 1993, he also served as Creative Director of I.D. magazine.
From 1996 to 1999 Bruce Mau was the Associate Cullinan Professor at Rice University School of Architecture in Houston. He has also been a thesis advisor at the University of Toronto's Faculty of Architecture, Landscape & Design; artist in residence at California Institute of the Arts; and a visiting scholar at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. He has lectured widely across North America and Europe, and currently serves on the International Advisory Committee of the Wexner Center in Columbus, Ohio.
In addition, Bruce is an Honorary Fellow of the Ontario College of Art and Design and a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Art. He was awarded the Chrysler Award for Design Innovation in 1998, and the Toronto Arts Award for Architecture and Design in 1999. In 2001 he received an Honorary Doctor of Letters from the Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design.
About Dean Paul Goldberger
Paul Goldberger became Dean of Parsons in July 2004. One of the nation's most eminent critics and writers on architecture and design, Dean Goldberger has helped shape public understanding of the social and political implications of design for nearly three decades. His appointment as Dean is a key step in bringing together design, critical social thought and public policy at Parsons. Prior to becoming Dean, he was a longstanding member of the school's Board of Governors.
As the Architecture Critic for The New Yorker, Dean Goldberger continues the celebrated "Sky Line" column, which was once written by Lewis Mumford and more recently by Brendan Gill. He joined the staff of The New Yorker in 1997, following a 25-year career at The New York Times, where he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1984 for his architecture criticism. He is the author of several books, most recently his chronicle of the process of rebuilding Ground Zero, UP FROM ZERO: Architecture, Politics and the Rebuilding of New York, which was published by Random House in September 2004. He has also written The City Observed: New York; The Skyscraper; On the Rise: Architecture and Design in a Post-Modern Age; Above New York; and The World Trade Center Remembered.
Dean Goldberger lectures widely around the country on the subject of architecture, design, historic preservation and cities, and has taught at Yale and the University of California, Berkeley. His writing has received numerous awards in addition to the Pulitzer, including the President's Medal of the Municipal Art Society of New York, the medal of the American Institute of Architects, and the Medal of Honor of the New York Landmarks Preservation Foundation, awarded in recognition of what the Foundation called "the nation's most balanced, penetrating and poetic analyses of architecture and design."
Parsons The New School for Design is one of the largest and most prestigious degree-granting colleges of art and design in the nation, with approximately 3,500 students in degree programs, and 2,500 non-degree students from all 50 states and approximately 60 countries. Parsons has been a forerunner in the field of art and design since its founding in 1896. Parsons' rigorous programs and distinguished faculty embrace curricular innovation, pioneer new uses of technology, and instill in students a global perspective in design. For more information, visit www.parsons.newschool.edu.