The Unmentionables Symposium is an inaugural two-day event hosted by the Department of Interior Architecture at Woodbury University School of Architecture and held at Helms Design Center in Culver City, April 7-8, 2017. Coinciding with the 85th anniversary of the university’s Interior Architecture program, the event highlights critical latent issues within the discipline today. Registration is open on the Unmentionables website.
Unmentionables is aimed at exploring new narratives for interior architecture and establishing a precedent for welcoming previously unmentioned ideas in spatial practice and theory. The symposium will serve as a provocation for marginalia, taboos, illicit ideas, and undertheorized issues such as critical interiority and physical and virtual constructed environments.
While interior architecture is often misread as marginal in relationship to more established allied disciplines (such as architecture), in recent years the field has emerged as its own site of questioning. No longer mute or “unmentioned”, it is a rich territory for interdisciplinary and trans-disciplinary writings, research, and designs.
Unmentionables brings together a broad range of notable thinkers and designers drawn from literature, architecture, film, art, philosophy, and interior design. Over two-days, the symposium will feature persistently critical voices drawn from across the country.
The symposium kicks off on Friday, April 7 with a keynote conversation between award-winning novelist Mona Simpson, production designer Bruce A. Block, and 2017 AIGA Medalist and Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award recipient Rebeca Méndez, moderated by Raymund Ryan, curator at Heinz Architectural Center, Carnegie Museum of Art.
On Saturday, April 8, three panel discussions, cheekily titled Flavorings, Feelings, and Trimmings, will feature the work of some of the brightest minds in practice. (A full list can be found on the Unmentionables website.) These sure-to-be lively conversations will be moderated by experts in the field of interior architecture and design: Billie Tsien, Principal of Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects | Partners; Susan Szenasy, editor-in-chief of Metropolis Magazine; and Edward Lifson, former director of communications for the Pritzker Prize. Unmentionables closes with remarks by Rossen Ventzislavov, associate professor of Philosophy at Woodbury University, and Heather Peterson, symposium co-coordinator.
The Unmentionables symposium is supported by the work of its advisory board: Lois Weinthal, chair of Interior Design at Ryerson School of Interior Design; Frank Clementi, principal of Rios Clementi Hale and a trans-disciplinary design educator; Raymund Ryan, curator at Heinz Architectural Center, Carnegie Museum of Art; and Gloria Gerace, renowned museum and cultural consultant. Symposium organizers include Christoph Korner, chair of Interior Architecture, and faculty members Annie Chu, FAIA IIDA, Heather Peterson, and Matthew Gillis, Assoc. AIA.
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