Architectural Explorations in Books - Brad Cloepfil and Eric Sanderson - Allied Works Architecture

Event Details

FREE - Doors open at 5:30 p.m.

Architect Brad Cloepfil and his innovative firm Allied Works Architecture have received significant and deserved attention over the past ten years for their designs of several highly influential public, institutional, commercial and residential buildings. Eric Sanderson, the well-known Wildlife Conservation Society landscape ecologist, joins Cloepfil to discuss the history of Allied Works, Cloepfil's approach to architectural design, the relationship between the built and the natural environment, and other topics captured in a major new architecture publication that details, from concept sketch through construction, many of the firm’s most ambitious commissions.

Allied Works Architecture / Brad Cloepfil: Occupation comprehensively covers the ideas, processes, and projects of the noted American architect Brad Cloepfil and his company Allied Works Architecture. The book is premised on a series of conversations between Cloepfil and numerous distinguished thinkers and makers that explore the principles, opportunities, and challenges of creative practice. Conversation participants include artists Doug Aitken, Ann Hamilton, and Ben Rubin, landscape designer Douglas Reed, ecologist Eric Sanderson, theologian and philosopher Mark Taylor, and engineer and manufacturer Jan Tichelaar. Among the numerous projects featured are the Seattle Art Museum, the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, the University of Michigan Museum of Art, the Clyfford Still Museum, and the National Music Centre of Canada. Architectural historians Kenneth Frampton and Sandy Isenstadt analyze several of Cloepfil’s buildings in detail. Photographs by Victoria Sambunaris examine the environments in which Cloepfil's projects are built. This first-ever monograph, which includes extensive reproductions of drawings and models, presents a unique and in-depth account of Cloepfil’s works and architectural practice.

Copies of Allied Works Architecture / Brad Cloepfil: Occupation are available for purchase and signing at the event.

Founded in 1994 by Brad Cloepfil, Allied Works is an award-winning practice with offices in Portland, Oregon and New York City. The 40-person practice focuses on projects throughout the world that engage the dynamics of change: elevating the role of buildings for the arts, places of learning, work and creative spaces, landscapes and urban environments, and residences in their communities while creating a civic architecture that catalyzes the development of surrounding neighborhoods and the greater region. The defining project of Allied Works is the Maryhill Overlook in the Columbia River Gorge, completed in 1998, the first of a series of five installation designs in diverse landscapes across the Pacific Northwest. It was followed by the design for Wieden + Kennedy Agency, the transformation of an historic warehouse in Portland’s Pearl District into a world headquarters that has become a benchmark for adaptive reuse and workplace architecture. In recent years the firm has gone on to completed a number of critically acclaimed cultural and educational projects, including the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis; the re-design of 2 Columbus Circle for the Museum of Arts and Design; Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts; and the University of Michigan Museum of Art. Current projects include the Clyfford Still Museum in Denver, Colorado; the creation of the National Music Centre of Canada in Calgary, Alberta; a major private residence in Dutchess County, New York; a new art building for Catlin Gabel School in Portland, Oregon; and a new home for the Pacific Northwest College of Art’s MFA program. Allied Works has been the recipient of several honor awards recognizing the firm’s innovative and holistic approach to design. In 2010 leading architecture critic and historian Sandy Isenstadt defined Cloepfil’s work as ““aiming to create oases of legibility, spaces that can look out upon the simultaneous contrasts of the modern world to appreciate them from a place no less complex, but one that unfolds over time, with repeated visits, rather than at the speed of a camera shutter, thereby rewarding continued occupation rather than just dazzling the eye.”

Brad Cloepfil is the Founding Principal of Allied Works Architecture. He studied architecture at the University of Oregon and went on to earn an advanced degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture. After more than a decade of work and teaching in Los Angeles, New Orleans, New York and Switzerland, Cloepfil founded Allied Works in his native Portland, Oregon in 1994. The New York City office followed in 2003. In addition to leading all aspects of creative work at Allied Works, Cloepfil has held guest professorships and given talks on the work throughout North America and Europe. In 2010 Sandy Isenstadt, an architecture historian and professor, described Cloepfil’s work as aiming “to create oases of legibility, spaces that can look out upon the simultaneous contrasts of the modern world to appreciate them from a place no less complex, but one that unfolds over time, with repeated visits, rather than at the speed of a camera shutter, thereby rewarding continued occupation rather than just dazzling the eye.” Christopher Hawthorne, architecture critic of the Los Angeles Times, identified Cloepfil as a “2011 Face to Watch in the Arts.”

Eric Sanderson is a landscape ecologist with the Wildlife Conservation Society (formerly the New York Zoological Society). He focuses on planning conservation of habitat and wildlife, working with such diverse species and their locales as lions, tigers, bears, jaguars, tapirs, peccaries, American crocodiles, North American bison, and Mongolian gazelle to date. Sanderson has also created what he calls Human Footprint and Last of the Wild, the first ever visual representation of modern humanity's impact on its only planet at less than one square mile resolution. His conservation efforts have been featured in National Geographic Magazine, the New York Times, Der Spiegel and Ranger Rick. He has edited two scientific books and written numerous scientific papers, in addition to his just-published book, Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City. Sanderson received his Ph.D. in ecology from the University of California, Davis. He also holds a Bachelors of Arts and Science in English literature and Biochemistry from Davis. He joined the Wildlife Conservation Society in 2000 and is currently Associate Director in the Living Landscapes Program.

Initiated and organized by Arezoo Moseni, Architectural Explorations in Books is a new series of engaging programs delving into the critical role that architecture books play in the understanding of contemporary urban developments and structures. The events feature book presentations and discussions by acclaimed architects, critics, curators, designers, photographers and writers.