3835 Campus Drive
Architecture Building (145 ARC)
College Park, MD 20742
United States
This lecture is part of the Fall 2024 Architecture Lecture + Event Series. The lecture is open to the public; workshops are for the MAPP Community only.
LECTURE - 10/30 | 4:30 - 6 p.m. | Auditorium
WORKSHOP - 10/29 | 5 - 7 p.m. | ARCH 700
Speaker:
Botond Bognar,
Chair of Architecture, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
About the lecture:
“In historic times Japanese architecture maintained a close relationship with nature. This relationship suffered during the country’s rapid modernization, industrial and technological progress, a condition which intensified in the bubble economy of the 1980s and 1990s. However, a recently emerging trend, best represented by the work of Kengo Kuma, seeks to reestablish nature’s role in contemporary modern architecture and produce a better human environment. The lecture will also discuss the similar efforts by Ando, SANAA, and several others in Japan and beyond."
About the speaker:
Born and educated in Budapest, Hungary, Professor Bognar is currently Edgar A. Tafel Endowed Chair in Architecture at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign where he has been teaching graduate design and lecture / seminar courses for 40 years. He received his BSc (1968) and MArch (1972) degrees at the Budapest University of Technology, and MA in Architecture and Urban Planning (1981) at the University of California Los Angeles. As a Japanese Governmental Scholar, he conducted research at the Tokyo Institute of Technology (1973-1975). As a licensed architect he worked in both Hungary and Japan where he lived for several years.
Today, Professor Bognar is an internationally renowned scholar of the history and theories of Japanese architecture with a long list of publications, over twenty books and monographs, many chapters, and innumerable essays and articles in professional journals. He is now finalizing his latest book, Modern Architectures in History-JAPAN, invited by his London publisher. He has been keynote-speaker and panelist at numerous international conferences and lectured all around the world including the University of Tokyo, the Royal Academy of Arts London, the Architecture Center of Vienna, and at leading universities in Europe, Asia, Australia, and the United States.