In this lecture, Bryony Roberts addresses recent projects that transform the social dimension of existing architecture. Questioning conventions in architecture and preservation, Robert discusses strategies for critically assessing buildings as part of larger patterns of social use and urban change. Integrating performance, drawing, and design, these projects produce interactive environments that augment historical spaces and introduce alternative social conditions. As part of ongoing research and writing on historic preservation and architecture, this work aims to foster critical discourses on how we preserve and change our existing built environments.
Bryony Roberts is a designer, artist and scholar. Her practice interrogates how we engage historical architecture, and combines methods from architecture, art, and performance to produce transformations of existing buildings. Recent projects include interventions at the Piazza del Campidoglio in Rome, the Federal Plaza in Chicago, the American Academy in Rome, and the Neutra VDL House in Los Angeles. Her work has received a Graham Foundation Individual Grant and was featured in the Chicago Architecture Biennial of 2015, in addition to solo and group exhibitions in Rome, Boston, Berlin, Los Angeles, and New York. She has published her research in Future Anterior, Log, and Architectural Record, co-edited the volume Log 31: New Ancients, and recently edited a book titled Tabula Plena: Forms of Urban Preservation published by Lars Müller Publishers. She was awarded the Rome Prize to develop her work at the American Academy in Rome (2015-2016), and currently teaches at the Columbia University GSAPP in New York and the Oslo School of Architecture in Norway.
