Lecture Title: Work in Section
Paul will be speaking about both his recent book, the Manual of Section and use its taxonomy to frame the work of LTL Architects. Manual of Section is the first comprehensive book on a fundamental architecture drawing type, an analysis of what it is and what it does. LTL foreground the section not only as a representational technique, ripe with the ability to demonstrate structure, interior space, and form, but also as a key locus of design invention. If the plan absorbs much architectural interest, serving as a means to control function, organization and movement, LTL argues that the section is the critical means for engaging social, environmental, and material questions. Designing and thinking through section establishes a relationship among architectural form, interior space, and site where the consequences of scale are tangible and visceral. As a cut into that which cannot be seen, the section embodies and reveals territories for architectural experimentation and exploration. Sections provide a unique form of knowledge, one that by necessity shifts the emphasis from image to performance, from surface to the intersection of structure and materiality that comprises the tectonic logic of architecture.
Paul Lewis is a Principal at Lewis.Tsurumaki.Lewis (LTL) Architects based in New York City. He is currently an Associate Professor and Associate Dean at Princeton University School of Architecture, where he has taught since 2000. He received a BA from Wesleyan University and a M.Arch from Princeton University. His New York based firm has completed academic, institutional, residential and hospitality projects throughout the United States. LTL received a 2007 Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award and has received multiple AIA design. Their recent built work includes The ContemporAry Austin, an art center in Austin, Texas; Steeplechase Pier at Coney Island, redesigned and rebuilt following damage from Superstorm Sandy; a new administrative campus for the Claremont University Consortium in Claremont, California; and projects at Cornell University, New York University and Columbia University.
The firm’s designs and drawings been exhibited around the world, including the U.S. Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale, and are part of the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and Carnegie Museum of Art. LTL Architects are the authors of Intensities (2013), Opportunistic Architecture (2008) and Situation Normal....Pamphlet Architecture #21 (1998). Their newest book entitled Manual of Section, an analysis of the history and typology of section in architecture, was released in August 2016. Paul is a Board Member of the Architectural League of New York and a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome.
This lecture has been approved for 1.5 LU by AIA Chicago
