A School of Architecture Lecture Series Event
When
Join CAPLA for the School of Architecture Lecture Series, featuring dynamic speakers from across built environment industries.
Despite an increased need to accommodate change, contemporary architecture still relies on the antiquated modernist vision of flexibility: a blank slate (or white cube or black box) upon which any activity can occur. This approach has historically produced banal, sterile architecture, and the intellectual and economic costs to reconfigure these architectural tabula rasae have become prohibitive. New concepts of flexibility must, and can, be advanced.
This lecture will be held in the Sundt Gallery in the CAPLA West Building as well as online via Zoom.
About REX
REX is an internationally acclaimed architecture and design firm based in New York City. Believing that architecture should serve its users and communities rather than merely being a representational art, REX challenges and advances building typologies while promoting the agency of architecture. The firm aspires to create inventive designs that are functionally specific, offering inspiring aesthetic experiences. REX has been named one of the World’s Top 10 Innovative Companies in Architecture by Fast Company twice.
The studio is composed of thirty designers from varied cultural, social and educational backgrounds, led by Joshua Ramus, REX’s founding principal. The firm’s ongoing projects include the nearing completion of the Ronald O. Perelman Performing Arts Center at the World Trade Center in New York, New York; the Lindemann Performing Arts Center at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island; the under-construction Elizabeth Quay Lots 5 & 6, a pair of mixed-use skyscrapers in Perth, Australia; the office tower, 205 North Quay, in Brisbane, Australia; the Necklace Residence on Long Island, New York; the adaptive reuse of the Frank Murphy Hall of Justice in Detroit, Michigan; and a virtual museum and performing arts space for Metapurse “housing” Beeple’s infamous NFT Everydays: the First 5000 Days. REX recently completed 2050 M Street, a premium office building in Washington, DC, hosting CBS’s Washington Bureau, and the re-cladding and interior renovation of Five Manhattan West, a 158,000 m2 (1,700,000 sf) Brutalist landmark straddling Penn Station’s rail yard in New York City.
Seminal projects in REX’s portfolio include the AT&T Performing Arts Center Dee & Charles Wyly Theatre in Dallas, Texas; the Vakko Fashion Center & Power Media Headquarters in Istanbul, Turkey; and the Seattle Central Library in the State of Washington. Joshua led the Seattle Central Library—praised by Herbert Muschamp in The New York Times as “the most exciting new building it has been my honor to review in more than 30 years of writing about architecture”—while a founding partner of OMA New York, a firm he later rebranded as REX.
About Joshua Ramus
Joshua Ramos, the Founding Principal of REX, leads a diverse team of professionals and is deeply involved in the firm's projects. Recognized internationally, he received the prestigious Marcus Prize in 2016 and has been acknowledged as one of the "5 greatest architects under 50" by HuffPost, among other accolades. Holding a Master of Architecture from Harvard University and a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from Yale University, Joshua has served as a visiting professor at various prestigious institutions. A registered architect in multiple countries, he was a founding partner of OMA New York before rebranding it as REX in 2006, overseeing notable projects like the Guggenheim-Hermitage Museum and the Seattle Central Library.