10/24/11

AMES, Iowa — Nationally renowned architect David Heymann, the Harwell Hamilton Harris Regents Professor in Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin, will speak about the complex relationship of buildings and landscape as part of the Architecture Advisory Council Lecture Series at Iowa State University.

Heymann, who is also an Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) and University of Texas Distinguished Teaching Professor, will present "Landscape is Our Sex" at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 2, in Kocimski Auditorium, room 101 College of Design. The event is free and open to the public.

The focus of Heyman's design practice, writing and research is the complex relationship of buildings and landscape, particularly natural landscapes.

"Are buildings the landscape, or are they just part of the landscape?" he asks.

In his lecture, Heymann will look at "how the strategies of landscape mapping so prevalent today are problematically justified by their means rather than their ends," he said. He will present arguments made by Austro-Hungarian architect Adolph Loos and American installation artist Robert Irwin to distinguish between architectural and sculptural presence in the landscape.

While at Iowa State, Heymann also will participate in a critique of five student projects from the fall-semester collaborative Architecture 301/Landscape Architecture 301 studios. The critique will be 1:20 to 4 p.m. in the Armory center space.

In addition to design studios, Heymann teaches site design and architectural theory at the University of Texas. He also teaches for the university's architecture program in Italy. He served as associate dean for undergraduate programs from 1998 to 2003 and currently chairs the landscape architecture graduate studies committee. He is a frequent guest critic at universities throughout the U.S. and Canada.

Heymann was commissioned by President George W. Bush to design an environmentally friendly limestone house for the Prairie Chapel Ranch near Crawford, Texas, which served as the "Western White House" while Bush was in office.

Prior to founding his own practice in 1991, Heymann worked for Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects and Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, and taught architecture as an adjunct faculty member at Iowa State. He was an Artists and Scholars Program resident at the American Academy in Rome in 2002-03 and 2008, a Brown Fellow at the Dora Maar House in Menerbes, France, this past summer, and will be a resident scholar at the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center in Italy in 2012. He is a contributing editor for Places, an interdisciplinary journal of contemporary architecture, landscape and urbanism.

Heymann holds architecture degrees from The Cooper Union, New York, N.Y., and the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, Cambridge, Mass.

Heymann's visit is sponsored by the Architecture Advisory Council, the professional advisory board for the ISU Department of Architecture.

Contacts:
Peter Goché, Architecture, (515) 294-8276, goche@iastate.edu
Heather Sauer, College of Design Communications, (515) 294-9289, hsauer@iastate.edu

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