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Stern Lecture: BAAG

Monday, October 21, 2024

6:00 pm -

About the Stern Professorship and Lecture

When William F. Stern passed away in 2013, his estate created the William F. Stern Endowed Visiting Professorship. The endowment supports bringing prominent visiting critics and lecturers to the Hines College through the endowment’s annual distribution. Since its inception, the College has welcomed esteemed architects, including Wendall Burnette, MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple, Brooks + Scarpa, MAIO, and ConstructLab, to work with students throughout the fall semester and present an annual all-school lecture.

Architecture of Transitions

We understand architecture as a process of exploration and research, where the challenge is to constantly rethink how we design, embracing human diversity and subjectivity. By rethinking how we design spaces through architecture, we can accommodate new ways of living and changing dynamics.

As our urban environments become denser, we must constantly renegotiate our boundaries, creating agreements between the immediate context and the broader environment. The agency of architecture becomes a means to create new connections between humans and other species. This involves not only sharing spaces, but also redefining limits to negotiate our coexistence.

Our discipline’s challenge and opportunity lie in rethinking how we design and experience these boundaries, exploring the intermediate spaces they create, and generating various transitional situations influenced by the intrinsic characteristics of the materials we use. Exploring the scope of architecture and the diversity of scales that compose the practice allows us to design from a territorial scale down to a fine detail, such as a 1:1 scale.

We can bridge the gap between these scales by studying the traceability of materials throughout their manufacturing process, from design to final implementation on the construction site. This approach enables us to question and examine material production processes, understanding them in their broader context. Traceability involves mapping the lifecycle of materials from extraction to refinement, logistics, and construction and assessing their environmental and societal impacts.

In this way, material knowledge becomes integral to the design process. Researching industrial and territorial activities leads to acquiring new tools that can be directly applied to design projects, placing materials at the core of architectural exploration. By comprehending the various phases of material production, we can design more thoughtfully and ensure that our architectural solutions are deeply rooted in their context.

About BAAG

BAAG, Buenos Aires Arquitectura Grupal, is an office based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Committed to the principles of collaborative work, BAAG understands architecture and contributes to the discipline through a combination of practical application and critical thinking, dedicated to ongoing production through inquiry, research, experimentation, and innovation.

The office is run by architects Gabriel Monteleone and Gastón Noriega, both graduates from the Faculty of Architecture, Design, and Urbanism at the University of Buenos Aires, where they are currently adjunct professors. BAAG has worked on a variety of projects, including institutional buildings, residential developments, research initiatives, cultural facilities, and both public and private competitions.

Their key achievements include participating in and winning an award at the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale in 2021; their exhibition “Pidgeon Audio Visual” at the Graham Foundation, Chicago (2023); a nomination for the Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize at the Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago (2016); the “Central Society of Architecture of Buenos Aires Prize” for completed work in 2014; the “First National Prize for Sustainable Architecture” awarded by the Central Society of Architects in 2015; the “Young Architects in Latin America” award at the 16th Venice Architecture Biennale in 2018; winning first prize at the Armenia Architecture Biennale in 201; and an award from the Academy of Fine Arts of Buenos Aires in 2020.

BAAG also actively engages in academic and professional discourse through lectures and workshops at universities and institutions, both in Argentina and abroad.

Gabriel Monteleone
Founder and Director

Gabriel Monteleone graduated from the Faculty of Architecture, Design, and Urbanism at the University of Buenos Aires in 2009. That same year, he won the First National Architecture Prize Clarín – Central Society of Architecture for the best university projects. In 2015, he received a scholarship from the landscape architecture program at the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, where he was a guest professor for Project I. His education experience also includes teaching Architecture Design I and IV at the University of Buenos Aires, where he is currently an adjunct professor of Architecture III. Monteleone has been invited to give lectures at various national and international universities.

Emilia Migali
Co-partner

Emilia Migali completed her studies at the Faculty of Architecture, Design, and Urbanism at the University of Buenos Aires in 2020. In 2018, she received a scholarship for an academic exchange program at the University of Genoa, Italy, specializing in the Urban Planning Laboratory. She has taught Architecture Design I and currently teaches Architecture Design V at the University of Buenos Aires.


This lecture is a part of the Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture and Design’s Entanglements Lecture Series.

Location
Architecture Building Theater