A Conversation with Ed Mazria: Pedagogy, Agency, Advocacy and Energy Futures

Please join us for a discussion on how to address energy in the pedagogy of architecture, models of advocacy, and architecture’s agency in our energy futures. This program is organized in conjunction with the exhibition Making Energy Visible, curated by Tülay Atak and on view at the Center for Architecture through March 28.

Energy drives modern life. We encounter its effects—light, warmth, motion—yet the infrastructures and urban systems that sustain them remain mostly unseen. Architecture and design can play a central role in thinking about energy today. While these fields can contribute to the decarbonization of building systems and the adoption of new technologies, they can also expand how energy is imagined—beyond quick fixes and toward visibility, legibility, and new forms of collective value.

A presentation by Ed Mazria will be followed by a conversation with exhibition curator Tülay Atak and Quilian Riano, the Dean of Pratt Institute School of Architecture.   
 
Speakers:
Tulay Atak, Curator, Making Energy Visible
Ed Mazria, Founder, Architecture 2030
Quilian Riano, Dean, Pratt Institute School of Architecture
 
About the Speakers:

Tülay Atak is an architect, an architectural historian, and theorist. Her research focuses on the intersection between environmental history and architecture. 

Ed Mazria is an internationally recognized architect, author, educator and visionary with a long and distinguished career. His award-winning architecture and planning projects span over a 35-year period, each employing a cutting-edge environmental approach to design. Most recently, Mazria has reshaped the national and international dialogue on climate change to incorporate building design and the 'Building Sector'. He is the founder of Architecture 2030, an innovative and flexible research organization focused on rapidly transforming the U.S. and global Building Sector from the major energy consumer and contributor of greenhouse gas emissions to a central part of the solution to the global-warming, energy and economic crises. Architecture 2030 developed and issued the 2030 Challenge, a measured and achievable strategy to dramatically reduce global GHG emissions and fossil-fuel consumption by the year 2030.

Mazria speaks nationally and internationally on the subject of architecture, design, energy and climate change and has taught architecture at several universities including the University of New Mexico, University of Oregon and UCLA. His numerous awards include AIA Design Awards, AIA Design Innovation Award, American Planning Association Award, Department of Energy Awards, “Pioneer Award” from the American Solar Energy Society, first recipient of the Equinox Award presented on the 50th anniversary of construction of the world’s first commercial solar building, a 2008 National Conservation Achievement Award from the National Wildlife Federation and the first 2010 Hanley Award for Vision and Leadership. Most recently, he has been ranked second among the nation's leading 'role models' for green and sustainable design by the 2010 Design Intelligence Survey. He is a fellow of the Design Futures Council.
  
Quilian Riano is the Dean of Pratt Institute’s School of Architecture, and is on the board of the Architectural League of New York and AIA New York.