Architecture.Research.Education
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ABOUT
Marcelo López-Dinardi is an immigrant, designer, educator based in Texas, and Assistant Professor of Architecture at Texas A&M University. He was a founding Partner of A(n) Office (2013-2020), whose work was exhibited at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale. He has written for The Avery Review, The Architect’s Newspaper, Domus, ARQ, Plat journal, Planning Perspectives, Art Forum (China), […]
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MUSEOS EN COMÚN – MUSEUMS IN COMMON
In October I was fortunate to participate in the Lugares Comunes (Common Places) panel as speaker as part of the exhibition Museos en Común (Museusm in Common) organized by Marielsa Castro at the JUMEX Museum in Mexico City. Ler more about the fantastic exhibition project here.
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ARQ 111 – DEGROWTH
Very excited to share the new issue of ARQ 111 on the theme of DEGROWTH as Guest Editor. The editorial asks, ‘is degrowth appropriate for all geographies and cultures? Is it worth exploring if it is not an anti-capitalist pursuit? Who is responsible, and who pays the price of degrowth? And for us, what is the role […]
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BOOK – TDTA
The books for the TEATRO DELLA TERRA ALIENATA winning pavilion at the 2019 Triennale di Milano arrived in English and Spanish and I am happy to have contributed with a roundtable discussion. You can obtain the books here.
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ACSA At-Large Director
Happy to have been elected to an Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) At-Large Director and will serve in its Board of Directors starting July 2022. More info here.
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FORMS OF ENGAGEMENT
Interview with PLAT journal editors discussing forms of engagement, care, architecture education, and architecture as potential. Visit their website here.
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MAKING THE PUBLIC–COMMONS
MAKING THE PUBLIC–COMMONS was an installation and a conversations-marathon project motivated by the ambition and need to elaborate our positions towards the making and building public–commons, primarily through an act of appearance and conversation much required in our cultural context. The project relied mainly on direct dialogue and embodied engagement. It proposed dialogue and conversations […]
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TABLE 21-8
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AN AGENDA FOR BCS
As a newcomer faculty to Texas in the Fall of 2018, I decided to dedicate most of my architecture studios—junior, senior, and graduate, to learn about the cities of Bryan and College Station (BCS), their logic, motivations, and potential pitfalls. These studios were a new endeavor to many. The thinking of architecture as a cultural […]
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QUESTIONS FOR DOWNTOWN BRYAN, TX
QUESTIONS FOR DOWNTOWN BRYAN, TX is a collaboration with MILM2 long-standing Proyecto Pregunta (or Question Project) for their latest book of urgent questions. For this occasion I asked WHAT HISTORY MEETS COMMUNITY? in response to the city’s revitalization slogan Where history meets community; and WHY THE CITY IS STILL SEGREGATED? to acknowledge the historical and […]
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ARCHIVAL IMPRESSION: (RE)COLLECTING GORDON MATTA-CLARK
This article examines the contested relationship between the artist Gordon Matta-Clark, who was educated as an architect, and his father, the Surrealist painter Roberto Matta, with regards to architecture and the archive. It argues that architecture was impressed, archived in Matta-Clark not only by his father, but also by his destructive drive and the reinscription […]
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BRIDGING THE BINATIONAL CITIES OF LAREDO AND NUEVO LAREDO
ARCHITECTURE MATTERS: BRIDGING THE BI-NATIONAL CITIES OF LAREDO AND NUEVO LAREDO The studio explores questions of political boundaries and their spatial implications in the bi-national cities of Laredo (US) and Nuevo Laredo (MX). The studio research and considers the existing conditions as they relate to questions of ecology, trade, migration, culture, among others. The last […]
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EXIT INTERVIEW: MUSINGS, HISTORIES, IDEAS
This remote-teaching studio takes the idea of an academic “Exit Interview” to develop a dialogue, discussions—or musings about contemporary architectural culture theories-and-practices, its production politics, its purpose, formulations, capacities, limits, and motivations. In brief, what is a project in architecture? It focuses primarily on architectural production of the last fifty years. Since this summer studio […]
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TEXAS MINI POLEIS
Everything is bigger in Texas, or not. The saying indeed reflect the vast geography of its political boundaries, yet its territory—like many others in the country’s extension, is also comprised of much smaller groupings that reflect other forms of assembly. Some of these groupings are, even in Texas, significantly small, or mini. TEXAS MINI-POLEIS is […]
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EXPANDED PRACTICES FOR ARCHITECTURE: LOCATING PSYCHOPOLITICS
EXPANDED PRACTICES FOR ARCHITECTURE, LOCATING PSYCHOPOLITICS: Re-Mediate, Reveal, Announce, Denounce, Expose, Display is an architectural research project investigating the SPATIAL, BODY or MEDIA transactions in which a form of “technology of power”– following Byung-Chul Han Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power, are manifested. The project asks where and how these transactions define codes, protocols, […]
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TABLE 3-8
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AMERICAN ART OF THE SIXTIES
Presented the paper, Audience and Discourse: Cross-Atlantic Exchanges in the Context of the IAUS in New York City, or Inventing New Eurocentric Architecture Institutions in the 1970s during the American Art of the Sixties: Visual & Material Forms in a Transnational Context symposium held (virtual) at Texas A&M University on March 26-27 2020. Organized by Susanneh […]
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ARCHITECTURE META-MATTERS
ARCHITECTURE META-MATTER(S) is a first year M.Arch studio focusing on introducing why architecture matters and what is the matter of architecture. As an initial course in the graduate program, the course will look at multi-scalar conditions and will find the role, opportunity, and limits of architecture. ARCHITECTURE META-MATTER(S) will research the territorial conditions in our […]
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THE RISK OF NOT SPECULATING
The Risk of Not Speculating, Liam Young in Conversation with Marcelo López-Dinardi published in ARQ 102.
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DREAMING SUMMER DESIRES BOOK
Summer intensive studio book documenting the work of the eponymous architecture studio that investigated the possibilities of play and summer desires in the context of a college town (College Station, TX) during the summer of 2019.
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I WOULD RATHER BE___________ DREAMING SUMMER DESIRES
I WOULD RATHER BE DREAMING SUMMER DESIRES (DSD) is a project about collective imagination in a context of social and spatial dispersion. DSD departs from the premise that the city of College Station TX, is a clear evidence of the abstracted territories produced […]
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INFRASTRUCTURE, THE COMMONS AND THE RIGHT TO THE CITY
A continuation of Public Assemblies and Infrastructures from the Fall 2018, INFRASTRUCTURES, THE COMMONS, AND THE RIGHT TO THE CITY is a third year architecture studio (Spring 2019) that will consider what, how and by whom are the collective title shaped Bryan, Texas, and how their identification and critical analysis can inform the production of a […]
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TEATRO DELLA TERRA ALIENATA
Moderated a panel on the Golden Bee wining Australia Pavilion of the 2019 Triennale di Milano, curated by Amaia Sanchez-Velasco, Jorge Valiente Oriol, Miguel Rodriguez-Casellas, Gonzalo Valiente, and included the participation of artist Patricia Reed. “Teatro Della Terra Alienata (Theatre of the Alienated Land) is the name of the Australian Pavilion designed by the UTS […]
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PUBLIC ASSEMBLIES & INFRASTRUCTURES
PUBLIC(S) ASSEMBLIES AND INFRASTRUCTURES is a third year architecture studio (Fall 2018) that will consider what and who constitutes the publics (in plural) of the cities of College Station and Bryan, in Texas, and how their identification and critical analysis can inform the production of a program and a project for architecture in the form […]
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SUBJECT
SUBJECT, 2019 Commercial exhibition banner, printed (36 x 168 in.) SUBJECT appeals to the use of language as a form of engagement, communication, and instruction. It also inquires, by been not-prescriptive but open-ended, text and word’s capacity to communicate apparent ideas or ideologies in the visual and psychological dialogue with the body that is confronted […]
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WE CAN FIT
This short design-research projects explores alternatives for the architectural floor plan of ONE MANHATTAN SQUARE, the newest addition to NYC’s Manhattan luxury skyscrapers. The floor plan is a drawing type that can both “determine” but also “accommodate” life, it is both active form and stuff container. WE CAN FIT alters the existing plan by re-filling […]
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UNNATURAL DISASTER
The project Spatializing Debt: A Visual Audit was presented at Columbia GSAPP after an invitation by the Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture from the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation from Columbia University during the panel Unnatural Disaster: Infrastructure in Puerto Rico before, during, and after Hurricane Maria on November 9, 2018. […]
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INCUBATING
GSAPP Conversation hosted an edition with outgoing members of the Downtown NYC GSAPP Incubator at the NewInc. You can listen to it here. Participant, 2018.
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HEADING SOUTH!
Happy to have accepted an offer to join the faculty of the Department of Architecture at Texas A&M University as Assistant Professor. See you in the south!
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‘IN-BETWEEN THE PHYSICAL AND THE PSYCHOLOGICAL: LOCATING GORDON MATTA-CLARK AND ARCHITECTURE’ AT ACSA-MARFA
In-Between the Physical and the Psychological: Locating Gordon Matta-Clark and Architecture, is a research-paper presented during the Fall Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture–MARFA, TX conference. The paper discuss the paternal/architectural weight of the artist-trained architect Gordon Matta-Clark and his father the surrealist painter–also trained architect Roberto Matta. Examining the archive of his works at the […]
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GSAPP DEBATES AT IDEAS CITY NEW YORK
Architecture vs Education with Marcelo López-Dinardi and Violet Whitney, as part of the GSAPP Debates presented during Ideas City New York. Participant, 2017.
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SPATIALIZING DEBT: A VISUAL AUDIT
Spatializing Debt: A Visual Auditing examines the intersection of architecture, political economy and visual imaginaries with the logics of state-financial debt under Puerto Rico’s current status, by giving territorial, spatial, and visual dimension to the so-called public debt. Investment Firms Information by the Centro de Periodismo Investigativo of Puerto Rico. Researcher, ongoing, 2017.
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ARCHINECT FEATURE
Archinect network featured Marcelo López-Dinardi among 22 immigrants “expanding the definition of American architecture,” and feature A(n) Office in their Small Studio report. Press, 2017.
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COCA – MADRID
COCA was the First Congress in Architectural Communication held at the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid (ETSAM). I presented during the ‘Pedagogical Actions’ panels the work Spatial and Body Transactions developed by Barnard+Columbia students during the spring 2017 semester. It explored the conditions for transactions in an educational setting, that of the Barnard and […]
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IDEAS CITY ARLES
Ideas City Arles was a week-long residency program organized by New York’s New Museum in collaboration with Luma Foundation (Luma Arles). “IdeasCity is a collaborative, civic, creative platform of the New Museum in New York that starts from the premise that art and culture are essential to the future vitality of cities.” Ideas City Arles considered the […]
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DOES A SURFACE SPEAK?
Does A Surface Speak? was my contribution for the collective exhibition, “Yes I’ve Had A Facelift, But Who Han’t” curated by Shyan Rahimi, Jessica Kwok and Adjustments Agency. Does A Surface Speak? is part monologue, part interrogation, part repository, and interactive piece that ask questions to the way (mostly) architectural surfaces are perceived and treated. The […]
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PROMISED AIR AT MoCAD
Promised Land Air, A(n) Office’s contribution to the 2016 US Pavilion for the architecture Venice Biennale, is now on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Detroit in its first tour stop. Projects will be on display in Detroit until April 16 and will continue their tour to Los Angeles. More about the project here. […]
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PUBLIC ASSEMBLIES OF WORK
PUBLIC(S) ASSEMBLIES OF WORK was a graduate architecture studio at NJIT that considers what and who constitutes the publics (in plural) of the town of Harrison, New Jersey, and how their identification and critical analysis can inform the production of a program and a project for architecture, or an assembly of work. The studio investigated subjects, […]
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THE MEDIA OF ARCHITECTURE: PRINT, EXHIBITIONS, AND COMMUNICATIONS AT COLUMBIA GSAPP
“The Media of Architecture: Print, Exhibitions, and Communications at Columbia GSAPP” December 9, 12:30pm at GSAPP Incubator / New Inc. Rather than examine these methods within the production of architecture itself, this event explores architectural narratives as they are expressed within academic, critical, and cultural settings. We will consider the role of exhibition making, print […]
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INCUBATING NEW YORK
“Incubating New York” will take place at the GSAPP, Columbia University on December 2, 2016 at 1pm. A panel discussion about the ideas and work developed during my residency at the GSAPP Incubator between 2015-2016. More info here and video recording of the event here.
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IDEAS CITY ATHENS
IDEAS CITY Athens was a week-long residency program organized by New York’s New Museum in collaboration with Neon Foundation. “The five-day residency will bring together emerging practitioners working at the intersection of community activism, art, design, architecture, and technology in cities around the world. IdeasCity Fellows will live and work in the Athens Conservatory and will transform the space into […]
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US PAVILION 2016 PROMISED L-A-N-D AIR
Promised L-a-n-d Air, the A(n) Office proposal for Mexicantown/Southwest Detroit, engages the consequences of North American infrastructure for urban housing, industrial plants, international institutions, and air quality. The program for the almost 10-acre site is conceived as layers of remediation–remediating the displacement of nearby residents, remediating the proliferation of trucks in residential neighborhoods, and remediating the air […]
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UNDISCIPLINED CMU: A DESIGN-BUILD MASONRY STUDIO
UNDISCIPLINED CMU: A DESIGN-BUILD MASONRY STUDIO is the book that document the project of the same name. The book was done during the Summer of 2015 in collaboration with Pier Paolo Pala, Chau Tran and Yuliya Veligurskaya, students who took part on the Spring semester making the project. The book is available for purchase here and to […]
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UNDISCIPLINED CMU
UNDISCIPLINED CMU is the second iteration of a second year undergraduate studio project at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in which a construction is developed as part of a masonry studio. Material is investigated as a given condition and turned into an unexpected object after intense exploration. The resultant object is a concrete construction that, as an […]
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SPATIAL CONSTRUCTIONS
Spatial Construction: Occupying a Grid is an exercise for the Introduction to Architecture and Visual Culture studio for non-majors at Barnard and Columbia. It is focused on the better understanding of space within a set of given parameters. First, it will work around a virtual cubic structure (12″x12″)that will contain a formal grid. This will define one […]
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ASCENDING, DURATION, ROOMS
Ascending, Duration and Rooms (13:54 each) are the three short films based on the un-construction of the House Opera in Detroit. Each film disassemble and reconstruct the footage of one-week of work into three themes: sound, time and space respectively. Exhibited at the BEB Gallery in the Rhode Island School of Design as part of the […]
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METHODS AND MEDIA
Methods and Media is an exhibition and a lecture at the BB Gallery of the Rhode Island School of Design after an invitation by faculty members Emanuel Admassu and Aaron Forrest. Methods and Media, the exhibition, is the exploration of the unconstruction process of the A(n) Office/McEwen Studio House Opera, as I video-documented it during a […]
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THE DAY AFTER THE CARNIVAL
The Day After the Carnival: The Hangover of Work (in Late Capitalism) was a graduate studio taught at Penn Design in the University of Pennsylvania, inquiring the intersection of work-production as a mode of carnivalesque action in the form of hangover. Students researched and draw existing program-buildings near Northern Liberties, analyzed their local-global logics, composed programmatic […]
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HOUSE OPERA | OPERA HOUSE
The House Opera project seeks, through architectural innovation, to propose a fertile alternative to the blight binary of neglect versus demolition. The project seeks to explore what might occur when the borders of a house open up to annihilate the borders between art and community, makers and receivers of art, museums and home. House Opera […]
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URBAN_NEXT INTERVIEWS
urbanNext* conducted three interviews on my “work with A(n) Office” in Detroit, a “Designer’s Approach” and my “Curatorial Approach” for the US Pavilion for the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale. They can be accessed here. * urbanNext is an online platform aiming to generate a global network to produce content focused on rethinking architecture through the contemporary urban […]
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REPLACING SPLITTING
Artist Gordon Matta-Clark Splitting’s house photographs were superimposed in the location where the house stood before demolition in 1974. Re-placing took place on April 2013 in Englewood, New Jersey. RE-PLACING SPLITTING is part of Destructive Knowledge: Tools for Learning to Un-Dō, a theoretical investigation between docility, knowledge and discipline through the artist’s work. Physical Installation, […]
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3595 BROADWAY
3595 Broadway is a critique/article to a mixed-use building by Columbia University’s uptown expansion in New York City, published in The Architect’s Newspaper here. Author, 2015.
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CMU I
A complement to the 2nd year studios at the New Jersey Institute of Technology students work on a masonry build-mock-up, a competition based project in which students create a masonry construction with the help of masons, typical solid CMU blocks were cut in order to create the space of “staged interactions” within the school environment. The inquiry of […]
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SYSTEMS AND TECTONICS
The core 2nd year studio at the New Jersey Institute of Technology aim to discuss and develop design strategies for the concepts of tectonics and buildings’ systems. The studio was given with an emphasis in experimenting with the tools of geometric and ordering systems and their networked capacity. Studio Instructor, 2014.
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URBAN INTERVENTIONS I
Barnard + Columbia Introduction to Architecture and Visual Culture studio for non-majors in architecture. Students were asked to develop a Urban Intervention based on active verbs that they first enacted in person. Verbs were interpreted and informed by the students’ body through conceptual drawings, then translated into site-specific interventions. Studio Instructor, 2014.
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ARCHITECTURE OF INDUSTRIOUSNESS
Architecture of Industriousness is a short text part of House Housing: An Untimely History ofArchitecture and Real Estate in Nineteen Episodes, exhibition’s pamphlet, made for the traveling exhibition Venice’s Casa Muraro during the summer of 2014, and off-Venice Biennale site. Also available on the web at http://www.house-housing.com. Research and Production Coordinator for the Venice part […]
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POST-SPECULATION ACT I
Post-Speculation Act I was an exhibition at P! Gallery featuring HOWDOYOUSAYYAMINAFRICAN. A project with A(n) Office, we designed the exhibition and installation of multimedia images and videos, as well as objects. 28 screens where displaying news and artists’ work related to urgent racial issues, subverting the typical surveillance display into a revealing and exposure device. […]
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VISITING SPLITTING
Visiting Splitting was a film screening and conversation held around two films depicting Gordon Matta-Clark’s Splitting work, including the film Visit To Humphrey Street House, a first public screening after revealing the film from the artist’s archive. In discussion with Kelly Baum, Jessamyn Fiore, GH Hovagimyan and Mark Wigley. Event held at the Storefront for Art and Architecture. […]
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ANONYMOUS SYMPOSIUM
Anonymous symposium presentation on the panel Commonisms, at the Princeton University School of Architecture with A(n) Office, 2013. Video documentation of the event here.
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LOCATING OUT-SOURCING
PG-Arch, a project for the exhibition Locating Out-sourcing at Studio-X Mumbai, departs from the acronyms used in the industry as a provocation for its architecture, from the Perfectly Generic Architecture (equivalent to the Professional Golf Association) to a Politically Generated Architecture. Photo shows Pangea3 headquarters, one of the largest legal-outsourcing services provider based in New […]
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PROMISCUOUS ENCOUNTERS
Promiscuous Encounters, a day-long event held at the GSAPP in March 2012, examined the interplay between the critical, curatorial, and conceptual capacities of architecture, neither audio nor video recordings were made. This publication is, then, the vehicle for the event’s documentation and the site where the interpretations of both participants and audience are made public, […]
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PROMISCUOUS ENCOUNTERS: ADRESSING/ASSESING ADHOCRACY
Promiscuous Encounters: Addressing/Assessing Adhocracy, a day-long event held at the Galata Greek School after an invitation form the curatorial team for the first Istanbul Design Biennial in November 2012, examined the exhibition ADHOCRACY curated by Joseph Grima through the lens of: invisibility, design, value and commons. Participants: Ethel Baraona Pohl, Ute Meta Bauer, Francisco Díaz, […]
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INTERPRETATIONS: PROMISCUOUS ENCOUNTERS
Interpretations: Promiscuous Encounters, a day-long event held at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation in March 2012, examined the interplay between the critical, curatorial, and conceptual capacities of architecture, and their promises exchanges. Neither audio nor video recordings were made. Participants: Keller Easterling, Andrés Jaque, Reinhold Martin, Mitch McEwen, Markus Miessen, Felicity D. Scott, Pelin […]
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CIUDADLAB: BRAZIL, THE FORM OF DESIRE
After researching the cities of Rio de Janeiro, Brasilia and São Paulo in Brazil we identified leisure, void, security, industry, body, tourism and monumentality as drivers of the forms of desire. With and ever expanding economy, Brazil has become the world’s eighth economy and the destination for countless local and international events. The research was […]
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POLIMORFO
Polimorfo is the journal of the School of Architecture of the Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico. Founder, Editor, Designer, 2009-2011 (in collaboration with Oscar Oliver-Didier). PDF available online here.
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SENSE RECESSION: WHAT COMES NEXT?
Sense Recession: What Comes Next? was a lecture series inquiring and exploring architectural practices as they emerged or were formulated out of the financial crash (not crisis) of 2008. Invited Lecturers: Xavi Sempere – Culdesac, Spain; José Luis Vallejo & Belinda Tato, Ecosistema Urbano, Spain; Giancarlo Mazzanti – Colombia; Carmina Sánchez del Valle, Hampton University, […]
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CIUDADLAB: UTOPIA IN MOSCOW
As with every CIUDADLAB research and exhibition project, we pick a different destination in an attempt to broaden the frame of reference from which we imagine the city. During the year 2008, choosing Moscow seemed to sense Russia’s renewed presence in the geopolitical game as we experienced the beginning of a renewed “Cold War.” Beyond Moscow’s exoticism with […]
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CIUDADLAB
A research and exhibition driven platform for examining and revealing the critical and emergent issues formulating the contemporary production of cities. We investigate cities across the world always identifying pressing issues of their role within a local or global scenario; social and economical inequality, migration, urban imaginaries, urban growth, geography, power, surveillance, biopolitics and memory […]
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ROUNDTABLE SERIES
The Roundtable Discussion Series began as a complement to the first CIUDADLAB course offered at ArqPoli in 2005. The conversations were conducted with the idea of bringing to the school multi-disciplinary issues pertinent to our discipline. The invited panelists came from a wide spectrum and fields, provoking more than mere conversations, but vivid debates that […]
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FLMM NEW VISITORS CENTER
The project, the new Visitors Center and Museum for the Luis Muñoz Marín Foundation in San Juan, Puerto Rico, situates itself as a mediator and threshold between a large semi-urban forest and a historic site grouping the former home and small buildings of the owners, where the house of the first elected governor of Puerto Rico is located. A […]
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PLACE AND CONTEXT STUDIO
For the initial part of the course, first year undergraduate students where confronted to notions of place and context. An analytical city study was developed through the layering of cartographic drawings including a vast variety of the city’s visible and invisible infrastructure. Mixed media, hand drawn. Studio Instructor, 2007.
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HOUSE O
The house was conceived as a large open interior/exterior space in between the front and back gardens of the elongated site. Two less permeable volumes contain the private and support areas. Formal public living areas are covered with a high roof to create a continuous environment with the gardens and outdoors. Project Lead Designer for […]
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ANARCHIST GARDENER
Led by pedestrian deity (Finnish architect Marco Casagrande), the anarchist gardener performance developed 12 “industrial zen gardens” during a 9 hour walking performance between the cities of Bayamón and San Juan. The anarchist gardener aimed for a better pedestrian city lost to vehicles. Performance, 2003.
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VALPARAISO OR AN ANAMNESTIC MEMORY
Memory is a vital resource for trying to explain cities. Valparaíso in Chile has been no exception as evidenced by the efforts that made the city a World Heritage Site (UNESCO) after this project began in 2002. Therefore, critical analysis of heritage-related memory could present operational and architectural alternatives in the exercise of articulating historical […]
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ABOUT
Marcelo López-Dinardi is an immigrant, designer, and educator based in Texas, and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Architecture at Texas A&M University. He was a founding Partner of A(n) Office (2013-2020). He’s interested in the multiple scales of design; biopolitics and agency in design and education; in the practice of architecture as research; art […]
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CONTACT
Marcelo López–Dinardi 