The talks series at East Hampton’s LongHouse Reserve will return next Thursday at 5 p.m. with a conversation focused in part on “Drifting Symmetries: Projects, Provocations, and Other Enduring Models,” the most recent monograph featuring the work of the architects Marion Weiss and Michael Manfredi. They will discuss their practice with Paul Goldberger, the noted writer and architecture critic.
The architects, who are based in Manhattan and are partners both in life and in business, say on their website that “For us the territory of architecture should concern itself with the whole of the built environment. We seek to broaden the definition of architecture and search for opportunities to consider, both in physical and disciplinary terms, a larger territory for expression.”
Their work transcends boundaries among architecture, art, ecology, landscape architecture, engineering, and urban planning, distinctions that “marginalize the architectural project.” The book considers their own built work alongside historical precedents and insights from architects, designers, landscape architects, curators, and others.
Among the firm’s notable projects are the Seattle Art Museum’s Olympic Sculpture Park, the Women’s Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden Visitor Center and Overlook, and Hunter’s Point South Waterfront Park.
Current projects include the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi, the La Brea Tar Pits and Museum in Los Angeles, and Lincoln Center’s new outdoor theater. The firm recently won an international competition for the addition and renovation of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Mo., which attracted over 180 submissions from 30 countries.
Mr. Goldberger, an Amagansett homeowner, is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, a columnist for The New Yorker, and the former architecture critic of The New York Times, where he received the Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Criticism. He was given New York City’s Preservation Achievement Award in recognition of the impact of his work on historic preservation.
In addition, he is the Joseph Urban Professor of Design at Parsons School of Design at The New School, and chairman of the board at Philip Johnson’s Glass House. Mr. Goldberger was a close friend and colleague of Jack Lenor Larsen, the founder of LongHouse, and is considered the pre-eminent scholar on LongHouse.
Tickets are $35, $25 for members. Copies of “Drifting Symmetries” will be available for purchase.
