The Sydney Gross Memorial Lecture
A(n)emble!
Mitch McEwen and Fran Edgerley
MITCH MCEWEN
A(n) Office, McEwen Studio and The University of Michigan
FRAN EDGERLEY
Assemble, Central St. Martins, and Liverpool John Moores University
Wednesday, March 23, 2016
6PM
301 Crosby Hall
This event is part of ’Shipping Architecture, an intermittent series of events that pairs speakers whose work may have as-yet unknown relationships. We refer to the colloquial use of the term “’shipping,” which conjures relationships, celebrity couples or imaginary ones — here serving as a structure that is playful but also productive of new discourse.
Bios
Fran Edgerley
Fran Edgerley is a founding member of the collective Assemble, a multi-disciplinary collective of 15 working across architecture, design and art. Founded in 2010 to undertake a single self-built project, Assemble has since delivered a diverse and award-winning body of work, whilst retaining a democratic and co-operative working method that enables built, social and research based work at a variety of scales, both making things and making things happen.
They employ a hands-on and collaborative approach to developing projects that address our relationship with the built environment. Their work usually includes design but rarely starts or ends there, often seeking to make spaces within the city which enable independence or resistance to market forces, homogenisation and dominance; spaces of self-authorship, rupture, creativity and difference. Assemble champion a collaborative working practice that blurs the line between client, designer, builder and public. Their involvement in projects covers a broad range of disciplines and interests – underpinned by the belief that a more diverse approach leads to richer results. In 2015 they became the first design practice ever to win the Turner Prize in the UK.
Fran has recently been working on the development of Granby Workshop in Liverpool. She holds teaching positions at Central St Martins College of the University of the Arts London and at Liverpool John Moores University. She has lectured across Europe and has exhibited and performed at institutions across the UK. Fran studied Philosophy, Psychology and Physiology.
Mitch McEwen
As Partner at A(n) Office and Principal of McEwen Studio, V. Mitch McEwen works in architectural and urban design, focused particularly on the intersection of urban culture and global forces. Led by McEwen with design partner Marcelo Lopez-Dinardi, A(n) Office is one of 12 U.S. firms selected for the U.S. pavilion exhibition at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale. This coming spring, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Detroit will present Algorithmic Recitative, a public engagement project based on A(n) Office's Detroit-based House Opera | Opera House project. Before co-founding A(n) Office, McEwen worked as an urban designer in the office of Bernard Tschumi Architects and New York City’s Department of City Planning. Her work has been published in Architectural Record magazine, the New York Times, and the New Museum, as well as exhibited at P! gallery, Storefront for Art & Architecture, and internationally. ArtNews named her a designer to watch in 2011. Since 2014 she has been Assistant Professor of Architecture at Taubman College of Architecture & Urban Planning at University of Michigan, after teaching previously at Taubman as Charles Moore Visiting Professor of Urban Design, as well as Adjunct Assistant Professor at Columbia GSAPP. McEwen holds an MArch from Columbia GSAPP and BA from Harvard in Social Studies.