Joshua Prince-Ramus
Founding Principal, REX
"Rethinking Flexibility"
Wednesday, February 23, 2022
6 - 7:30 pm
Hayes Hall 403
UB South Campus
Despite an increased need to accommodate change, contemporary architecture still relies on the antiquated modernist vision of flexibility: a blank slate (or white cube or black box) upon which any activity can occur. This approach has historically produced banal, sterile architecture, and the intellectual and economic costs to reconfigure these architectural tabula rasa have become prohibitive. New concepts of flexibility must, and can, be advanced.
AIA continuing education credits available (1 LU)
Biography
Joshua Ramus is the founding principal of REX
Joshua Ramus is the founding principal of REX, whose mission is to challenge and advance building paradigms and promote the agency of architecture. He is currently working on the Ronald O. Perelman Performing Arts Center at the World Trade Center; the Brown University Performing Arts Center in Providence; two mixed-use towers in Australia; the Necklace Residence on Long Island; and a virtual museum and performing arts space for Metapurse, which will “house” Beeple’s infamous NFT The first 5000 Days. Joshua’s belief that architecture should do things for its users and communities, and not simply be a representational art, was first applied to his design of the Seattle Central Library, which he led as a founding partner of OMA New York.
Joshua has been honored with the Action Maverick Award from the experimental performance company STREB and was the first American recipient of the international Marcus Prize. He has also been credited as one of: the “5 greatest architects under 50” by HuffPost; the world’s most influential young architects by Wallpaper*; the twenty most influential players in design by Fast Company; “The 20 Essential Young Architects” by ICON magazine; and the “Best and Brightest” by Esquire. His projects consistently receive the profession’s top awards and accolades, including two AIA National Honor Awards and Time magazine’s Building of the Year. Joshua has been a Smithsonian Institute National Design Award Nominee each of the last twelve years.
Joshua has been a visiting professor at Columbia University, The Cooper Union, Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Rice University, Syracuse University, and Yale University. An early member of the TED Advisory Board, he shared REX’s design methodologies at the TED 2006 and TEDxSMU conferences. Joshua holds a Master of Architecture from Harvard University and a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from Yale University.
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