SEPTEMBER AIA LUNCHEON
Join AIA Central Oklahoma and the Christopher C. Gibbs, College of Architecture at the University of Oklahoma for the September AIA Luncheon on Thursday, September 5th at 11:30 a.m. at the Capitol View Event Center. We’re excited to announce our speaker, Lawrence Scarpa, FAIA of Brooks + Scarpa. His talk is titled, The Power of Beauty: Why it matters. Why do we remember buildings, locations and experiences? Even a place visited in our childhood can conjure emotions that make an impact on us through the memories they create. Brooks and Scarpa will explain the creative process that aspires to make a lasting impression out of even a brief encounter.
Beauty is deeply intertwined with human values, social structures, and individual well-being. Its relevance can be seen in the way societies and cultures celebrate, pursue, and define beauty. It impacts almost every aspect of life from art and architecture to daily routines and social norms.
Beauty is the promise of happiness.” Happiness is one of our fundamental human needs and Beauty fulfills that promise. Buildings that we admire are ultimately those which, in a variety of ways, extol the values we think worthwhile. Whether through material innovation , form, colors or service to society, qualities such as friendliness, kindness, subtlety, strength and intelligence are part of what we believe are beautiful. Our sense of beauty and our understanding of the nature of what is good are intertwined and inseparable.
Brooks and Scarpa’s work is deeply rooted in conditions of the everyday, and works with our perception and preconceptions to allow us to see things in new ways. They do this, not by escaping the restrictions of practice, but by looking, questioning and reworking the very process of design and building, rethinking the way things normally get done – with material, form, construction, even financing –– and to subsequently redefine it to cull out it’s latent potentials – making the “ordinary extraordinary.”
Lawrence Scarpa, FAIA
Principal, Brooks + Scarpa Architects
Lawrence Scarpa has garnered international acclaim for the creative use of conventional materials in unique and unexpected ways. He is also considered a pioneer and leader in the field of sustainable design.
In 2022 Mr. Scarpa received the National AIA Gold Medal, the institutes most prestigious honor. He is also the recipient of the ACSA Tau Sigma Delta Gold Medal and has received more than 200 major design awards including twenty-nine National AIA Awards, Architect Magazine’s Progressive Architecture and R+D awards, the HIVE 50 Innovator Award, National AIA Collaborative Achievement Award, AIA Los Angeles Chapter Gold Medal, Architect Magazine’s Top 50 Architecture Firms (ranked 2nd, 4th and 9th respectively), AIA California Council Lifetime Achievement Award, Smithsonian Cooper Hewitt National Design Award, Record Houses, Record Interiors, Rudy Bruner Prize, six AIA COTE “Top Ten Green Building” Awards and was a finalist for the World Habitat Award, one of ten firms selected worldwide. His work has been exhibited internationally including the National Building Museum in Washington, DC, MOCA Los Angeles, A+D Museum and the Smithsonian Museum. He has been featured in NEWSWEEK and he has appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show with Leonardo Di Caprio. In addition, Interior Design Magazine honored him with their Lifetime Achievement Award. His firm Brooks + Scarpa was awarded the National and State of California Architecture Firm Award from the American Institute of Architects.
He in currently on the faculty at the University of Southern California and has taught and lectured at the university level for more than two decades. Some of those institutions include Harvard University, UCLA, SCI-arc, Washington University in St. Louis, University of Florida, University of Michigan, University of Southern California and the University of California at Berkeley. He is a co-founder of the A+D Museum, Los Angeles, Affordable Housing Design Leadership Institute and Livable Places, Inc.; a nonprofit development and public policy organization dedicated to building mixed-use housing and to help develop more sustainable and livable communities.
The deadline to register is Friday, August 30th. AIA Central Oklahoma members attend free and nonmember guests are $35.
REGISTRATION FOR THIS LUNCHEON IS CLOSED.
***Larry Scarpa will be available to sign books after the luncheon! If you’d like to purchase one of this books, you can do so here:
Brooks + Scarpa Architects: A Journey of Discovery and Salty Urbanism: A Design Manual for Sea Level Rise Adaptation in Urban Areas ***
Thank you to our sponsors!
