Todd Reisz - How Dubai Made Architecture
When: Thursday 11 November 2021 @ 00:00 (Eastern US Time)/ 09:00 (Dubai time)
Where: Concrete at Alserkal Avenue, 17th St - Al Quoz - Dubai - United Arab Emirates
Speaker
Todd Reisz, architect, writer
CES: 1.0 LU/HSW for AIA Members
Event Description
In 1959, experts agreed that if Dubai was to become something more than an unruly port, a plan was needed. Specifically, a town plan was prescribed to fortify the city from obscurity and disorder. With the proverbial handshake, Dubai's ruler hired British architect John Harris to design Dubai's strategy for capturing the world's attention―and then its investments.
Explore the overlooked history of a skyline that did not simply rise from the sands. In the city's earliest modern architecture, the foundations of an urban survival strategy of debt-wielding brinkmanship and constant pitch making, Dubai became a testing ground for the global city―and prefigured how urbanization now happens everywhere.
Speaker Bio
photo credit: Jan de Bruijn
Todd Reisz, architect, writer
Architect and writer Todd Reisz lives in Amsterdam. His recent book Showpiece City: How Architecture Made Dubai (Stanford University Press, 2020) explores how architecture provided the means not only to sell Dubai on a global stage but also to argue for the city’s very existence.
Reisz’s work examines the global practice of architecture, specifically how the architect circulates expertise, technologies, and cultural narratives. Through writing and teaching, he has argued for the necessity to ground Earth-scale questions in the local contexts of cities. He co-edited Building Sharjah (Birkhäuser, 2021), a photographic and archival investigation of the Middle Eastern city’s vanishing modern landscape. In 2020, Reisz was the designer for Sharjah Art Foundation’s exhibition Art in the Age of Anxiety. In September 2021, the exhibition Off Centre / On Stage he curated in collaboration with Art Jameel opens in Dubai, alongside a new publication with Khatt Books. The exhibition is the closing chapter to a long-running investigation of architecture’s integral role in broadcasting Dubai.
In 2019, Reisz was the Louis I. Kahn Visiting Assistant Professor in Design at Yale School of Architecture, where he led an advanced studio addressing migration in the context of Dubai and Amman. In 2018, he was a guest faculty member at Harvard Graduate School of Design. From 2012 to 2017, he served as the Rose Visiting Assistant Professor in Urban Studies at Yale.
As director of research at OMA/AMO, Reisz led the office’s first entry at the Venice Architecture Biennial (2006) and edited Al Manakh (2007) and Al Manakh 2: Gulf Continued (2010), two definitive explorations of ongoing urban development in the Arab cities of the Persian Gulf region. His work has been featured in several iterations of the Venice Architecture Bienniale, the Istanbul Design Biennial, Sharjah Biennial 13, and publications such as The Guardian, Perspecta, Log, Jadaliyya, Journal of Urban History, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Architectural Design, Artforum, Volume, and ARCH+. He has been an invited speaker at Tate Modern, Harvard University, Yale University, TU Delft, NYU Abu Dhabi, Columbia University, MIT, Architectural Association, Global Art Forum, International New Town Institute, and ETH Zürich.
Website: www.toddreisz.com. Twitter: @toddreisz
