Perry Kulper - Bartlett International Lecture Series

Spatial Breeds: An Amateur’s Etymology

Lecturer's Abstract

This lecture will unpack a working background comprised of influences and outcomes toward constructing a spatial practice. Using examples of Perry’s work, supplemented with key references, the lecture will build a network of relations, known and in the process of being discovered—aimed at developing spatial and representational participation with culture and the discipline of architecture.

People, things and phenomenon cited influences appear and connect within his work. They include curiosity cabinets, Zen gardens, Robert Venturi’s ‘Complexity and Contradiction’, Jorge Luis Borges’ ‘Celestial Emporium of Celestial Knowledge’, Surrealism, the Baroque period, Dutch Golden Age painting, Robert Rauschenberg’s Combines and indeterminacy. Language prompts, analogous thinking, the naming problem, typological rebooting and inventive programmatic formulations will populate the margins.

Spatial Breeds trades on influences and a cross-section of work, tracing a process of constructing a practice where an architect needs to be many architects… elaborating the possible worlds of a floating amateur.

Biography

Perry Kulper is an architect and Associate Professor at the University of Michigan. He previously taught at SCI-Arc for 17 years. After graduate studies at Columbia University he worked with Eisenman/ Robertson, Robert A.M. Stern and Venturi, Rauch and Scott Brown before constructing his own practice.

His primary interests include: the generative spatial potential of drawing, the varied affordances of diverse design methods in design, and broadening the conceptual range by which architecture contributes to our cultural imagination. In 2013 he published Pamphlet Architecture 34, ‘Fathoming the Unfathomable: Archival Ghosts and Paradoxical Shadows’ with friend and collaborator Nat Chard. They are at work on a new book to be published by UCL Press. Recently he optimistically ventured into the world of the digital, attempting to get a handle on Photoshop operations—as a result he encountered one of his steeper learning curves. Fantastic beasts have also been on his mind.

Image: ‘Aerial Diptych Follies, Analogic Drawings’, Perry Kulper

This event is free and open to all. No booking is required, but please arrive early to guarantee your place.