REGISTRATION IS REQUIREDIN-PERSON ONLY. Limited to AIA St. Louis members & Washington University Architecture Students, Alumni, Staff & Faculty.6:00PM - Vote for 2023 AIA St. Louis Officers6:30PM - Program 
1.5 LU|HSWSponsored by Kiku Obata & Company 
Kelley Van Dyck Murphy Assistant Professor,
Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts | Kelley Van Dyck Murphy is an assistant professor of architecture at the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis. Her projects engage material and contextual specificity to explore identity within the public sphere. Expanding on the unique architectural and construction heritage of St. Louis and other post-industrial Midwestern cities, Kelley’s research speculates on emerging fabrication and visualization processes with an understanding of history, place, and cultural practices. The work is situated between architectural design, urban intervention, and cultural storytelling as exhibited through the materials and processes that produce them. Kelley’s research has been awarded grants from Washington University, the Mellon Funded Divided Cities Initiative, the Regional Arts Commission of St. Louis, and the Ann Arbor Arts Commission. With Lynnette Widder and Heidi Kolk, she was awarded a Mellon Foundation Divided Cities grant for Beauty in Enormous Bleakness, a multiyear project studying the four prominent Japanese-American architects who graduated from Washington University during the internment period in World War II. Kelley leads Van Dyck Murphy Studio, a multidisciplinary architecture and design collaborative based in St. Louis, Missouri. The practice engages in built and speculative projects at the scales of objects, installations, and environments, focusing on the coupling of place with material systems and material craft. Recently, Van Dyck Murphy studio was among the winning designers for the Alleyway Project, an international design competition that will result in the reimagining of an alleyway in downtown Ann Arbor, Michigan. They are also in the process of designing and fabricating a ceramic 3D-printed masonry screen wall at the site of Louis Sullivan’s Wainwright Building in downtown St. Louis. |  Kiku Obata President,
Kiku Obata & Company | Kiku Obata founded Kiku Obata & Company in 1977. She leads the firm in its philosophy to create unique and compelling identities and places. Ms. Obata brings over 35 years of experience to a highly diverse portfolio of work. As design director, she oversees the development of the design concept, defining how research and design can meet client objectives and engage people. She works with clients to incorporate in-depth insights and future-focused design perspectives. Ms. Obata is recognized for her ability to bring a holistic focus on experience to every project. She believes that one’s surroundings and immediate interactions greatly impact mood, health and emotion. Ms. Obata holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Studio Art from Stanford University. She is sits on the Board of Trustees for the Saint Louis Art Museum, serves as chair of the building committee, and is a member of the collections and diversity committees. She is also a Board Member of the St. Louis Public Library Foundation, and a Committee Member of the Airport Art Advisory Committee for Lambert St. Louis International Airport. |  Eric Paul Mumford Professor,
Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts | Eric P Mumford, an architect and historian, is the Rebecca and John Voyles Professor of Architecture at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis. He has given many invited lectures nationally and internationally, and publishes academic books and peer-reviewed scholarly articles. He is the author of The CIAM Discourse on Urbanism, 1928-1960 (MIT Press, 2000), the only book-length history of the International Congress of Modern Architecture; Modern Architecture in St. Louis: Washington University and Postwar American Architecture, 1948-1973 (2004); and Designing the Modern City: urbanism since 1850 (2018), a textbook on the history of how architects’ have tried to shape modern cities through design ideas. He is also a curator of exhibitions about modern architecture at the Mildred Lane Kemper Museum at Washington University and at the Wrightwood 659 gallery, Chicago. |
Gyo Obata: Life and Work - Panelists will discuss the life, family, and historical context of Gyo Obata as a Japanese American, and his place in modernist history in St. Louis and at large.
Gyo Obata, world-renowned American architect and founder of Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum (HOK), whose career spanned seven decades and whose designs are some of the most well-known structures in the world. Born in 1923 in San Francisco, Mr. Obata was the son of painter, Chiura Obata, and floral designer and ikebana artist, Haruko Obata. Mr. Obata graduated from Washington University in 1945. He received a scholarship to attend graduate school at Cranbrook Academy of Art, in Bloomfield Hills, a suburb of Detroit where he received his master's degree in 1946. Upon graduation, he was drafted into the United States Army and sent to Adak, Alaska to design bridges. After returning home from the military in 1947, Mr. Obata started working at Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill (SOM) in Chicago. Next, he joined Hellmuth, Yamasaki, and Leinweber in 1951 in Detroit. In 1955, with the vision to create sustainable and optimal environments for people through art and science, George Hellmuth, George Kassabaum, and Mr. Obata decided to open their own firm in St. Louis, known as HOK, now one of the largest architecture and engineering firms in the world. Initially their work focused in the area of education. Mr. Obata, one of the world's leading architects, has designed hundreds of structures that have shaped and improved diverse communities and allowed a broad swathe of people to fulfill their dreams. Some of the most notable include the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum on the Washington D.C. Mall; Camden Yards, Baltimore; Bristol Myers Squibb Headquarters; U.S. Olympic Fieldhouse in Lake Placid; Southern Illinois University Edwardsville; the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport, which is larger than the Island of Manhattan. Under his leadership, Mr. Obata helped to grow HOK from a one-office firm into an international, architectural powerhouse with 32 offices worldwide. He served as Chairman of the Board and Chief of Design from 1981 to 1993, Co-Chairman and Corporate Design Director from 1994 to 2004, and Founding Partner from 2004 until his retirement in 2012. He continued to serve as a design consultant to HOK until 2018.
|
Print Page
