Portman Prize Studio Critic Lecture | Guy Nordenson
Working Structures: Change, Frame, and the Infrathin
Wednesday, January 26th, 2022 at 6 p.m. EST
Reinsch-Pierce Family Auditorium
Join us at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, January 26th, for the kick off of the Spring 2022 Lecture + Events series at the Georgia Tech School of Architecture! Our first lecture of the semester features Guy Nordenson— this year’s Portman Prize Critic.
Guy Nordenson is a structural engineer and professor of architecture at Princeton University. He has been the engineer for over 200 projects, including the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC, Santa Fe Opera House, Toledo Glass Pavilion, the International African American Museum, and Emmanuel Nine Memorial, in Charleston SC, and oversaw the design of David Hammons’ Day’s End sculpture in the Hudson River.
Nordenson has led numerous research projects on coastal resilience and climate adaptation and is the author of multiple books on the subject, including On the Water | Palisade Bay (2010), Structures of Coastal Resilience (2018), and Four Corridors (2019). He was Commissioner of the NYC Public Design Commission from 2006 to 2015 and a member of the NYC Panel on Climate Change. He is fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
This year, Nordenson was appointed the 2022 Portman Visiting Critic at Georgia Tech, where he leads the Spring 2022 Portman Prize Studio, a graduate-level competition studio focused on the integration of technical detail considerations into the larger concepts and process of design. This year’s studio, titled “Raising Community – Adaptation in the Yazoo Mississippi Delta,” addresses the increased frequency of flooding in both coastal and riverine counties in the United States as a result of climate change. The studio focuses on the design of climate resilient communities in river floodplains, taking into account existing vernacular precedents and leveraging new building technologies, from 3D printed concrete to mass timber.
The lecture is free and open to the public, and will be held at the Reinsch – Pierce Family Auditorium, in the ground floor of the Architecture East building. If you are unable to attend in person but would like to tune in, register to attend the virtual live stream at this link.
Per Georgia Tech guidelines everybody is strongly encouraged to wear a mask while inside campus facilities.