Renowned architect Ted Baab, visiting professor at The Cooper Union and founder of BAAB, will present the next Hyde Lecture, “Really Really,” at 4 p.m. Oct. 7 in Architecture Hall West, Room 127.
Baab's practice, BAAB, focuses on houses and housing, with an emphasis on form and geometry as drivers of plan and organization. His work on multifamily housing in complex urban contexts explores inventive ways to use site and zoning constraints to challenge conventional models of living in cities. He is particularly interested in how everyday spaces can be rethought to create new possibilities for living.
Before establishing his practice, Baab spent 12 years at SO-IL, where he led many of the firm's award-winning housing projects. He is a licensed architect and earned his Master of Architecture with Distinction from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where he received the AIA Henry Adams Certificate for academic achievement and a Penny White Award for independent research. At The Cooper Union, he coordinates the housing studio.
For this lecture, Baab will examine how architecture determines what is considered normal, typical or appropriate — and what makes it possible for a form or space to be different. Drawing on psychoanalyst Adam Phillips' exploration of desire and the idea of what it "really" means, Baab will question the architectural tendency to search for an underlying logic, intention or ideal solution.
Baab will explore how buildings are often shaped not only by their formal orders and intentions but also by the challenges of negotiating cities, rationalizing complex structures and accommodating the irregularities of function, program, organization and inhabitation. Rather than viewing these spatial and formal "misfits" as problems to be resolved, he will consider them as opportunities for architectural invention.
Through examples from the existing city and new architectural proposals, Baab will examine how geometric and spatial anomalies can become tools for creating new forms of architectural agency.
The Hyde Lecture Series is the College of Architecture's long-standing, endowed public lecture program. Each year, the series welcomes nationally and internationally recognized leaders in architecture, interior design, landscape architecture and planning to inspire dialogue around the issues shaping the future of the design professions.
