DDC Talks: A Monthly Lecture Series Program

Every year over 40 million square feet of workspace is built in New York City. For most individuals, this space will be where they will spend the most time throughout the course of their lives. This presentation will help to examine how the design and construction of these spaces impact us as individuals and as a society, and how we can work together towards making them more healthful, functional, sustainable and uplifting. New developments in interior design tie together an emphasis on performance over hierarchy with flexibility and energy conservation.

Lecturers:

Martha K. Hirst, Commissioner, New York City Department of Citywide Administrative Services

Joan Blumenfeld, FAIA, IIDA, LEED, Principal, Perkins+Will

Telephone/Fax: 718.391.1779/718.391.1508

Contact: Janice Sharp, Training Coordinator, TSD Unit, sharpj@ddc.nyc.gov.

Organized and sponsored by: New York City Department of Design & Construction

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Institute on Religion, Law & Lawyer's Work; Auburn Theological Seminary; The Louis Finkelstein Institute at Jewish Theological Seminary.

Religious Controversies: Beyond Polarization?

Third in the three-part series:
"Islamic Ethics, Moral Controversy and Islamic Law"

Featured Speakers:

Prof. Mohammad H. Fadel, University of Toronto Faculty of Law;

Prof. Marion H. Katz, Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, New York University

In response to growing concerns that religious beliefs and institutions foster cultural polarization, this three-part series will explore the extent to which religious understandings of law and social policy have the capacity to hold contrasting positions in harmony.

Sponsors: Institute on Religion, Law & Lawyer's Work; Auburn Theological Seminary; The Louis Finkelstein Institute at Jewish Theological Seminary

For more info. . .

Green roofs offer many benefits in urban areas, from aesthetic to environmental to practical. They help minimize the effects of pollution, reduce the urban heat island effect, improve energy efficiency, and provide a natural oasis in the urban jungle.

Columbia University invites you to attend a special lecture on green rooftops.

Join speakers William Foley and Amy Norquist as they discuss the benefits and how-tos of green roofing.

Speakers:
William F. Foley, CSI, CCPR, has been directly involved with green roof specification, consulting, installation assistance and project oversight for the past 5 years. Most recently Bill has taken a new position as NE Sustainable Technologies Specialist with Tremco Roofing Division. His responsibilities include green roofing systems, photovoltaic systems and reflective roof system alternatives.
In addition, Bill has been an instructor for "Green Roofs for Healthy Cities" teaching green roof 101, 201 and 301 classes across the US.

Amy Norquist is a green building entrepreneur, specializing in the design and installation of green roofs and living walls. Her company, Greensulate LLC, is based in New York City and has offices on Long Island and on the west coast. Norquist has over 20 years of experience in environmental conservation/protection and has worked with green buildings for over 5 years. Greensulate's clients range from large corporations to the individual brownstone owner or co-op building.

For more information refer to www.tremcoroofing.com.

Contact: 212.854.9666 / ce-info@columbia.edu / www.ce.columbia.edu/landscape

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What is the impact of powerful images and objects made explicitly for one community on another? Hamza Walker, contemporary art curator at the University of Chicago's Renaissance Society, and Alisa LaGamma, curator at the Metropolitan Museum's Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas, discuss the genesis and cultural implications of two controversial exhibitions: Walker's Black Is, Black Ain't, and La Gamma's recent Eternal Ancestors: The Art of the Central African Reliquary. Linda Norden, Director of the Amie and Tony James Gallery at the Graduate Center, will moderate.

Contact: 212-817-2005

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Cities have been part of our collective experience for nearly ten millennia. Born of a much deeper sociality that has always compelled human groups to form periodic collectives, cities emerged during the Holocene as truly planetary forces with their own emergent gravitational fields that have vastly redefined human movement and perception. No one today escapes their orbits. No one is unaffected by the new spatialities that cities have come to inscribe on our everyday lives and that we, in our daily orbits, reproduce.

As the inaugural event to the 2008 Theoretical Archaeology Group meetings at Columbia University, Geohistories of the City has been designed as a conversation about once and future cities that explores the dynamic relationship between urban space and social lives throughout time. How are we to understand cities as social constructions? How are we to understand social agents as urban constructions? How does the experience of "centrality" or "marginality" slip between spatial and social realities? What role has urbanism played in the deep histories of human society, and what role has it yet to play in the future?

Three prominent scholars have been invited to address these questions through their research on the world's earliest cities (Hodder), early modern urban centers (Dawdy), and postmodern megacities (Soja).

Ian Hodder (Department of Anthropology, Stanford University)
Shannon Dawdy (Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago)
Edward Soja (Department of Urban Planning, UCLA; Department of Sociology, LSE)

The Theoretical Archaeology Group has been running a meeting in Britain for 30 years with the aim of promoting debate and discussion of issues in archaeological theory. The Columbia meeting inaugurates a US branch of the Group. The conference promotes experimentation and innovation and encourages wide participation by students as well as faculty and archaeologists from non-academic settings as well as conversation with other disciplines. As well as conventional oral presentations, we have exhibits and installations mounted as part of the conference.

TAG is a three day event to be held on Columbia University's Morningside campus. This is located in uptown Manhattan at 116th street, between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue. A full program of events can be found here: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/archaeology/conference/tag/program%20outline.pdf

Abstracts for sessions and papers may be found on the conference website. http://www.columbia.edu/cu/archaeology/conference/tag/

For further information regarding this event, please contact Deepna Nandiga by sending email to TAG-NYC@columbia.edu or by calling 2128544552.

For more info . . .

The Theoretical Archaeology Group has been running a meeting in Britain for 30 years with the aim of promoting debate and discussion of issues in archaeological theory. The Columbia meeting inaugurates a US branch of the Group. The conference promotes experimentation and innovation and encourages wide participation by students as well as faculty and archaeologists from non-academic settings as well as conversation with other disciplines. As well as conventional oral presentations, we have exhibits and installations mounted as part of the conference.

TAG is a three day event to be held on Columbia University's Morningside campus. This is located in uptown Manhattan at 116th street, between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue. A full program of events can be found here: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/archaeology/conference/tag/program%20outline.pdf

Abstracts for sessions and papers may be found on the conference website. http://www.columbia.edu/cu/archaeology/conference/tag/

For further information regarding this event, please contact Deepna Nandiga by sending email to TAG-NYC@columbia.edu or by calling 2128544552.

For more info . . .

The Theoretical Archaeology Group has been running a meeting in Britain for 30 years with the aim of promoting debate and discussion of issues in archaeological theory. The Columbia meeting inaugurates a US branch of the Group. The conference promotes experimentation and innovation and encourages wide participation by students as well as faculty and archaeologists from non-academic settings as well as conversation with other disciplines. As well as conventional oral presentations, we have exhibits and installations mounted as part of the conference.

TAG is a three day event to be held on Columbia University's Morningside campus. This is located in uptown Manhattan at 116th street, between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue. A full program of events can be found here: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/archaeology/conference/tag/program%20outline.pdf

Abstracts for sessions and papers may be found on the conference website. http://www.columbia.edu/cu/archaeology/conference/tag/

For further information regarding this event, please contact Deepna Nandiga by sending email to TAG-NYC@columbia.edu or by calling 2128544552.

For more info . . .

Schizophrenia (SZ) is a psychiatric disorder characterized by thought disorder and cognitive deficits. Currently available antipsychotics provide relief of positive symptoms, but have limited therapeutic efficacy on negative and cognitive symptoms that typically preclude successful reintegration into society for many patients. The developmental hypothesis of SZ was originally based on observations that certain environmental factors and behavioral traits might lead to a predisposition for SZ. More recently it was broadened to include the influence of SZ susceptibility genes, of which Disrupted in Schizophrenia 1 (DISC1) is one of the most promising candidates. The DISC1 protein functions as a scaffold for multiple proteins, including nuclear distribution element-like 1 and phosphodiesterase 4B, which themselves are candidate SZ susceptibility genes. This symposium invites experts in the field of DISC1 biology to present their ideas on the etiology of SZ and how an understanding of DISC1 regulated pathways might relate to the development of new antipsychotic therapies.

Akira Sawa, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
Nicholas Brandon, Wyeth Research
Katherine E. Burdick, North Shore Long Island Jewish Health System
Steven J. Clapcote, The University of Edinburgh
Sponsored by: Biochemical Pharmacology Discussion Group
Organizers: Julia Heinrich, PhD, Formerly with Wyeth Discovery Neuroscience and Robin Kleiman, PhD, Pfizer, Inc

This meeting is being held jointly with the American Chemical Society's New York Section.

Agenda

1:00 pm - Introduction
1:15 pm - Centrosomal Pathway of DISC1 in Schizophrenia
Akira Sawa, MD, PhD, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine Baltimore, Maryland
2:00 pm - Unraveling the Function of DISC1 through Components of the DISC1 Interactome and DISC1 Expression in the Brain
Nicholas Brandon, PhD, Wyeth Research, Princeton, New Jersey
2:45 pm - Coffee Break
3:15 pm - DISC1 and its Binding Partners: Impact on Schizophrenia-Related Clinical Traits
Katherine E. Burdick, PhD, North Shore Long Island Jewish Health System, Glen Oaks, New York
4:00 pm - A Mouse Mutagenesis Approach to Elucidating the Role of DISC1 in the Brain
Steven J. Clapcote, PhD, The University of Edinburgh, Scotland
4:45 pm -Closing Remarks

For more info & abstracts . . .

A discussion of the hurdles facing refugees in the US asylum system, the difficulties and disparities in the immigration courts, and the crucial difference made by legal representation.

The panel's discussions will pivot off of the book Asylum Denied: A Refugee's Struggle for Safety in America by David Ngaruri Kenney and Professor Philip G. Schrag (University of California Press, May 2008).

Speakers will include:

Eleanor Acer, Director, Refugee Protection Program, Human Rights First

Alan Keller, M.D., Director, NYU/Bellevue Program for Survivors of Torture and the authors of Asylum Denied

Moderator: Adam Liptak, National Legal Correspondent, The New York Times

RSVP is requested but not required: contact Elisabeth Centeno at centenoe@humanrightsfirst.org or (212) 845-5291.

"Asylum Denied is riveting and essential reading for anyone interested in the lives and struggles of immigrants. Kenney's story will astonish, frustrate, and inspire you." --Dave Eggers, author of What is the What

"This is a fabulous book-a love story, a law story, a struggle against death, a battle for justice, and much more. I urge you to read it." --Bruce Ackerman, Yale Law School

"Asylum Denied is at once a page-turner, a penetrating critique of the U.S. asylum system, and an exquisite exploration of humanity and politics, of emotion and law, of tension and release. It has the same narrative power that distinguished Jonathan Harr's A Civil Action." --Hiroshi Motomura, University of North Carolina

"The issue of asylum has been lost in the debate about immigration. Asylum Denied reminds us of the persecution that refugees face, takes our collective conscience and shakes it to the core" --Financial Times

Contact: Elizabeth Centeno, Human Rights First
Telephone: (212) 845-5291
Email: centenoe@humanrightsfirst.org

For more info. . .

A panel discussion about the process of designing, manufacturing and marketing furniture.

If you ever wanted to design a chair and get it made, you are not alone. The list of architects who have designed furniture includes: Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, Norman Foster, Frank Gehry, Alvar Aalto, and Marcel Breuer, to name a few. Often initially designed for their own buildings, much furniture designed by architects has gone on to live a second life as design icons on their own. This panel will demystify the entire process of furniture design from the initial inspiration and conceptual sketches through the aspects of ergonomics, selection of materials, mockups, production, distribution and marketing. It will share the experiences of furniture designers, architects and interior designers who have designed (and specified) furniture, and manufacturers who fabricate it. We will talk about what manufacturers look for in a chair design, how they select their designers, and how they market the final products and how this is changing. Finally, we will talk about the role of publications in launching new furniture designs.

Panelists:
Niels Diffrient, Industrial Designer
Gary Lee, Principal,Gary Lee Partners Architecture
Jeffrey Osborne, Design Consultant
Benjamin Pardo, Senior Vice President Design Knoll
and moderator Susan Szenasy, Editor in Chief of Metropolis

For more info . . .

P. Adams Sitney will talk about movement and perspective in three short films, by Marie Menken, Ernie Gehr, and Stan Brakhage. He will illustrate the ways in which these films fulfill the promise of an American aesthetic first proclaimed by Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1836 and promoted in different ways by Gertrude Stein, John Cage, and Charles Olson, among others. This program reflects the argument of his new book: Eyes Upside Down: Visionary Filmmakers and the Heritage of Emerson.

Films to be shown:

Arabesque for Kenneth Anger, Marie Menken, 16mm, 1961, 4 mins
"A new sound version of this classic film. It is a beautiful experience to see her fabulous shooting. The cutting is just as fabulous and is something for all to study; the new score by Teiji ito is 'out of this world' with its many leveled instrumentation. Marie says 'These animated observations of tiles and Moorish architecture were made as a thank-you to Kenneth for helping me to shoot on another film in Spain.' Shot in the Alhambra in one day." - Gryphon Film Group

Shift, Ernie Gehr, 16mm, 1972-74, 9 mins
"For Gehr, Shift broke new ground, hence perhaps a pun in its title. The film is his first to employ extensive montage. The actors are all mechanical - a series of cars and trucks filmed from a height of several stories as they perform on a three-lane city street. Gehr isolates one or two vehicles at a time, inverting some shots, so that a car hangs from the asphalt like a bat from a rafter, using angles so severe the traffic often seems to be sliding off the earth, and employing a reverse motion so abrupt that the players frequently exit the scene as though yanked from a stage by the proverbial hook. A sparse score of traffic noises accompanies the spastic ballet mecanique. Not only the action but Gehr's deliberate camera movements are synced to the music of honking horns, screeching brakes, and grinding gears. The eight-minute film is structured as a series of obliquely comic blackout sketches: trucks run over their shadows; cars unexpectedly reverse direction or start up and go nowhere." - J. Hoberman

Visions in Meditation #2: Mesa Verde, Stan Brakhage, 16mm, 1989, 17 mins
"This meditation takes its visual imperatives from the occasion of Mesa Verde, which I came to see finally as a Time rather than any such solidity as Place. 'There is a terror here,' were the first words which came to mind on seeing these ruins; and for two days after, during all my photography, I was haunted by some unknown occurrence which reverberated still in these rocks and rock-structures and environs. I can no longer believe that the Indians abandoned this solid habitation because of drought, lack-of-water, somesuch. (These explanations do not, anyway, account for the fact that all memory of The Place, i.e., where it is, was eradicated from tribal memory, leaving only legend of a Time when such a place existed.) Midst the rhythms, then, of editing, I was compelled to introduce images which corroborate what the rocks said, and what the film strips seemed to say: The abandonment of Mesa Verde was an eventuality (rather than an event), was for All Time thus, and had been intrinsic from the first such human building." - SB

P. Adams Sitney is a historian of film art, a co-founding member of Anthology Film Archives, and Professor of Visual Arts at Princeton University. He is the author of the book Visionary Film, originally published in 1974, which was the first major study on the post-war American avant garde cinema, and is today considered a classic. Among his other publications are Modernist Montage: The Obscurity of Vision in Cinema and Literature from 1992 and most recently Eyes Upside Down: Visionary Filmmakers and the Heritage of Emerson. His articles regularly appear in Artforum and other journals.

Tickets - $6, available at door.

For more info. . .

Ambassador Christoph Bubb, Consul General of Switzerland in New York will give a lecture on economic relations between the US and Switzerland.

Contact: 212 817 2051/53

http://euromatters.org/

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Art therapist Jim Andralis (MPS 2006 Art Therapy) will discuss the adolescent groups that he runs at The Family Center, in which members create comic books to reflect their own creative visions. Andralis will look at how group members incorporated him into their books as a character, the grisly fate he often met and how it reflects the therapeutic relationship cultivated with his clients.

Free and open to the public.

For more info. . .