bldgblog: interview with kazys varnelis

BLDGBLOG continues its recent string of fantastic posts with Geoff Manaugh's interview with Kazys Varnelis, of AUDC and the newly formed Network Architecture Lab at Columbia's GSAPP. Check it out. I was lucky enough to see Varnelis's talk at the Philip Johnson symposium in Yale back in February, which reframed Johnson's career as a series of powerful social and professional networks, and which used Johnson's AT&T Building project from the 80s as a narrative framework for the critique (read the paper here). Varnelis's new position at the GSAPP represents one of Mark Wigley's first new major hires for the history/theory curriculum since his accession to the deanship two years ago, and I think it's definitely a smart pick-up for the school... Varnelis will join the likes of Frampton, McLeod, Ockman, and Reinhold Martin -- already quite a strong bunch -- and hopefully his addition to the faculty represents a renewed commitment to the critical approach espoused by these folks over the years. If nothing else, the NetLab is evidence of Wigley's ever-so-slight shift away from the digital form-obsessed Tschumi years towards a more politically, socially, and ethically conscious form of architectural education. Can't wait to see how it all plays out...

link: "The Logistics of Distance: An Interview with Kazys Varnelis", at BLDGBLOG