STAGING LIFE | LECTURE BY RICK JOY, STUDIO RICK JOY

1040 N. Olive Rd,Tucson AZ 85719

21 April, 2023

Description

Being comprehensively observant and sensitive towards the world around us is highly valuable for making architecture that lives well in its surroundings and that is lived in well. Beyond what is being photographed, architecture is what is being graciously enlivened. It is the stage for personal events, where daily life and momentary dramas unfold in spaces that condition behaviors as much as they are soulfully conditioned by their inhabitants. Architecture is the background for personal life. I believe that this view of architecture is deeply humane and unfashionably grounded in patience and perseverance in observing habits, listening to nuances, sensing mood and reading place. These characteristics do not guarantee great architecture, but livable architecture might not happen without them. This kind of thinking risks to get stuck in trivial tautological reassurances—failing to reach a new each time. Yet, from my practice I know that when there is courage to make a bold architectural statement in designing a place for living, a statement that is founded on a realistic interpretation of human lifestyle, a statement that can be conceptually thought about first, then all reflection is synthesized into the making of place. The lecture will explore these notions of place seeking, place reading and place making through examples of the works of Rick Joy Architects. Rick Joy is the founder and principal of Studio Rick Joy. He is considered an important contributor to the ongoing global discourse on conceptual and sustainable architecture. His work expresses innovation and exactitude in modernism and reflects a unique sense of place. Honors include receiving the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Architecture in 2002 and in 2004 winning the prestigious National Design Award from the Smithsonian Institute/Cooper-Hewitt Museum. In 2015, Rick was vested into the American Institute of Architects’ College of Fellows and the Royal Institute of British Architects’ RIBA International College of Fellows. He was inducted into the Interior Design Hall of Fame in a Javits Center event in 2019. Other professional affiliations include The College of Fellows of The American Institute of Architects, The American Academy of Arts and Letters and Tucson MOCA Advisory Board Member. Rick lectures internationally and periodically serves as visiting professor at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, Rice University, M.I.T. and the University of Arizona. The studio’s first monograph, Desert Works, was released by Princeton Architectural Press in 2002 and the second, Studio Joy Works, was released in 2018. He is also the co-owner of CLL Concept Lighting Lab with his partner Claudia Kappl Joy. CLL provides full-service lighting design for all SRJ projects in addition to outside firms. Originally from Maine, he studied music and was a classical percussionist and rock/blues drummer until the age of 28, when he moved to Tucson to study architecture.