symposium

register

symposium

home tour

sponsors

photo

Join us at the 2015 Design Marfa Symposium
September 18 10 a.m. - 5 p.m. and
September 19 10 a.m. - Noon
at the Crowley Theater in Marfa, Texas.

Confirmed speakers and sessions:

Friday, September 18, 10 a.m. - 5 p.m.

Does This Structure Make Me Look Hot?
Want to know the R-value of rammed earth, lava rock or adobe? Tucson architect Cade Hayes breaks down the properties of earthen building materials.

Marfa Design + Build
With patience, courage and adobe, former Brooklynite Kelly Armendariz talks us through the design and build of his beautiful Marfa home.

The IT House
Marfa has IT! Los Angeles architect Linda Taalman discusses using this precision building system custom tailored to her Marfa client’s site.

Planes, Trains, Automobiles ... and Bikes!
Design is not just for buildings and interiors. Gina Coffman shares how we can design our community areas to increase opportunities to walk, bike, interact and live well.

Here Comes the Rain Again
Brad Lancaster makes you think differently about rain. His ideas about rain harvesting have helped change Arizona state policy. His ideas are applicable for home, municipal and client solutions.

6:30 - 8:30 p.m.
Art Opening at Wrong Marfa: Complimentary Cocktails and Tacos for purchase.

Saturday, September 19, 10 a.m. - Noon

We Have a Winner
French architect Paul Vincent will present his winning design of Design Marfa’s 2014 Multi-Family Housing Competition. Dallas architect and juror Sharon Odum will be on hand to discuss the jurors' decision making process.

Case Study: Hotel St. George: Carlos Jimenez, Larry Rickels, Mary Alice Palmer, Nunzio DeSantis
Downtown Marfa is changing! The architectural designer, engineer and interior professionals take you behind the construction to discuss Hotel St. George, Marfa’s four story hotel.

1 - 5 p.m.
Home Tour

6:30 - 8:30 p.m.
Cocktail party at Cochineal
Cocktails and hors d’oeuvres

Sunday, September 20, 10 a.m. - 4 p.m.

Consider extending your stay for this event:

Judd Foundation will host an open house at Casa Perez.
There will be a talk by Dr. Jeffrey Shepherd, Associate Professor of American Indian History at UTEP (time tbd).
There will be music and food available, but visitors are welcome to bring their own picnic and drinks.

Casa Perez is located about 45 miles from Marfa down Pinto Canyon Road, the gate is on the left about 12 miles past the end of the paved road. High clearance vehicles required.

People can contact Hilary duPont with questions at marfa@juddfoundation.org or 432-729-4406 ext.100.

Speaker Bios:

Kelly Armendariz
Kelly Armendariz is an alumnus of Princeton University (BA, Neuropsychology) and New Jersey Institute of Technology (MArch). For the last seven years he has been working in New York City as an architectural designer and project manager, having completed numerous interiors, renovations and branding projects in Manhattan and Brooklyn with the offices of Andrew Bartle Architects, Jendretzki Architects and his own small practice, studioKoA. In Brooklyn, Armendariz founded and directed Splatterpool as a collaborative art space with the primary mission of exhibiting a motley roster of local emerging creatives. Following a twenty-year absence, he is delighted to return to the vast landscapes of his childhood in the Chihuahuan Desert for his first residential project in the Southwest.

Gina Coffman
Gina's multidisciplinary work engages the public through street design for people, and equitable art access. For over a decade she has worked, studied, and collaborated in the repurposing of streets to increase opportunities to walk, bike, and live well. She is guided by the principle that if we facilitate face-to-face interactions on the street through equitable, inclusive process and smart design, the physical, economic, environmental, and social health of a community can thrive. As a planner at Seattle Department of Transportation implementing the Seattle Bicycle and Pedestrian Master Plans, her work in wayfinding, street design, bicycling and walking path development, significantly impacted the way people move through Seattle. During her tenure, bicycle commuting increased 56%, including a marked increase among women and children. While senior planner at Toole Design Group she helped to develop bicycle, pedestrian, and complete streets master plans for cities around the county including Dallas, Governors Island NY, Wichita KS, and the Twin Cities.

In 2008, Gina cofounded the Art Lending Library, an art access and community building program that loans local original artwork to the public for free. By placing artwork into homes, the program aims to make art accessible to more people while promoting local artists underserved by galleries and museums. The program is the first of its kind in the country.

Gina holds a masters degree in Landscape Architecture from the University of Washington and a bachelors degree in ecology and art from the Evergreen State College. She currently lives in a community of artists in an old school house with her pet turtle in Seattle.

Nunzio DeSantis, FAIA, LEED AP, HKS Executive Vice President
Nunzio is involved in the marketing, design and overall project delivery of hotels, resorts and commercial related projects. His approach to architecture is based on 32 years of experience and an understanding of the requirements related to developing truly unique and memorable environments in accordance with clients’ goals, budgets and schedules. Nunzio’s approach to each project challenges designers, consultants and owners to establish early concepts, which determine a project’s individuality, style and attitude.

Nunzio, along with the HKS Hospitality staff, has completed in excess of 23,000 hotel rooms located throughout the United States, Mexico and the Caribbean. This experience includes a variety of hotel concepts, from limited service hotels to entertainment and gaming hotels, to luxury one-of-a-kind boutique resorts. He has worked closely with such clients as Disney, Universal Studios, Rosewood Hotels and Resorts and many other recognized hotel operators. Nunzio led a team in the design of the highly acclaimed Las Ventanas resort in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. This resort can be found in over 100 publications including the cover story of Travel and Leisure. It has been named one of the best new resorts in the world and most recently “Best Latin American Resort” by Conde Nast.

Cade Hayes – Principal of DUST, Licensed Architect
Cade Hayes was born and raised in Carlsbad, New Mexico, in the northern tip of the Chihuahuan Desert. Some of his fondest memories rise from a deep connection with the desert that was developed throughout his childhood by exploring the desert, its geographic features; mountains, canyons, dunes, nearby rivers, national forests and Native American Ruins as often as he could. He learned to work with his hands from his first real world education that arose from spending most of his spare time as on his grandfather’s farm and from being the son of a welder, mechanic, teacher and perfectionist.

He attended Architecture school in Far West Texas at Texas Tech University, on the Llano Estacado, one of the largest and flattest mesas on the North American Continent. There he further refined his affinity for simplicity and purity, both of which have become largely influential in shaping his life and thoughts toward aesthetic/design pursuits. Upon graduation, his everlasting fascination and love for the desert led him to journey west to the Sonoran desert practice Architecture. The raw, fragile, vast expanses of land and qualities of light are familiar friends of the North American Desert region he has always called home.

Cade continues to seek and develop poetic pursuit and deep respect for the interdependence of experience and materiality. There is a continual search to refine knowledge, pursue dreams and apply both rigor and freedom to the ideas that govern the creation of anything new.

Carlos Jimenez
Born San Jose, Costa Rica (1959). Moved to the United States in 1974. Trained as an architect at the University of Houston College of Architecture (B.Arch.1981). Established Carlos Jimenez Studio in 1983. Tenured Professor at Rice University School of Architecture (2000), having taught at the Southern California Institute of Architecture, Texas A&M University, University of California in Los Angeles and at Berkeley, University of Navarra in Pamplona Spain, Williams College, Tulane University, University of Houston, Graduate School of Design at Harvard University, University of Texas at Arlington and at Austin, and University of Oregon. Jimenez is a frequent lecturer, critic and jury member at national and international architecture events. Jury member of the Pritzker Architecture Prize 2001-2011.

Built works include among others: the Central Administration and Junior School for the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Spencer Studio Art Building at Williams College, the Irwin Mortgage Corporate Headquarters, the Cummins Child Development Center, the Peeler Art Center at DePauw University, the Crowley House, the Rice University Library Service Center and Data Center, the Tyler School of Art at Temple University, and the Centre Urbain in Evry France.

Jimenez has received several awards for excellence in design from Architectural Record, the American Institute of Architects, the Chicago Athenaeum, Architecture, Progressive Architecture and the Architectural League of New York among others. The work has been published in numerous architectural journals, dedicated monographs and authored books such as “Carlos Jimenez” (Barcelona), “Carlos Jimenez Buildings” (New York), “Carlos Jimenez House and Studio” (Cambridge), and “Crowley” (Singapore).

Jimenez served as a juror for Design Marfa's Multi-Family Housing Compeition.

Brad Lancaster
Brad Lancaster is a dynamic teacher, consultant, and designer of regenerative systems that sustainably enhance local resources and our global potential. He is the author of the award-winning, best-selling book series Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond; the website www.HarvestingRainwater.com; and its ‘Drops in a Bucket’ Blog.

Brad has taught throughout North America as well as in the Middle East, Asia, Europe, and Australia. His hometown projects have included working with the City of Tucson and other municipalities to legalize, incentivize, and provide guidance on water-harvesting systems, demonstration sites, and policy. He has likewise collaborated with state agencies to promote practices that transform costly local “wastes” into free local resources. Brad’s aim is always to boost communities’ true health and wealth by using simple overlapping strategies to augment the region’s hydrology, ecosystems, and economies—living systems upon which we depend.

Brad lives his talk on an oasis-like demonstration site he created and continually improves with his brother and neighbors in downtown Tucson, Arizona. On this eighth of an acre and surrounding public right-of-way, they harvest 100,000 gallons of rainwater a year where less than 12 inches fall from the sky. But it doesn’t end there. The potential of that water is then integrated with the simultaneous harvest of sun, wind, shade, and fertility. Brad is motivated in his work by the tens of thousands of people he has helped inspire to do likewise, go further, and continue our collective evolution.

Sharon Odum, AIA
Sharon Odum has been in engaged in the practice of architecture since 1980, beginning her career with Omniplan in Dallas, before attending Rice University, where she received a Masters in Architecture. In 1985, she joined Gary Cunningham, FAIA, where she collaborated on many award winning projects, which included schools, libraries, conference and theatre centers, art galleries, nature centers, churches, offices and residential works.

Sharon Odum Architect, a small, Dallas architecture firm, was founded in 2000, where she has focused on maintaining a diverse range of project types. A modernist at heart, Sharon’s design philosophy is to get to the essence of the problem at hand, and to express the solution as honestly and directly as possible. As a process driven architect, she values collaboration with artists, craftsmen, other design professionals, and (even) the clients, knowing often it is more about the journey than the outcome. Socially, she knows the positive potential that architecture and design can bring to an individual, a community, and society as a whole, so as an Adjunct Professor, Sharon often teaches graduate design studios at the University of Texas at Arlington. As a board member of the Dallas Architecture Forum, a non-profit group dedicated to providing public discourse on architecture and urban design, Sharon’s focus has been on education and inclusivity.

Odum served as a juror for Design Marfa's Multi-Family Housing Compeition.

Mary Alice Palmer, Associate Principal at HKS
With a widely varied design background in film, fashion and interior design, Mary Alice brings a unique understanding of the creative process to projects in hospitality, high-end residential and commercial mixed-use. As s design director of creative teams in the design of luxury hotels and resorts and residential properties, she has a strong emphasis on creating and developing conceptual design and client presentation painting a verbal and visual picture. She oversees all aspects of the design process from schematic to design development through specifications, interfacing with construction documents and construction administration with a scope of work generally including guest rooms, suites and residential villas, public space and ballrooms, food and beverage, spa components and pool and outdoor areas.

Larry Rickels
Larry Rickels leads Datum Engineers’ San Antonio office. He brings with him 15 years of diverse experience in the industry, 13 of which were spent as a structural project manager/Engineer of Record in San Antonio. Many of his projects have involved renovations to existing buildings, and he enjoys being involved in work that helps rejuvenate existing places, especially when the renovations create or reinvigorate cultural centers. In recent years, he has served as engineer of record for San Antonio’s renovations for the Palacio Del Rio hotel, Plaza De Armas, the Rand Building, and the Witte Museum. His clients appreciate his eye for detail, responsiveness, creativity and sensitivity to good design – attributes Datum feels are key to our philosophy of “the Art of Structural Engineering”. Larry holds undergraduate degrees in architecture and structural engineering, as well as a master’s of Structural Engineering for the University of Texas at Austin.

Datum Engineers, founded in 1937, is a Texas-based firm devoted exclusively to the practice of structural engineering. Datum serves a client base of corporate, institutional, public and private development owners and architectural firms primarily in Texas but across the United States as well. We take great pride in our reputation as innovative designers and creative problem solvers who collaborate with architects to empower their vision.

Linda Taalman
Living and practicing in Los Angeles, Linda Taalman leads Taalman Architecture and IT House Inc., which has facilitated the completion of over a dozen off site fabricated IT House projects. Her architectural accomplishments and contemporary art collaborations have received numerous accolades. A graduate of the Cooper Union she is an Associate Professor of Architecture at Woodbury University. She has completed a number of award winning projects including Dia: Beacon (AIA NY Merit Award 2006), Off-Grid IT House (AIA LA Merit Award 2008), the Small Skyscraper (LEF Fund), and Stabiae Archeological Park (ASLA Scraper Award).

Taalman’s explorations in architecture investigate the potential of building technologies and systems to sensitively create innovative and sustainable spaces. She has lectured on her practice for Copenhagen’s 3 Days of Design, the Architecture League in New York, the Aspen Institute, California College of the Arts, Columbia University, Dwell on Design, the Sculpture Center, Yale University, and ARTFORUM Berlin. Her work has been exhibited widely throughout the world including MOMA, New Museum, MAK, Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, Art Basel, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, and the Vitra Design Museum.

Paul Vincent
Mr. Vincent studied architecture at Accademia di Architettura, Mendrisio and École Nationale Superieure d’Architecture de Paris-Belleville, where he graduated in 2010. He has worked in several firms in Paris, Switzerland and Morocco. He will present his winning design of Design Marfa's Multi-Family Housing Competition.