Spring 2026 Lecture Series
Rensselaer Architecture is pleased to announce its lecture series for spring 2026. All lectures start 5:00pm. All Lectures will be at EMPAC Theater, with the exception of Bruce Becker. Admission is free.
Levent Ozruh
Beginning at the End
Wednesday, January 14
Levent Ozruh is the founder and director of OZRUH, a London-based architectural studio exploring material-driven, adaptive design through research-led practice. His work challenges conventional architectural permanence by developing systems that evolve through change – bridging advanced manufacturing, elemental material cycles, and open-ended spatial strategies. OZRUH is deeply inspired by the principles of evolution and diversity in nature, driving us to venture beyond the traditional confines of manual and analog human creativity. Their pursuit is aimed at harnessing the intrinsic diversity and richness offered by nature’s evolutionary processes, proposing an architectural ethos that is pluralistic rather than idealistic. Ozruh works through algorithmic design and custom fabrication to develop systems that emerge from matter, not impose form onto it. By simulating physical behaviours – like erosion, aggregation, or decay – they grow architectures that adapt, recombine, and mature over time.
Ozruh is a Design Expert at the UK Design Council, advising on national priorities in sustainable innovation, and has contributed to the European Space Agency’s lunar architecture strategy as part of Hassell’s Space Architecture team. His design research has been exhibited internationally, including at the Venice Biennale, Barbican Centre, Royal Academy of Arts, and the London Design Festival.
Ozruh studied architecture at University of Edinburgh, the Bartlett (UCL), and the AA School of Architecture. He has conducted research at MIT’s Senseable City Lab and taught across leading academic institutions, including the Bartlett, IAAC, and the Architectural Association, where he currently directs the Moonshot Visiting School
Postponed
The Cecilia Puga lecture will be rescheduled for a later date
Cecilia Puga / Paula Velasco Arquitectura
Some character in search for an author
Mosaic Associates Architects Lecture
Wednesday, January 28
Cecilia Puga is co-director and co-founder of Cecilia Puga – Paula Velasco Arquitectura, a practice that connects independent professionals from various disciplines and specialties. Through international competitions, the studio has been in charge of the new headquarters of Chile’s Ministry of Cultures and Heritage, the infrastructure design project for Queulat National Park, and the master plan and preliminary project for Punta Arenas’ International Passenger Terminal. Recently, they obtained first place in a public competition to design The National Archive Building in Valparaiso, Chile.
Puga has developed her professional practice in Santiago since 1995, where she has carried out design projects at different scales and programs, from single-family homes—most notably the House in Bahia Azul, to collective housing, educational and industrial equipment, and urban design such as the renovation of public spaces in Cerro Toro. She has developed her academic activity at Universidad Católica de Santiago, ETH Zurich’s School of Architecture, University of Texas at Austin, Harvard GSD, and Barcelona Institute of Architecture. Her work has been featured in several national and international specialized publications, including the 53rd issue of journal 2G which was dedicated to her work. Her office was one of the 100 offices around the world selected by Herzog & De Meuron to design a villa in Inner Mongolia, within the context of the Ordos 100 project, led by artist Ai Wei Wei.
Florian Idenburg / Solid Objectives (SO–IL)
Once Again, but This Time with More Feeling
Mike Wacholder Memorial Lecture
Wednesday, February 4
Lecture Begins at 5:30 p.m.
Florian Idenburg is an internationally renowned Dutch architect with over two decades of professional experience. After learning the ropes in Amsterdam and Tokyo, he founded SO–IL in 2008 together with Jing Liu. His years of working in cross-cultural settings make Florian a thoughtful and collaborative partner. With a joyous demeanor, he pursues innovation through working together. He has a particularly strong background in institutional spaces, leading the office on projects as Kukje Gallery and the Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at UC Davis as well as Amant in Brooklyn. His strength lies in generating imaginative ideas and transforming those into real-world spaces and objects.
Idenburg has a strong intuition for the orchestration of form, material, and light, and enjoys developing projects to a level where those elements become places for people to experience and use. He combines a hands-on approach with a theoretical drive, sharing this creative spirit with clients, collaborators, and students. A frequent speaker at institutions around the world, he has taught at Harvard, MIT, Columbia, and Princeton University and is currently a Professor of Practice at Cornell University. In 2010, Idenburg received the Charlotte Köhler Prize from the Prince Bernhard Culture Fund. He is a registered architect in the Netherlands and an International Associate of the American Institute of Architects.
SOLID OBJECTIVES IDENBURG LIU is an architecture studio with offices in New York and Amsterdam. Founded in 2008 by Florian Idenburg and Jing Liu, who first met in Tokyo in 2001, the practice has developed a diverse body of work recognized through international awards, exhibitions, and publications. Their projects encompass a diverse range of buildings, including cultural, civic, residential, commercial, and educational facilities, across both new construction and adaptive reuse, spanning temporary installations to long-term urban strategies.
At the core of SO-IL’s work is an ambition to shape a stronger civic realm. They approach each commission as an opportunity to rethink conventions and to design spaces that support more open, collective, and sustainable ways of living. A dedication to craft, detail-oriented construction, and intellectual rigor underpins this approach, ensuring that each project is tailored to its specific location while contributing to the broader discourse of architecture. SO-IL’s engagement with the arts—through collaborations with artists, curators, and cultural institutions—further broadens our perspective, enriching the material and experiential qualities of our architecture.
Sou Fujimoto
Between Nature and Architecture
Kenneth L. Warriner Memorial Lecture
Wednesday, February 11
Sou Fujimoto established his architectural practice in 2000. His work quickly gained recognition for its unique approach, blending nature, architecture, and human interaction in a harmonious and sometimes provocative manner. His designs often explore the relationship between inside and outside spaces, as well as the boundaries between nature and built environments.
Fujimoto designed the Grand Ring for Expo 2025 in Osaka, Japan. The ring is 61,035 meters, making it the largest wooden structure in the world, and serves as the expo’s primary circulation route. The ring also provides space for visitors to take refuge from sun, rain, and wind. The structure has a circumference of roughly two kilometers, and a diameter of 700 meters. Its form is intended to symbolize unity between all countries participating at the Expo. The ring has a modular wood structure that can be dismantled, and combines modern construction techniques with more traditional ones. The project uses Nuki joints – a Japanese connection method in which a horizontal beam is slotted through a vertical post. Nuki joints are often seen in traditional Japanese temples and shrines.
Fujimoto designed the House of Music in Budapest, which opened in 2022. The 9,000 square meter museum is dedicated to telling the history of music over the prior 2,000 years. The museum building is wrapped in a glass wall and topped by a large, overhanging roof, mimicking the feeling of being under a tree canopy. The roof of the building is punctuated by 100 opening, some containing trees, that allow natural light to filter into the building. On the underside of the roof, 30,000 geometric shapes in the form of abstracted leaves are set into the ceiling. The ground floor of the museum is largely open, with the glass walls allowing for visual permeability and a feeling of looking through trees.
In 2013 Fujimoto designed the Serpentine Pavilion in London. The pavilion, a delicate lattice of white steel, is a prime example of his philosophy of creating spaces that evoke both natural and artificial environments simultaneously. The structure blurs the lines between architecture and nature, creating a transparent, cloud-like space that invites visitors to explore its ambiguous boundaries. Other notable projects include House N in Oita, Japan, a residential project that features a series of nested boxes with varying degrees of openness, and the Musashino Art University Museum & Library, which is characterized by its labyrinthine interior and extensive use of bookshelves as structural elements.
Sou Fujimoto is a frequent lecturer and has taught at various institutions both in Japan and abroad. His work has been exhibited internationally and he has received numerous awards, including the Japan Institute of Architects Grand Prix and the Wallpaper Design Award.
He studied architecture at the University of Tokyo, graduating in 1994.
Bruce Becker / Becker + Becker
From Bauhaus to Passive House
CBIS Auditorium
BCA Architects & Engineers Lecture
Wednesday, February 18
Bruce Becker is President of Becker and Becker Associates, Inc. (Becker + Becker), where he employs a fully integrated approach to sustainable design, planning, financing, and development of buildings that meet the social, economic, and environmental needs of communities. His firm specializes in green supportive, affordable, and mixed-income housing, community centers, child and senior day care facilities, and urban and historic revitalization projects.
Becker + Becker has planned, designed, and developed over 10,000 units of multi-family rental housing, along with a wide variety of commercial, retail, educational, and mixed-use facilities. Bruce founded two non-profit housing organizations—Common Ground HDFC and Under One Roof—to sponsor innovative mixed-use affordable housing projects. He has served as development consultant and architect to dozens of non-profit organizations and municipalities.
Among Becker + Becker’s notable projects are Hotel Marcel and the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies. Hotel Marcel is a 165 room boutique hotel, including restaurant, gallery and meeting space. Certified historic rehabilitation and adaptive re-use of mid-century modern Armstrong Rubber Company Building aka Pirelli Building, originally designed by Marcel Breuer in 1967. The building features historic rehabilitation and adaptive reuse of New Haven’s iconic Breuer landmark into a model for sustainable hospitality. The project addresses long-standing historic preservation and economic development priorities to create a high quality hotel and meeting facility proximate to the waterfront, train stations, and major highways at the city’s gateway. The Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies is a renovation of and addition to the internationally renowned environmental research center, originally designed by founder of the green building movement, Malcolm Wells, in 1978. The renovation of the facility returns it to Malcolm Wells’ original vision to create a near-zero energy building to house the Institute’s research, conference center, and administrative offices.
https://www.beckerandbecker.com/
Javier Senosiain
Organic Architecture
Wednesday, March 11
Javier Senosiain is a Mexican architect known to be one of the first architects to design organic architecture in Mexico. He is a graduate from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), and has served as an architecture professor at the university. Throughout his career he has worked with different areas of architecture, but he specialized in Organic Architecture. He is the founder of the Organic Architecture firm in Mexico City, which has been responsible for designing offices, houses, factories, and co-ops. He is also the author of two books called Bioarquitectura and Arquitectura Organica.
Casa Orgánica (Organic House), 1985, which he built for his family as an experiment in organic architecture—and which is now publicly accessible by appointment—has become an archetype of the possibilities of contemporary cave living. The organic house was born of the idea of creating a space suited to human beings, adapted to their environmental, physical, and psychological needs, which takes into account both their natural origins and their historical background. Senosiain’s almost incomprehensibly vast El Nido de Quetzalcóatl (The Nest of Quetzalcóatl), 1998–2007, in contrast to the domestic comforts of Casa Orgánica, is a still-developing organic architecture theme park. The design is executed on a lot measuring 5,000 square meters, with a very irregular topography owing to the oak-filled ravine that crosses it lengthwise. Senosiain’s interest in building organically, which he does principally in formed concrete, extends to a wide range of models and systems patterned on nature. What they all share is a quality of emerging from, and/or nestling into, the earth. In 2022, Javier Senosiain debuted a large mosaic-covered serpent installation in the exhibition “In praise of Caves” at the Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum in Long Island City, New York.
https://www.arquitecturaorganica.com/