AIAJ MOVIE NIGHT DISCUSSION:

HOW MUCH DOES YOUR BUILDING WEIGH, MR. FOSTER?

WEDNSDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2019 @ 19:00
doors open at 18:30

SUMMARY:
The Goal of this program is to watch and discuss the short film about Norman Foster’s life and work. How Foster’s work improves the physical, emotional, and social well-being and address sustainability. Does more efficient use of material resources have the potential to improve the sustainability and affordability? Does Carbon Neutral City for 50,000 residents in Abu Dhabi to benefit the environment? How do users perceive and act in unusual structural behavior situations?

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:

1. The 2010 documentary on Norman Foster’s life and work, How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr. Foster? draws its title from Buckminster Fuller’s favorite question to architects, purportedly posed to Foster during a visit to the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, completed in 1978. Implicit in the inquiry was Fuller’s call for more efficient use of material resources as part of a larger energy conservation strategy, and Foster claims he spent the next week coming up with the answer. This exercise clearly influenced Foster’s thinking, and the documentary includes footage of a 1980 client presentation in which he compares a mockup of a lightweight polycarbonate sandwich panel only a few inches thick to a 3-foot-thick brick wall, a 9-inch concrete wall with an air cavity, and a multilayered brick wall, concluding that the minimal sandwich panel performs equally as well as the other wall types. Foster asserts in the film: “Technology is the art of making things and high technology is performance.”

2. The virtues of Foster's buildings are well displayed here. They're sleek, graceful and aerodynamic. They employ streamlining and geometric forms both for strength and to appear (somewhat) less large and intrusive than they really are. They also use recycled materials and modern technologies to decrease energy costs.

3. The documentary explains how much Foster likes to tout about his unbuilt scheme “carbon neutral" city for 50,000 residents in Abu Dhabi. The aspects of improving the physical, emotional, and social well-being of users.

4. The documentary sidesteps controversies small and large. Foster's Millennium Bridge in London, intentionally designed to sway as people crossed it, made pedestrians queasy; it was quickly closed so it could be stabilized, then reopened. The aspects of user perceptions and behavior in relation to structural behavior.

VENUE:
Nikken Sekkei Takebashi Office, 1-1-1 Hitotsubashi, Chiyoda-ku Palace Side Building 8F, MeetingRoom1

ADMISSION FEES:
Free

CES:
1.5 LU/HSW for AIA members

Wine & snacks will be served in a networking session after the lecture.
講演後にワイン・スナック付き交流会を開催致します.

This program is for AIA MEMBERS ONLY and there will be a wine/snack discussion session after the movie.