International Visitors Programme
From
Canada
Dates of visit
23 to 27 October 2018
Purpose of visit
Alessandra Ponte is Professor at the École d'architecture, Université de Montréal. Her extensive knowledge at the intersection of architecture and information technologies is why she will join the panel at Het Nieuwe Instituut during the Automated Landscapes: Data Centers Seminar.
Ponte will give a lecture at Het Nieuwe Instituut entitled Matters of Extraction about the concept of 'total environment' and how this relates to energy landscapes and megastructures in Canada. She will focus on mining in a region on the border of Labrador and Quebec. Developed after World War II, it includes a model town with a megastructure regulating its climate.
During her visit to The Netherlands, she will meet a variety of Dutch architecture and design representatives and discuss research themes over dinner. She will then visit the Delta Works together with Dirk van den Heuvel (Jaap Bakema Study Centre) and get a tour of the archives, and exhibitions of Het Nieuwe Instituut and visit the Sonneveld House. Throughout her visit, there will be possibilities of network enhancement and consolidation in the Dutch field of architecture and design, and open up opportunities for further collaboration.
Function
Alessandra Ponte is a professor at the École d'architecture, Université de Montréal. She has also taught at the schools of architecture of Princeton University, Cornell University, Pratt Institute New York, the ETH Zürich, and at the I.U.A.V (Venice). She has been adjunct professor at School of Design of Built Environment and Engineering, Queensland University of Technology (Brisbane, Australia), taught workshops in collaboration with the AA School London and the Catholic University of Santiago de Chile, and at the University of Costa Rica.
Ponte is responsible for the conception and organization of the Phyllis Lambert International Seminar, annual colloquia on architecture, held at the Université de Montréal. She curated the exhibition Total Environment: Montreal 1965-1975 (Canadian Center for Architecture, Montreal, 2009) and collaborated to the exhibition and catalogue God & Co: François Dallegret Beyond the Bubble. She has published extensively including The House of Light and Entropy (London: AA Publications, 2014). She contributed to the Canadian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale Architecture in 2014 (Arctic Adaptations) and 2016 (Extraction). From 2013 to 2016 she was a member of the research group Future North (AHO, Oslo, Barents Institute).
She is now collaborating with the Office for Urbanization (GSD, Harvard University) on a project devoted to Landscape as Urbanism in the Americas. Since the Winter 2017 she has been developing with master students and collaborators at the Université de Montréal a research on architecture and information technologies.