Magazine Club Interview with Perry Kulper
Einhorn Lecture
Perry Kulper
Architect and Associate Professor of Architecture, University of Michigan
Surface Capacity
‘Surface Capacity’ will unpack the construction of a spatial and pedagogical practice through the lens of architectural representation, by sampling various kinds of produced surfaces—analog, digital and composites. Comprised of influences, hunches, flat out shots in the dark and outcomes, ‘Surface Capacity’ will build a relational calculus that points to developing spatial, representational, cultural and disciplinary participation. Key partners-in-crime for the work will be tickled in the talk, including curiosity cabinets, Robert Venturi’s book, ‘Complexity and Contradiction’, Wallace Stevens’ seminal poem ’Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird’, Jorge Luis Borges’ fictional taxonomy, ‘Celestial Emporium of Celestial Knowledge’, Baroque architecture, Matthew Barney’s ‘Drawing Restraints’, surrealist techniques, and interests in contingency and indeterminacy. Language prompts, analogous thinking, the ‘naming problem’, tailored visualizations, and inventive programmatic thinking will populate the margins. ‘Surface Capacity’ will get under the metaphorical hood of an approximate practice, constructed by an amateur, that leverages various forms of visualization towards spatial speculations that aspire to enlarge what might be possible in the cultural imaginary.
