Pratt Institute's undergraduate and graduate architecture programs will present their spring 2011 School of Architecture Lecture Series (SALS) from Thursday, March 3 through Monday, April 18, 2011, at the Institute's Brooklyn and Manhattan campuses. The lectures are free and open to the public; however, seating priority will be given to current students with Pratt identification.

Theorist, lawyer, and media artist/activist Paul Guzzardo will deliver a lecture on Thursday, March 3 at 6 PM in Higgins Hall Auditorium at 61 St. James Place in Brooklyn. Guzzardo's work explores the relationship between new digital information technology (particularly communications devices) and public culture. His new media conceptions have been applied to performance spaces including the MediaARTS Lab, of which he is founder and curator, nightclubs, and public spaces in the St. Louis area. 

Legendary artist Christo will deliver a lecture on Thursday, March 10 at 6 PM in Memorial Hall at 200 Willoughby Avenue in Brooklyn. He will discuss his work in progress since 1977, titled The Mastaba: Project for the United Arab Emirates, a work of art/architecture made of approximately 410,000 horizontally stacked oil barrels. Christo is best know for his large scale-environmental "wrapping" art, notably The Gates in New York City's Central Park. 

Pratt Visiting Associate Professor (Construction/Facilities Management) Gerald McGowan will moderate a panel discussion, titled "FM Roundtable: State of the Art Perspectives" on Tuesday, March 22 at 6:30 PM at Pratt Manhattan at 144 West 14th Street, Room 213. McGowan will discuss the emergence of facilities management as a profession. 

Poet Tina Chang will deliver a talk on behalf of The Annual Christina Porter Art and Poetry in the Schools Lecture, on Thursday, March 24 at 12:30 PM in Higgins Hall Auditorium at 61 St. James Place in Brooklyn. She is the author of two books and her work has been featured in numerous publications.  Chang is the current (2010) poet laureate of Brooklyn. Her new collection of poetry, Of Gods and Strangers, is forthcoming this year from Four Way Books.

Distinguished members of Pratt Institute's Network for Emerging Architectural Research (NEAR) will host a symposium, "NEAR: New Practices GAUD" (Graduate Architecture and Urban Design) on Thursday, March 24 at 6:00 PM and Friday, March 25 at 1:00 PM, 3:30 PM, and 6:00 PM in Higgins Hall Auditorium at 61 St. James Place in Brooklyn. NEAR's director and Pratt associate professor of Graduate Architecture and Urban Planning, David Ruy, is highly acclaimed for his work examining the intersection of architecture, nature, and technology.

Carlos and Borja Ferrater, founders of the Office of Architecture in Barcelona (OAB), will deliver a lecture on Thursday, March 31 at 6 PM in Higgins Hall Auditorium at 61 St. James Place in Brooklyn. Carlos Ferrater is the recipient of numerous awards and is recognized for his design of the Botanical Park and the MediaPro buildings in Barcelona, Spain, among others. Borja Ferrater, also highly awarded, is currently an architecture instructor at the International University of Catalonia.

Executive Vice President and Director of Forest City Ratner Companies Robert Sanna will deliver a lecture, titled "Development as a Contact Sport," on Thursday, April 14 at 6:30 PM at Pratt Manhattan at 144 West 14th Street, Room 213. Sanna's career has been focused in the New York Metropolitan area for the last two decades and his firm is responsible for many new additions. Sanna currently oversees the pre-construction development of the Atlantic Yards project.

Guy Nordensen, structural engineer and professor at Princeton University, will talk on Thursday, April 14 at 6 PM in Higgins Hall Auditorium at 61 St. James Place in Brooklyn. Nordensen is commissioner and secretary of the New York City Public Design Commission and is also active in environmental disaster engineering. Nordensen's firm, Guy Nordsenson and Associates, recently completed projects including the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York City.

CEO Jose Koechlin and designer Denise Koechlin of Inkaterra, a Peruvian eco-tourism institution, will speak on Monday, April 18 at 12:30 PM in Higgins Hall South, Room 111, at 61 St. James Place in Brooklyn. Their lecture, "Design of the Pueblo Nature Center at Machu Picchu," will highlight Inkaterra's mission to conserve Peru's natural and cultural heritage. Jose and Denise Koechlin have engineered projects including sustainable hotel development, environmental protection programs, ecology research, and community farming.

Architect and historian Paulo Portoghesi will conclude the spring 2011 lecture series with a conversation with Pratt Professor of Architecture Catherine Ingraham on Monday, April 18 at 6 PM in Higgins Hall Auditorium at 61 St. James Place in Brooklyn. Portoghesi is professor of architecture at the University La Sapienza in Rome, where he specializes in classical architecture.  His latest architectural design nearing completion is the Strasbourg Mosque in France. 

Past School of Architecture lecturers have included Frank Gehry, Will Alsop, Bob Crane, Lawrence Feldman, and Michael Ratner. For more information on the series, please visit http://www.pratt.edu/academics/architecture/architecture/lectures/