Word: speeches
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...plot almost continuously. Also, I never really noticed that the actors were singing. The color and expression of various voices were at the forefront of the production, but none of the singing seemed staged. The four leads were particularly strong. Quilichi and D'Amelio occasionally swung a flat, everyday-speech exclamation into their performances, and Buff, in her transsexual role as Otto, single-handedly built the tension of the play, bellowing out against Poppea's betrayal...
...foremost architects and the man responsible for the planned revamping of the Harvard University Art Museums, spoke to a packed Piper Auditorium last Thursday. Famous for his work in such major spaces as Houston's Menil Collection, Osaka's Kansai Airport and Paris's Centre Georges Pompidou, Piano's speech attracted so large a crowd that not only was the auditorium packed, but even the secondary broadcast room was standing-room only. People had to be turned away in droves. Perhaps the situation called for an architect...
Despite the cramped conditions and the technical flaws of the secondary broadcast, the Italian architect's one-and-a-half-hour speech went over well with the audience. Introduced as the "romantic architect," to contrast with Meier's classical leanings, Piano lived up to his billing by choosing to speak about his concern for "lightness" and fluidity. Although he did not mention his forthcoming plans for the Harvard museums, and instead spoke only about other recently opened projects, the palpable sense of excitement at architecture's possibilities demonstrated that Harvard's own museums are in good hands...
...Piano's words, architecture involves walking "the knife edge between art and science": One day the architect is a poet, the next day an engineer. That fine edge was highlighted in the first part of his speech, which dealt with his redesign of Berlin's Potsdamer Platz. This enormous, 5 million square foot space resonates with cultural significance, since it is both the former cultural center of Europe as well as the center of tragedy. The Cold War divide between East and West Germany, however, is now a matter for the history books, and Piano's task, as he noted...
...Piano noted, much of architecture lies in the invisible, in the memories and social life generated by the use of the space. What one sees--the physical architecture--is merely the tip of the iceberg. He expanded on this idea of "immateriality" in the last half-hour of the speech, presenting slides of his other works. Piano's work has consistently stressed the importance of space and transparency, or, as he put it, "lightness". The glass of Kansai Airport seems to show the open possibilities that flying offers. His Tjibaou Cultural Centre of New Caledonia, for instance, is naturally ventilated...