Architecture is a manifestation of culture. On the occasion of AIA Baltimore’s 150th anniversary, the AIA Baltimore and Baltimore Architecture Foundation 2021 Lecture Series will explore how the built environment simultaneously reflects and influences culture, in Baltimore and beyond. Each lecture will expose how cultural values shape design. The three lectures are focused around themes with specific local resonance in Baltimore, a city in which the arts and culture are key to community identity, history, and future vitality: Architecture and Identity, Art and Architecture, Architecture and Social Justice. Visiting and local speakers will examine and highlight the built environment and its relationship with the arts, community initiatives, sustainability goals, preservation, equity, the vernacular, and more, as we reflect on how these have been shaped by design practice throughout AIA Baltimore’s 150 year history.

Art + Architecture: This lecture will address the intersection of art and architecture, and the ways in which art, as an expression of culture, is reflected in the built environment. Speakers will discuss globally renowned cultural projects and museums, and local art and culture in Baltimore.

Lecture description: Benjamin Gilmartin, AIA, Partner at Diller Scofidio + Renfro, will discuss how the studio’s significant cultural projects were acts of conservation, adaptation, and radical rethinking for contemporary use. With the transformation of the Lincoln Center for Performing Arts Campus and the recent MoMA expansion, DS+R sought to preserve the original DNA of two of New York’s most iconic modernist projects, while opening up and democratizing these traditional citadels of “high art.” The recently completed US Olympic & Paralympic Museum in Colorado Springs, remediates an industrial brownfield area at the edge of the city center, to both revitalize the downtown core and build one of the most universally accessible museums in the nation.

Bio: Benjamin Gilmartin joined Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R) in 2004 and became a partner in 2015. Ben led the redesign of Alice Tully Hall, multiple public spaces within the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts campus, and the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive at the University of California, Berkeley. Most recently, Ben completed the United States Olympic & Paralympic Museum in Colorado Springs, hailed as one of the most accessible museums in the country. In addition to recently completing DS+R’s first building in Australia at the University of Sydney, Ben is also currently co-leading the design of a facility for MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning in Cambridge and a major tech headquarters in the Pacific Northwest.

Cara Ober, Founding Editor and Publisher of BmoreArt will address artist and museum culture and the way they intersect and collide, assessing how this impacts art communities and establishes hierarchies of value.

Benjamin Gilmartin, AIA, is a Principal at Diller Scofidio + Renfro, a 100-person interdisciplinary design studio that integrates the performing arts, visual arts, and architecture. Mr. Gilmartin joined DS+R in 2004 and became Principal in 2011. In 2010, Fast Company named Diller Scofidio + Renfro the most innovative design practice in the profession and among the top 50 most innovative companies in the world.