In partnership with AIGA DC Design Week
5:30–7:00 p.m: Opening Reception for the Exhibition:
Designing and Redesigning MLK Library
7:00-8:30 p.m: Panel Discussion,
Designing Utopia? Learning from the Bauhaus Experiment
The Bauhaus (1919-1933) was a German art school that imagined a better world and launched some of the greatest architects, designers and artists of the 20th century—including Mies van der Rohe, architect of DC’s own MLK Library. Yet the school’s social vision was eclipsed by World War II and the rise of a fascist regime. Today we see traces of Bauhaus design everywhere—but what became of its utopian ideals? Further, what new perspective does this history offer on present-day challenges of inequality and shrinking public space? Join us for a cross-cultural conversation with experts from the fields of art and design, architecture, and education about historical experiments and today’s realities in design for the public good.
Moderator: Maryann James-Daley, Assistant Director of Public Services for the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library at DC Public Library
Panelists:
Karen Koehler, Professor of Art History, Hampshire College
Mira Azarm, Innovation Instigator, UMD Academy for Innovation & Entrepreneurship
Hazel Edwards, Chair, Howard University Department of Architecture
RSVP
Maryann James-Daley is Assistant Director of Public Services for the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library at DC Public Library, which is undergoing a 3-year, $211 million modernization. She started her career at DC Public Library in 2012 as the Web and Social Media Librarian, before moving to manage The Labs and Digital Commons at the MLK Library, where she led staff who provided programming and services with innovative, maker and studio technologies. Since then, she has served as acting manager of Tenley-Friendship Neighborhood Library, Interim Assistant Director for Public Services for neighborhood libraries, and in her current position managing operations for the central library. Before her transition to library work, she served as an editor, producer and reporter for outlets that include
The Washington Post and
Baltimore Sun. Maryann passionately champions libraries as a spark for education, inspiration, collaboration and change. An alum of Howard University and University of Pittsburgh, Maryann lives in Maryland with her husband, 5-year-old son and 1-year-old daughter.
Karen Koehler is professor of art history at Hampshire College and teaches courses in modern and contemporary art, architecture, photography, and design, with an emphasis on connections between the built environment, visual culture, and critical theory. In 2008, Koehler served as guest curator and sole author of
Bauhaus Modern, an exhibition and catalogue at the Smith College Museum of Art. Other recent publications on the Bauhaus include catalogue essays for the Prada Foundation in Milan and the Gallery of New South Wales, as well as an essay on the Bauhaus and Gestalt in
Intersecting Colors: Joseph Albers and His Contemporaries at the Mead Art Museum, Amherst College, and a forthcoming essay on "Bauhaus Doubles" for
Bauhaus Bodies, forthcoming from Bloomsbury Press. Recipient of recent grants from the NEH, Mellon, and Kress and Graham Foundations, Koehler is currently completing an intellectual history of the architect Walter Gropius for Reaktion Books (distributed in the U.S. by the University of Chicago Press), a project for which she received a Senior Fellowship from the Center for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts (CASVA) at the National Gallery in Washington.
Mira Azarm is an Innovation Instigator in the Academy for Innovation & Entrepreneurship at the University of Maryland, and teaches classes in several departments relating to sustainability and design, innovation principles, and the design process. She’s known for developing and prototyping interdisciplinary, experiential coursework and tools that bring social design methodologies, design thinking and the creative process to diverse audiences, particularly within organizations dedicated to creating or invigorating an internal culture biased toward innovation. She teaches emerging business leaders in the combined MA/MBA in Design Leadership program at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), where she completed a prestigious Robert W. Deutsch Fellowship through MICA’s Center for Social Design. She recently traveled the world as a Design Coach for the World Bank in an initiative aimed at creating climate innovation centers for local, “green” entrepreneurs using human-centered design methods.
Hazel Edwards is Professor and Chair of the Department of Architecture, College of Engineering and Architecture at Howard University since July 2016. Her unique career has combined place-related research with planning and urban design practice. Her research interests in quality of life are framed within urban design contexts while focused primarily on historic residential and campus environments. Her design background has served as a foundation for her talent for translating and representing ideas and concepts as well as creating alternatives. Of note is a planning study that culminated in a book that she co-authored entitled,
The Long Walk: The Placemaking Legacy of Howard University. Born in North Carolina. Dr. Edwards was raised in Washington, DC and holds a Bachelor of Architecture and a Master of Architecture in Urban Design from Howard University and a Ph.D. in Regional Planning from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. She returned to North Carolina as a Carolina Minority Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She was elected to the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Certified Planners (FAICP) and will be inducted in April 2018. She has taught in the graduate city planning programs at Morgan State University's Institute of Architecture (1999 to 2007) and at The Catholic University of America's School of Architecture and Planning (2007-2016) where she served as director of the Master of City and Regional Planning program.
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