2009 - Daylight Symposium
CONSTRUCTING THE EPHEMERAL - LIGHT IN THE PUBLIC REALM by James Carpenter
Speakers
James Carpenter
James Carpenter Design Associates (JCDA)
James Carpenter is considered to be a leading architectural designer and innovator in glass and material technologies and he has achieved fame as a light artist and designer of filigree glass constructions. He masters the entire toolbox of light design with a degree of skill attained by only very few of his contemporaries: its refraction and concentration, its absorption and reflection, its colour and its rhythmics. Carpenter designs sensual total art works that constitute far more than simply a decorative add-on to the buildings of others. His interest in architecture and structure has evolved into a unique design practice and studio, James Carpenter Design Associates, a multi-disciplinary architectural design firm with a specific focus on the exploration and management of light. The firm specializes in both the aesthetic and functional development and documentation of enclosure systems, glass structures and skylights, and specialty construction on building skins.
James Carpenter studied architecture and sculpture at the Rhode Island School of Design, graduating in 1972. He actively exhibited his sculpture and installation film projects throughout the US and Europe, and from 1972 to 1982 worked as a consultant with Corning Glass Works in Corning, NY, researching the development of new glass materials including photo responsive glass and various glass ceramics. These projects were aimed at potential architectural applications, utilizing the technical capabilities of such glass to control and manipulate light and information.
James Carpenter is the recipient of numerous awards including the National Environmental Design Award from the Smithsonian Institution and the AIA’s Honor Award. In 2004, he received a prestigious MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. He is founder and principal of the firm James Carpenter Design Associates in New York. In addition to this he is also a principal of the firm Carpenter/Norris Consulting, Inc., with partner Davidson Norris. In 2002, James Carpenter and Luke Lowings opened a studio, Carpenter/Lowings Architecture and Design Ltd., located in London.
