Every Thought Flies: Launching the Zambonini Archive

Zambonini Boat

Lecture by Robert Kirkbride
Thursday, October 3, 2013
6:00 – 7:00 PM
The Glass Corner, Rm 206, 25 East 13th Street

Catered Reception to Follow

Exhibition Runs October 3 – 17, 2013

Robert Kirkbride, Associate Professor of Product Design, will give an informal lecture on the fascinating life and career of architect and educator, Giuseppe Zambonini.

Every Thought Flies: Launching the Zambonini Archive celebrates the arrival of the work of architect and educator, Giuseppe Zambonini (1942-90), at the Kellen Design Archives of Parsons The New School for Design. This exhibit will feature projects and ephemera from Zambonini and the Open Atelier Design (1977-88), the innovative non-accredited school and design-build practice Zambonini founded, along with newly digitized recordings of OAD lectures and panels designed by Zambonini for the first U.S. exhibit of work by Italian architect Carlo Scarpa (1983), with whom he completed his thesis at the Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia.

Among the first of the New York Architecture League’s Emerging Voices (1982), Zambonini merged interior design, architecture, industrial design and theater, emphasizing process exploration through drawing and full-scale making. The Open Atelier of Design, described by Zambonini as “partially school and partially studio,” produced widely published loft renovations while featuring instructors and lecturers such as Marco Frascari, Michael Kalil, George Ranalli, Lauretta Vinciarelli, Peter Eisenman, Richard Serra, Steven Holl, Jean Gardner, Allan Wexler and others. Zambonini also taught in graduate architecture programs at Yale and Columbia, was academic dean for the New York School of Interior Design, and directed the architecture program at Georgia Institute of Technology at the time of his unexpected death.