Femmetech

It's safe to say that we are itching to hear from Margherita Cesca and Catie Newell at Femmetech.

11.30am 

Margherita Cesca Nelder-Haynes 

Director of Architecture at LANPRO 

ITALIANspaceWISE Founder

Margherita is an Italo-British RIBA Chartered Architect, qualified both in Italy and in the UK with 20 years experience in architecture, heritage and interiors. She has extensively worked internationally since 2001 operating in the USA, Canada, UK and Italy with project in Russia, Germany, Sierra Leone and St.Helena. She has been a practice Director for over 8 years. 

Growing up in Italy, a nation in which culture is infused with originality, design flair and creativity, Margherita’s love for architecture, design and detail is innate.

She graduated at IUAV University of Architecture in Venice and started her career working on heritage buildings in New York City on the 5th Avenue for VERSACE and ETRO.

TALK TOPIC: 

Margherita has a strong passion for pioneering technologies and innovations mostly related to sustainability and Carbon Zero strategies. Margherita will discuss different initiatives and discuss project she has collaborated on with the University of Cambridge, an avant-garde environmental and green initiatives project. She has also designed and delivered the award winning “P2P Power to Plants” prototype at Cambridge Botanic Garden in cooperation with Biochemistry Department of Cambridge University and will give us some insight into this particular project and how it came to fruition. 

12.30pm 

Catie Newell Podcast 

https://teulo.co/events/darkness-architecture/

BIO:

Catie studied an MArch at Rice School of Architecture before founding Alibi Studio in 2010.She is also Associate Professor of Architecture and MSc Digital & Material Technologies Director at Taubman College of Architecture at the University of Michigan.  

PODCAST OUTLINE: 

In this podcast with Catie, we explore how she came to be an architect and her love of art and the abstract.  Catie discusses how she her practice works and approaches new jobs and how they manage clients expectations. She introduces the use of light / dark and how that affects her work. She delves into a few projects and talks about the materials used in those projects.

Using site-specific installations and photography as the main mediums of my practice, I represent existing spaces through an obscuring of the relevant embedded materials. I deploy material manipulation, illumination and darkness, and implications of occupation to intervene in a space where something unanticipated has already happened.

The materials and their tectonic are chosen for their relevance to the site and the history they infuse. The process of fabrication is a vital act in the work, often amplifying realities and identities of the site through their interpretation or ethics. My work seeks to make the familiar unfamiliar, unsettling our understanding of the space and its histories. Each installation carefully balances being an anomaly to its setting with a deep resonance to the conditions that constructed it. Often ephemeral, the works address time in the registration of the present moment and in its short lifespan. 

Learning outcomes and AACA Competencies:

3.2 Application of creative imagination, aesthetic judgement ans critical evaluation in formulating design options. 

4.1  Evaluation of design options in relation to project requirements 

5.1 Application of creative imagination and aesthetic judgement in producing a resolved project design