SoA Director to Deliver AIA Oklahoma Conference Keynote

School of Architecture Director Blaine Brownell, FAIA, will deliver a keynote address for the 2021 annual conference of the Oklahoma state chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA Oklahoma). His presentation, “The Corona Effect: Toward an Inoculated Architecture,” will close the conference’s first day on September 30.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has transformed the way we live and work, and it is changing how we will continue to design and occupy buildings,” Brownell writes in the lecture description. “The pandemic’s significant human loss and disruption have motivated the overarching aspiration to create inoculated places: buildings, cities, and landscapes that, once exposed to the novel coronavirus, have since been transformed via design and technical agency into sites protected from disease. This lecture will consider COVID-19’s influence on surfaces, systems, spaces, and society as well as emerging design approaches to limit the severity of subsequent pandemics.”

Brownell’s research focuses on emergent materials and applications, and he has published widely on the topic. Among his many contributions are his long-running “Mind & Matter” column for Architect magazine and his four-volume Transmaterial series (2006, 2008, 2010, 2017), which catalogs materials that have the most significant potential to redefine our physical environment.

In March, Brownell was interviewed by Building Design + Construction Executive Editor Robert Cassidy about new materials and systems for post-COVID construction. Learn more here.

Prior to delivering the AIA Oklahoma conference address, Brownell will lecture at Oklahoma State University School of Architecture. His presentation, “Material Agency: The Disruptive Nature of Architectural Innovation,” examines the role of experimentation in advancing architecture, how innovation in architecture is practiced effectively, and how we might measure its outcomes.