Cocktails & Conversation is a series of dialogues about design that joins an architect with a critic, journalist, curator, or architectural historian to discuss current architecture and design issues. This program will feature architect Matthew Bremer, AIA, and design editor and architecture journalist and critic Fred Bernstein in conversation about their shared obsessions—NYC and home—over a custom-crafted cocktail that transports Bremer back home to Texas.
Bremer will discuss his life and career-long obsession with designing for domestic life across geographic and socio-economic spectra, and how innovative, thoughtful and soul-stirring design for society’s neediest demands the same inspiration and rigor as luxury design for society’s most privileged. Bremer’s design approach is about authentic placemaking and social and environmental equity. This event coincides with the final day of the exhibition CFA LAB: Seeking Refuge and Making Home in NYC, on display in the galleries adjoining the Center for Architecture’s Tafel Hall. Curated by Matthew Bremer and Vyjayanthi Rao, the exhibition features work by three Center for Architecture Lab residents—Kholisile Dhliwayo, NCARB, ARBV, NSWARB; A.L. Hu, NOMA, AIA, NCARB, EcoDistricts AP; and Karla Andrea Pérez—and explores intimate notions of home, place, and community for three historically oppressed and marginalized groups. The talk will engage the adjacent exhibition as well as use two recently completed projects by Architecture in Formation—one a 100% affordable senior passive house community and the other a Caribbean island compound designed as a personal and corporate retreat—that both stem from similar inspirations of nature, communal activity, and desire for the permanence of home rooted in place.
