Conversations in Context invited leaders from creative fields to reflect on the site’s past, present, and future, and to contribute their perspectives on the Glass House and its significance to contemporary debates.

Bjarke Ingels started BIG Bjarke Ingels Group in 2005 after co-founding PLOT Architects in 2001 and working at OMA in Rotterdam. Through a series of award-winning design projects and buildings, Bjarke has developed a reputation for designing buildings that are as programmatically and technically innovative as they are cost and resource conscious. Bjarke has received numerous awards and honors, including the Danish Crown Prince’s Culture Prize in 2011, the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale in 2004, and the ULI Award for Excellence in 2009. In 2011, the Wall Street Journal awarded Bjarke the Architectural Innovator of the Year Award. In 2012, the American Institute of Architects granted the 8 House its Honor Award, calling it “a complex and exemplary project of a new typology.” Alongside his architectural practice, Bjarke taught at Harvard University, Yale University, Columbia University, and Rice University and is an honorary professor at the Royal Academy of Arts, School of Architecture in Copenhagen. He is a frequent public speaker and has spoken in venues such as TED, WIRED, AMCHAM, 10 Downing Street, and the World Economic Forum.

Canadian artist and author Douglas Coupland was born in 1961 on the Royal Canadian Air Force Base, ‘4-Wing,’ in Baden-Baden, West Germany.  His first novel, Generation X, was published in 1991.  Coupland has published fourteen novels, two collections of short stories, seven non-fiction books, and a dramatic work for England’s Royal Shakespeare Theatre Company, as well as screenplays for film and television.  Since 2000 he has reinvigorated a visual art practice that was largely dormant from the late 1980s which encompasses a diverse range of media including painting, prints, photography, sculpture and installation.  He has exhibited his artwork in Canada and internationally. His first solo museum show will be at the Vancouver Art Gallery from June to September, 2014 and will be traveling internationally.

Conversations in Context was generously supported by Oldcastle BuildingEnvelope^®

Additional support was kindly provided by Nat and Lucy Day.

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