CUNY Lectures

Here's two lectures next week at CUNY schools worth noting:

:: Bubbles in Beijing: Architecture, Physics, and the Olympics
Tuesday, April 1, 6:30pm
The Graduate Center
365 Fifth Avenue
(at 34th Street)

"The Olympic aquatics pavilion in Beijing resembles a box of bubbles. This extraordinary structure and the feat of engineering required to build it will be discussed by Denis Weaire, physics professor at Trinity College Dublin, who first observed the efficiency of bubble structures. He'll be joined by Daniel Brodkin, a principal in the New York office of the engineering firm Arup."

The lecture is free. Visit the The Science & The Arts Program site to reserve a seat.

:: David Harvey: The Right to the City
The Fifth Annual Lewis Mumford Lecture on Urbanism
Thursday, April 3, 6:30pm
The Great Hall, Shepard Hall
City College of New York
160 Convent Avenue

"Professor Harvey’s lecture, titled 'The Right to the City,' will examine who gets to exercise this precious right and how. Under capitalism, there has been a long-standing conflict between a view of cities as centers for profit making and capital accumulation and another that sees them as utopian spaces of human interaction. While the former has prevailed, Professor Harvey will ask how the right to the city can be restored to the people. Such questions need to be addressed by all who seek a more humane and ecologically sensitive urbanism for the 21st Century, he contends."

The event is organized by the Graduate Program in Urban Design of the CCNY School of Architecture, Urban Design and Landscape Architecture. It is free and open to the public. No reservations are necessary.