Architect Neil M. Denari to Present Lectures on Feb. 1 and 2 in Fayetteville, Little Rock

Benny Chan

HL23 is a 14-floor condominium tower along the High Line at 23rd Street in New York's West Chelsea arts district. (Image courtesy of Neil M. Denari Architects)

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Neil M. Denari will present a lecture at 5 p.m. Monday, Feb. 1, in Ken and Linda Sue Shollmier Hall, Room 250 of Vol Walker Hall on the University of Arkansas campus in Fayetteville as part of the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design lecture series.

In addition, he will present a lecture Tuesday, Feb. 2, at the Arkansas Arts Center, 501 E. 9th St., in Little Rock. That lecture begins at 6 p.m. in the center's Lecture Hall, following a 5:30 p.m. reception, and is part of the Architecture and Design Network's 2015-16 series of public lectures.

Denari is a principal of the architecture firm, Neil M. Denari Architects Inc., based in Los Angeles. The firm works on projects in North America, Europe and Asia.

In these lectures, titled "Disagree to Agree," Denari will discuss how his firm works to deploy potentially disagreeable ideas into a welcoming context of agreement. This involves persuasion, as a form of explanation, and a reliance on equal amounts of logic and enthusiasm. This idea came from the common phrase, "We'll just have to agree to disagree," which describes a situation in which the parties cannot make an agreement because of differing opinions or ideologies, and therefore never reach a decision. Architecture as a transformational act is mediated by money, human will and faith in a specific direction and outcome.

Denari has received many awards, including the Los Angeles American Institute of Architects Gold Medal in 2011, and the firm won first prize in the New Keelung Harbor Service Building competition in 2012. His work is permanently held by eight museums around the world. It also has been included in many exhibits, such as the solo show "The Artless Drawing" in 2010 at Ace Gallery in Los Angeles and the 2013 group show "New Sculpturalism" at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.    

Denari is a professor of architecture, vice chair of the Department of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of California, Los Angeles, and was the director of the Southern California Institute of Architecture from 1997-2002. He received a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Houston in 1980 and a Master of Architecture from Harvard University in1982.  Denari has given lectures worldwide and was a visiting professor at Harvard University, Princeton University, Columbia University and the University of California, Berkley.

Denari is also the author of Interrupted Projections (1996), Gyroscopic Horizons (1999), and Mass X, which is expected to publish this year.

The Fayetteville lecture is the Lewis Architects Engineers Lecture.

The public is invited to attend. Admission is free with limited seating. For more information, contact 479-575-4704 or fayjones.uark.edu. 

The Little Rock lecture is part of the 2015-16 Art of Architecture lecture series, which is sponsored by the Architecture and Design Network, a non-profit organization, with support from the Central Arkansas Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, the Arkansas Arts Center, the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design and community members. It is free and open to the public. For more information, contact ardenetwork@icloud.