Frank Lloyd Wright's Urbanism: From DC To Baghdad With Mina Marefat MAUD '80

This program will begin with drinks and a full dinner

Frank Lloyd Wright remains America’s most famous architect.  Although his urban design ideas were not as well known, they were equally transformative. Mina Marefat will discuss Frank Lloyd Wright’s profound engagement with urbanism as he envisioned uncommon solutions to modern challenges in the city using his exquisite renderings, sketches and handwritten notes. From his remarkable Crystal Heights, a city-within-the city of Washington DC, an enchanted crystalline landscape he called an “Arabian Nights Entertainment” to his unbuilt “Isle of Edena” in Baghdad, Iraq encompassing a garden paradise that included an opera house, museums, an amphitheater and university campus, Frank Lloyd Wright’s urbanism uniquely relates East and West in reciprocated influence, shared memory and imagined possibility. The design and program of Crystal Heights and of Baghdad distilled all of Wright’s theories and ideas about urban design and architecture each in an innovative hitherto unprecedented aesthetic. Both projects were groundbreaking as large-scale architectural complexes and as innovative urban design concepts and the story of their demise reflects the political climate of their respective countries and of the profession.
 

Mina Marefat is a registered architect, urban designer, and an architectural historian practicing in Washington as principal of Design Research, an architectural/urban design and research/education firm where she consults on urban revitalization, cultural projects, disaster mitigation and sustainable design. She was a Fulbright fellow in Paris, an SSRC fellow, an NEH fellow and a Rockefeller Scholar at the John W. Kluge Center for Scholarly Studies at the Library of Congress. She conducts and publishes original research on modern architecture and urbanism including on the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius and Alvar Aalto. She served as the curatorial advisor to the Guggenheim Museum.

MENU

Spinach and pear salad with fresh mushrooms- Raspberry Vinaigrette and Balsamic Vinaigrette

Grilled salmon with fresh Pico de Gallo

Roasted Chicken Breast (with an Alfredo Basil Cream Sauce

Roasted seasonal  vegetables

Brown rice with fresh herbs

chocolate chip cookies  and Fruit salad with whipped cream

Tickets

$45 for Harvard Club members and their guests

$65 for Non-members
Ticket includes lecture, full dinner, and drinks.  Menu to be posted shortly.