Third Talk20 Changes Venue and Menu

Mashrou3 Leila

A cacophony of beat-jerking mood-enhancing sounds marked the third edition of Talk20 held by the Department of Architecture and Design (ArD) on March 27—this year at the Hostler Center Auditorium to accommodate the steadily growing audience. The program, sparked by Architecture and Design’s (ArD) in-house live music played by the band Mashrou3 Leila, included 12 talks on diverse topics, from various creative disciplines. 

Members of the AUB community and many visitors from outside campus flocked to this gathering for “informal” exchange of design ideas. Strictly “not a lecture,” Talk20 consisted of a series of short presentations, with 20 slides, each 20 seconds long, selected, compiled and narrated by students, educators, and professionals representing many fields of design and architecture.

The first presentation, given by ArD’s visiting professor and architect Karim Najjar, talked about talking. As an “instrument of speech,” the language of architecture “has grammar and vocabulary with structure and form,” said Najjar before allowing his slides to do the talking. Katrine Holmfeld and Mirene Arsanios from the non-profit association Ashkal Alwan followed Najjar with their presentation on the association’s old and forth-coming projects. 

Painter and video artist Lamia Joreige then presented her own images of “devastation” as “fragments” constituting the Lebanese war memory—fragments, because, she said capturing complete narratives would be an “impossible” task. This led to the next item: the work of fourth year architecture students Joey Abu Jawdeh and Anthony Khoury, which focused on the compromising adaptation of their 7x4 work/play space, in which they accompanied their presentation by playing their own music. 

No less interesting were the talks by architect Bernard Mallat on architecture and laws, by musician Jade Souaid on his journey from engineering to the arts, by Maha Issa and Gamar Markarian on landscape architecture, and by Milia Maroun on fashion design.  Confirming the promise that this biannual exchange would become more diversified with each new edition, the event also included an ArD group show on India, musician Salma Mousfi’s elaboration on the “need for proper filters to save time and money,” graphic designers Lina and May Ghaibeh with their humorous account of “twinship,” and the closing talk of architect Raed Abillama.