A Pritzker Prize-winning architect and the visionary founder of the Morphosis firm, Thom Mayne filled Lewis auditorium with an overflow crowd last Friday evening with his lecture “tC: The Continuity of Contradictions.” No doubt, much of this excitement can be attributed to the way in which Mayne’s work demonstrates how architecture can change how the public sees the world.

If art and design are some of the few fields where life and work are inextricably linked, then architect Daniel Libeskind’s lecture on Wednesday night epitomized the anti-“nine to five.” Far from being someone who sits down in a cubicle, pays his dues to the corporate world and then goes home to enjoy what non-work related pleasures he can, Libeskind, from the beginning and for better or for worse, has saturated his work with his voice, his hand, his beliefs and his personal history. From photos of his childhood in Poland and his expressive account of his family’s ties to the Holocaust, to his politicized slogans paired with highly commercial works, Libsekind’s sometimes incongruous but always passionate beliefs can be traced through his prolific building history.

Correction Appended

Risley Hall recently shed some light on a piece of its historic architecture — literally. In September, lampposts were installed on the four gates the residential college, a project that was initiated by one of Cornell’s student architects.

It all started in 2006, when Joe DeSense ’09, then architecture student and Risley resident, came across several old photos of Risley from 1913, dug up by a friend who had been writing a paper on the history of Risley.

“I noticed these brick lampposts, two in each driveway leading up to the building, and thought, ‘Why did they get rid of something so nice?’” DeSense said.

DeSense eventually proposed his idea of restoring the lampposts to Elaine Bushey, Risley’s residence hall director, who responded favorably.

My recent incursion into the workforce has rendered me confused as to what exactly constitutes business attire in architecture. With no enforced dress code, the firm I have been working for in the past months continues to surprise me each week, with its similarity to the casualness of a Silicon Valley start-up (though, with the unfortunate exclusion of the free beer, massages and laundry pickup).

Some statistics: Cornell has, ahem, the number one architecture program in the United States. The United States each year produces six billion metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions — which is, per capita, almost 200 times more than poorer countries in the world. Buildings represent 39 percent of those emissions. Let’s round that up to 40 percent. While turning off the lights in Rockefeller overnight is important, the energy saved by doing so is chump change compared to what could be wrought by the education of a well-trained and knowledgeable generation of builders and designers.

Shock and disbelief were the only two feelings stronger than nausea when judges announced the results for architecture at the recent Solar Decathlon competition in Washington, D.C. After a two-year, Herculean effort, Cornell’s Solar Decathlon team (CUSD) had produced an innovative house of remarkable craftsmanship. Its peculiar form and materiality exerted an uncanny architectural magnetism, attracting the press and public and eliciting praise and pride from everyone involved.

An assortment of architecture students, faculty and the occasional architect neophytes (specifically, this writer) gathered on Wednesday night for one last lecture before fall break with Michael Manfredi M.Arch ’80 of the architecture firm Weiss/Manfredi. Manfredi, who received his bachelor’s degree at the University of Notre Dame and his master’s at Cornell University, has been acclaimed for the various designs his firm has implemented over the last several years. Highlighting nine of his recent works, Manfredi used these projects to explain the unique approach that the firm takes to conceptualizing the projects.

When people mention “paper architects,” they usually mean architects who design highly theoretical, exorbitant, unrealizable utopian projects that remain consigned to the drafting board. While such architects are sometimes critiqued for being overly academic, inattentive to the nuts-and-bolts of their craft as well as client needs, they are important for pushing the conceptual frontiers of the discipline. Paper architects can help expand the poetic possibilities of architecture’s collective imagination even if their designs are never intended to be built.

Kevin Pratt, architecture, with a model.

Imagine a life without cars, cell phones or laptops. Olin and Uris Libraries closing as soon as the sun sets, while rough drafts for freshman writing seminars fill up the trash cans with their paper, ink and lead. While such a disaster will clearly not happen tomorrow, unsustainable rates of production and waste have professionals from agriculture to architecture concerned.

Asst. Prof. Kevin Pratt, architecture, teaches a class on thermal and environmental systems. He is currently involved in two research projects — Vibro Wind Power and Sustain — both of which are focused on improving the energy efficiency of buildings.