Wiel Arets IIT Presidential Lecture Series

Dean Wiel Arets will deliver the eighth installment of the Presidential Lecture Series, hosted by President John L. Anderson, on Monday, March 30, 2015 at 3:30 p.m. in Hermann Hall. John W. Rowe, IIT Regent, Former Chairman of the Board, and Chairman Emeritus of Exelon Corporation, will introduce the lecture titled: “Towards a Hybrid Metropolis”, presented by Wiel Arets.

Dean Arets will explore the metropolis of the twenty-first century as a hybrid—connected, automated, and noiseless. Such qualities enable today’s societies, within these hybrid metropolises, to live dualistically: They’re more interconnected, productive, and longer leisured than their predecessors, though capable of the securities that a village once provided.

Wiel Arets, an internationally acclaimed architect, educator, industrial designer, theorist, and urbanist known for progressive academic research and hybrid design solutions, has been dean of IIT College of Architecture since 2012. He also holds the Rowe Family College of Architecture Dean Endowed Chair at IIT.

Discourse around the metropolis is the prime challenge within Arets’s research. His vision as dean is focused on seeking out the boundaries and challenges currently facing us: How will architecture, as part of the metropolis, develop within our extremely exciting and complex world? The hybrid metropolis should be based on an awareness of both risk and tension, and the creation of a new urban dream.