The University of Technology, Jamaica, through its Caribbean School of Architecture, hosted the Ruskin Punch Memorial Lecture on October 11, 2018 at the institution’s Papine campus.

The memorial lecture is named in honour of Ruskin Punch, the late distinguished Trinidadian architect who was noted to be a true believer in professionalism in architecture, and in shared dialogue between generations of architects.

The lecture on the theme, “The Common Sense” of Performance Architecture” was delivered by Jamaican, Chicago-based architect Gordon Gill, of Adrian Smith and Gordon Gill Architecture, USA.

Gill is one of the world’s foremost exponents of performance-based architecture, and is also patron of the Government of Jamaica’s current Houses of Parliament Design Competition.

Gill’s presentation to the capacity audience of over 200 people, comprising architects, educators and students, delved into his firm’s impressive body of work on the many critically acclaimed and award-winning global projects they have undertaken since the firm’s founding 12 years ago in 2006.

For each spectacular building project, he expounded on not just the passion and commitment of his design team, but also explained in detail the human factor, the local environmental assets and physical considerations, such as energy efficiency and generation, which are brought to bear on his design concepts include several super-tall and sustainable skyscrapers.

Emphasising that sustainability is about people and not just about “energy and carbon”, Gill noted that each project begins with a deep analysis — “sometimes its sun, sometimes it’s thermal, sometimes it’s a combination of social issues…geographic or typographical”, he explained.

Gordon’s pre-eminent firm is responsible for such monuments as the tallest building in the world — Dubai’s Burj Khalifa; the under-construction skyscraper, the Sauda Arabia’s 1 km Jeddah Tower, (formerly Kingdom Tower) which is set to surpass their previous work as the tallest building; the Istanbul Cultural Centre in Turkey with its state-of-the-art opera house, concert hall, theatre and cinema; the luxury Waldorf Astoria hotel in Beijing, China, among a host of other remarkable mega structures.

Answering the often asked question of “how do we choose what we are working on?” the master architect said that “we don’t care about the size of it, what we care about is the client and what we look for in a client is someone who loves what they do as much as we love what we do”. He added that, “so we are looking for clients that love architecture, that are committed to quality, and that have a dying relentlessness and a passion for what they do”.

Gill noted that this philosophy led him for example, to park projects because of its importance to the neigbourhood, and to work with theatre companies for 10 years “just because they are really good at what they do”, he said, referencing the Yard at Chicago Shakespeare Theater. That project involved the expansion and renovation of the popular theatre located on Navy Pier in downtown Chicago, to include an adaptable, flexible auditorium built from modular towers.

University President Professor Stephen Vasciannie, in his welcome, thanked Gill for accepting the university’s invitation to share some of his vast expertise and knowledge on architectural design, and expressed that students of architecture, members of faculty, institutions of government, and a general audience will benefit from learning more about the importance of performance-based architecture in building safe and sustainable communities.

In moving the vote of thanks, Dr Garfield Young, dean, Faculty of The Built Environment, thanked Gill for his “potent, powerful and impactful” presentation.

Young also thanked sponsors and external partners of the evening’s proceedings, which included the Urban Development Cooperation the Jamaica Institute of Architects, CESCO Ltd, and EduCom Co-op Credit Union Limited.