Kivi Sotamaa Lecture “Sensation”

Monday, November 16, 6:00pm – MBA Suite, University of Colorado Denver Building, 1250 14^th Street, Denver

5:30 – Reception in MBA Suite Area

Finnish architect Kivi Sotamaa is Visiting Assistant Professor at the UCLA Department of Architecture and Urban Design. Previously he held positions at The Ohio State University and the Universität für Angewandte Kunst, Institut für Architektur in Vienna. He is the principal of Sotamaa Design ltd. Until 2005 he was one of the founders and principals of Ocean North. Sotamaa’s creative work is widely published and exhibited. His work has been exhibited by MoMA, the Wexner Center for the Arts, Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Fondazione Trussardi and the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art Kanazawa. Publications featuring his work include the New York Times, Phaidon’s 10×10 Architects [1&2], New Scandinavian Design, Forum Sweden, AD, Praxis, Kenhiku Bunka, L’Arca and Domus. His most current projects are Saunalahti Public School and Sirocco, a permanent pavilion to be constructed in 2009 in Helsinki. Sotamaa holds a Masters degree from the University of Art and Design in Helsinki [UIAH] and in addition has studied at the Helsinki University of Technology and the Royal College of Art in London.

“Sotamaa explores a formal vocabulary which reflects his fluid, less bounded, more organic way of working and communicating. In his work there is a resurfacing of ideas that developed earlier in 20th century by surrealist painters, filmmakers, poets - having to do with the subconscious, having to do with dreams, water, fluidity, and the dissolution of the boundaries that reason applies to experience - with which reason tries to categorize experience. Sotamaa is developing a vocabulary which draws on and expands surrealist ideas into architecture. His work is not just about the technology, the new, the digital - but the continuity with ideas that are integral to modern art.” (Herbert Muschamp, NY Times architecture critic)