Last week, KieranTimberlake hosted an evening of art and conversation in celebration of the new publication Building Ghosts: Past Lives and Lost Places in a Changing City. This event concludes our year of public programming in celebration of our 40th anniversary.  

As part of our ongoing 40th anniversary programming, we transformed Ortlieb's Bottling House, our COTE® Top Ten award-winning historic office space and living laboratory, into an interactive exhibition titled More or Less, showcasing KieranTimberlake's interventions at colleges and universities across the country.  
 

2024 marks 40 years of KieranTimberlake and we're continuing to celebrate with more events, conferences, and other happenings. To better capture all that we're up to, we'll be sharing quarterly posters designed by our in-house team.  
 
In April, May, and June, KT will be connecting with industry leaders, sharing our latest research with the ARPA-E HESTIA program, and presenting our newly completed work with the Folger Shakespeare Library and the John F. Kennedy Center. 
 
See below for more details. We look forward to connecting soon at events both near and far.

On March 8, we hosted a Tour + Toast at our studio, the former Ortlieb's Bottling House in Northern Liberties, Philadelphia. The first in-person event of the year, we invited friends and colleagues to join us for a casual evening of art, architecture, and conversation.  
 
The event coincided with the 2024 Building Museums Symposium by the Mid-Atlantic Association of Museums (MAAM), where Principal Johann Mordhorst presented our decade-long master plan and renovation of the Folger Shakespeare Library, reopening to the public on June 21.

KieranTimberlake is participating in the International Union of Architects (UIA) World Congress of Architects in Copenhagen, Denmark. Meeting July 2-6, the UIA is an international non-governmental organization recognized by UNESCO as the only architectural union operating at an international level. The group convenes every three years.  
 
Partner and Research Director Billie Faircloth is a co-chair of the Design for Climate Adaptation panel with Maibritt Pedersen Zari of the Auckland University of Technology. The panel convenes delegates from more than 30 counties to exchange worldviews on the urgency of climate adaptation across five themes: Indigenous Knowledges, Frameworks and Feedback, Architectural Technologies, Nature-Based Solutions, and Behavior Change and Action.  
 
“We hope this congress serves not solely as a forum for gathering knowledge but also as an inspiration for transforming the professional practice of adaptation in the built environment,” Faircloth recently told ArchDaily.  
 
In addition, Leslie Louie, a delegate to the subpanel Partnerships for Change: Reframing Agency, will present “How Alternative Governance Models Can Help the Design Community Combat Forced Labor.” In this paper, KieranTimberlake proposes that as architects engaging issues of forced labor and supply chain equity should learn from the legacy of fair-trade and community-based, worker-driven programs.

KieranTimberlake's innovative work with prefabrication was recently highlighted in a WIRED Magazine article on sustainable building practices.  
 
As the global construction industry creates about one-third of the world's waste, the article emphasizes a necessary shift towards circular building, or "the practice of making buildings that can be more easily disassembled, moved, or repurposed." 
 
In a list of recent examples, they note "KieranTimberlake's innovative prefab, sustainable homes Loblolly House and Cellophane House™." 
 
Completed in 2006, Loblolly House used integrated assemblies of parts, fabricated off-site, to build a house in an entirely different way. The conception and detailing were formed about four new elements of architecture: scaffold, cartridge, block, and equipment. The connections between elements were designed to be made using only simple hand tools.

As our renovation of the Folger Shakespeare Library continues, Partner Stephen Kieran joined Folger Director Michael Witmore and Anneliza Kaufer of Olin for a discussion on the project's architectural vision scope.

Earlier this month, KieranTimberlake researchers Billie Faircloth, Christopher Connock, and Ryan Welch attended the Smartgeometry conference in Toronto and conducted a week-long workshop called "Materials as Probes." The workshop was an outgrowth of an ongoing research collaboration between KieranTimberlake and the Center for Information Technology and Architecture (CITA) in Denmark about the design potential of thermodynamic modeling. 
 
Watch the video above and read more about the workshop on the Smartgeometry website.

The Architects Newspaper recently hosted Facades+ Philadelphia, a multi-city conference series that brings together architects, industry experts, academics, and building owners to discuss “all things building skin.” The event was co-chaired by Partner Matthew Krissel and moderated by KieranTimberlake staff Efrie Freidlander, Fátima Olivieri, and Jon McCandlish.

Last week, KieranTimberlake partnered with Metropolis Magazine to host a Think Tank discussion about new paradigms for planning and designing 21st century cities. The event, titled “Pedestrians, Bikes, and Cars: Designing a Balanced Multi-Modal 21st Century City,” was moderated by the magazine's Director of Design Innovation, Susan S. Szenasy. 
 
Using Philadelphia as a case study, Szenasy led a panel of experts to explore how the city might re-balance its infrastructure as equitable for all modes of transportation. The panelists were KieranTimberlake partner James Timberlake, former Mayor's Office of Transportation Chief of Staff Andrew Stober, Sarah Clark Stuart, director of the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia, safe streets advocate Dena Ferrara Driscoll, and Drexel University professor and department head Alan Greenberger.