Buffalo native Jeffrey Albert, an architect with a passionate personal interest in Asian design and architectural themes, spoke at Park Hall Friday as a part of UB's "Asia at Noon" program, a series of brown-bag lunch lectures sponsored by the Asian Studies Department.
Albert is a partner in Foit-Albert Associates, the architectural firm that designed UB's South Lake Village apartment complex in 2000. Albert's lecture, entitled "Architecture and the Void: A Bridge Between East and West," was the second of five "Asia at Noon" lectures planned for this semester.
"It's a chance for people to put their research on the table," said the Director of Asian Studies, Thomas W. Burkman, of the lectures. "It's an interdisciplinary activity so people get to hear what's happening across the field."
Albert began by discussing a series of pictures of 500-year old Indian temples and palaces that were inspired by both Hindu and Buddhist beliefs, stories and principles.
"All of Southeast Asia, in my mind, has a very successful integration, an overlapping, of Hinduism and Buddhism. There's a cross-fertilization of all these cultures," he said. "But South India has this wonderful use of color and form that you really don't see anywhere else in the world."
Albert focused on the concept of spirituality as a part of the design process and the architecture itself. According to Albert, China's building designs are integrated and unified with nature, much like India's. The idea behind the Chinese pavilions in his photographs, said Albert, was to get away from the hustle of life, to relax the mind and body, and to think.
"I wish I saw more of these in our culture," he said.
Albert also discussed pictures of temples in Thailand and of monasteries in Japan.
"There's a very strong integration of opposites," said Albert. "Ying and yang, light and dark - it encompasses the duality of life."
Albert recalled what it was like to see these ornate Himalayan temples in person, first seeing them when he was 15 years old.
"The culture just spoke to me of a history I had never known before. It opened my mind to a different worldview," he said. "These structures automatically take your mind some place higher."
Albert concluded with ancient, medieval and modern architecture in Asia, Europe and North America as he discussed the contemporary use of "negative space" in design and explained the "void" in his lecture's title.
"The void is that realm of potentiality, the place all things issue from," he said. "One draws inspiration from the void. The void allows you to contemplate what can be or has been. It makes you contemplate why you're here."
Professor Pilwon Han, an architect from Korea and instructor at UB while he spends a year in the U.S., attended Albert's lecture.
"This was great. Some of the images were very familiar to me since I am from Korea," said Han, who is writing a book about Chinese architecture. "This really was a great introduction for American students to Asian architecture."
Albert said he hopes that students left his talk with a sense of a wider, more spiritual world.
"I hope that students will see there's a wide range of experiences and they all have equal value," Albert said. "Drop your preconceptions and experience things for what they are."
"When you look only at the external, you miss something," he added. "If you leave behind the premise of what the buildings should be, they will show you exactly what they are."
The "Asia at Noon" series continues with Professor Jonathan Stalling's "Translating the Sound of It: Experimental Translations of Song Dynasty Lyric Verse" on Oct. 24, Asian American public artist Tomie Arai on Nov. 7, and Mark Ashwill's "Vietnam and America: From Swords to Plowshares" on Nov. 21.
Photo: Meredith Forrest Kulwicki
