Using site-specific installations and photography as the main mediums of practice, Alibi Studio alters existing spaces through spatial and atmospheric manipulations. In this lecture, Cathlyn (Catie) Newell will discuss numerous built works and collaborative research that range in technique, medium and location. The work will demonstrate a commitment to materials investigations that foregrounds physical and immaterial attributes as well as material culture. Processes of fabrication will be discussed as they relate to the acts of making and the amplified realities of a site.

Biography

Catie Newell is the founding principal of Alibi Studio and Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Michigan. She has a Master of Architecture from Rice University and a Bachelor of Science from Georgia Tech. In 2006 she won the SOM Prize for Architecture, Design and Urban Design with her project Weather Permitting. Before joining the University of Michigan as the Oberdick Fellow in 2009, Newell was a project designer at Office dA in Boston. Newell's work and research capture spaces and material effects, focusing on the development of atmospheres through the exploration of textures, volumes and the effects of light or lack thereof. Newell's creative practice has been widely recognized for exploring design construction and materiality in relationship to location and geography, and cultural contingencies. Newell won the 2011 ArtPrize Best Use of Urban Space Juried Award and the 2011 Architectural League Prize for Young Architects and Designers. Newell recently exhibited at the 2012 Architecture Venice Biennale and the 2015 Lille3000 Triennial. She won the 2013-2014 Cynthia Hazen Polsky and Leon Polsky Rome Prize in Architecture and she is a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome.

For more information, please contact jmohammad@aus.edu, College of Architecture, Art and Design.