Bernard Khoury on the Difference Between Cynicism and Irony
From the Quarantine Tapes Podcast with Paul Holdengraber
Hosted by Paul Holdengräber, The Quarantine Tapes chronicles shifting paradigms in the age of social distancing. Each day, Paul calls a guest for a brief discussion about how they are experiencing the global pandemic.
Today on episode 49 of The Quarantine Tapes, Paul Holdengräber is joined by architect Bernard Khoury. They discuss how aspects of cynicism and irony may or may not show up in modern architecture. Bernard also shares his perspective on how to create meaningful work within architecture, and how the pandemic has brought many of his projects to a halt for the moment.
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Bernard Khoury was born in Beirut in 1968. He studied architecture at the Rhode Island school of Design (BFA 1990 / B.Arch 1991) and received a Masters in Architectural Studies from Harvard University (M.Arch 1993). In 2001, he was awarded, by the municipality of Rome, the honorable mention of the Borromini Prize given to architects under forty years of age. In 2004, he was awarded the Architecture + Award. He is the co-founder of the Arab Center for Architecture. He was a visiting professor at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, L’Ecole Spéciale d’Architecture in Paris and the American University of Beirut. He has lectured and exhibited his work in over one-hundred-twenty prestigious academic institutions in Europe and the U.S. including a solo show of his work given by the International Forum for Contemporary Architecture at the Aedes gallery in Berlin (2003) and numerous group shows including YOUprison at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin (2008) and Spazio at the opening show of the MAXXI museum in Rome (2010). He was the architect and co-curator of the Kingdom of Bahrain’s national pavilion at the Venice Biennale’s 14th International Architecture Exhibition in 2014. Khoury started an independent practice in 1993. His work has been extensively published by the professional press. Over the past twenty years, his office has developed an international reputation and a significant diverse portfolio of projects both locally and in over fifteen countries abroad.
