Tonight!!! Monday, November 10 in the Ellyn Bye Studio
Just added to the panel: Economist Joe (”The Young and the Restless”) Cortright

DYMAXION PORTLAND & THE SPACESHIP EARTH
A conversation about regional resources with
David Bragdon (Metro), John Haines (Mercy Corps NW), Jill Fuglister (Coalition for a Livable Future) and Lawrence Wallack (PSU’s College of Urban and Public Affairs)

Forty years ago, Buckminster Fuller envisioned a World Game that would , “make the world work for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation without ecological offense or disadvantage of anyone.”

Join some of Portland’s leading thinkers and policy-makers for a discussion on the region’s “Spaceship Earth” challenges (like open spaces and environmental stewardship, renewable energy population growth, equity, sustainable development, climate change, hunger and affordable/adequate shelter). Presented in conjunction with PCS’ production of R. Buckminster Fuller: THE HISTORY (and Mystery) OF THE UNIVERSE.

Monday, November 10, 7:30 pm
Ellyn Bye Studio, Gerding Theater at the Armory (Free and open to the public)
For more information: timd@pcs.org.| www.pcs.org

Make a night of it! Come by after the Portland Spaces/City Club Bright Lights Discussion Series featuring Congressman Earl Blumenauer in conversation with Randy Gragg (at Jimmy Mak’s, 221 NW 10th Ave, starting at 6 pm)

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‘Tis the season for politics, no? With an election upon us and the current MIC (military-industrial-complex) bucking for an upgrade to the Military-Industrial-Infotainment-Vortex, I was very pleased to see that Robert Baer (former CIA spook and author) gave a high-five and shout-out to Buckminster Fuller.

Casually clicking through the pages of Foreign Policy Magazine (your handy portal to global politics, economics, and ideas) with my morning coffee, I was tickled to see that Baer picked Buckminster Fuller for National Security Advisor on its “Cabinet Dream Team”.

“Fuller is long dead, but the White House needs a visionary of his caliber to think our way out of oil dependence on unstable dictatorships like Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. We need a Manhattan Project for solar power, windmills, and even nuclear energy. We also need someone who can look objectively at our options on global warming before it’s too late. “

Baer was one of a list of the world’s top thinkers (including Georgetown’s Bob Gallucci, Leslie H. Gelb,and The Nation’s Katrina vanden Heuvel) who were asked to consider how the next American president will confront a host of potential cataclysms: from a virulent financial crisis to a vicious terrorist enemy, nuclear proliferation to climate change. Their task? To name the unlikely team that can best guide No. 44 through the turbulent years ahead.

(You can even pick your own Dream Team.)

Bucky Lives!!

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Throughout the run of R. Buckminster Fuller. . ., PCS invites the community to explore the visionary legacy of Fuller’s thinking and its impact on design, sustainability, engineering, global equity and so on. Below’s a great sampling of ideas–with a great Portland twist to them.

Dymaxion Portland and the Spaceship Earth
Monday, November 10 7:30 pm (Ellyn Bye Studio)
How is Portland addressing , “Buckminster Fuller’s vision “to make the world work for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation without ecological offense or disadvantage of anyone?” Join leaders from across the region, including David Bragdon of Metro and Mercy Corps NW’s John Haines, among others for a talk centering on “Spaceship Earth” challenges like environmental stewardship, population growth, equity, sustainable development and shelter.

Designs on Portland: Designing Dreams, Engineering Desire
Wednesday, November 19, 6:30–8:30 PM
Design Within Reach Portland Studio (1200 NW Everett)
What role do design and technology play in how we imagine “the future?” How do designers balance between the manufacturing of desire and the “more with less” impulse to solve complex global issues? Join Brian Libby for a conversation with Sohrab Vossoughi, founder and president of ZIBA Design and Daniel H. Wilson, robotics engineer and author of Where’s My Jetpack? A Guide to the Amazing Science Fiction Future That Never Arrived. Drinks/Refreshments served.

Trevor Blake: The Approximately Omnidirectional Ephemeralization of Richard Buckminster Fuller
Sunday, November 30, 6 pm (Mezzanine)
One of Portland’s resident Buckminster Fuller scholars, presents an innovative meditation on the man who urged us all to “do more with less.”

Tony Fry—Design Futuring, Culture and the Coming Age of Unsettlement
A PNCA+FIVE Idea Studio presentation
Friday, December 5, 12:30 pm (Ellyn Bye Studio)
Serendipitously timed with PCS’ R. Buckminster Fuller. . ., visionary design theorist Tony Fry argues that “the moment of decision is now upon us.” Evoking Fuller’s radical manifesto-like urgency, Fry (one of Australia’s leading eco-design theorists and a visiting artist at PNCA) poses and unpacks two crucial and linked questions: how can design, as a positive force for change, be made to happen? And, how can design become a redirective practice rather than an agent of “defuturing?” A visionary look at design’s challenges in “the age of unsettlement” – and how we might chart pathways to an equilibrium or sustainment. Free & Open to the public

All events are FREE and open to the public.

R. Buckminster Fuller-related events are made possible in part by grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Maybelle Clark Macdonald Fund, and the Oregon Community Foundation

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Do you ever wonder what happens here at the Armory when no one’s looking and the season hasn’t started?

Sometimes we have parties, fundraisers and scavenger hunts and sometimes we do really wild things like invite our friends at  Cascadia Green Building Council to get jiggy with lectures on thermal mass energy storage technologies and super cool radiant conditioning systems.

Case in point: Wednesday’s Portland Transformational lecture featuring Patrick Bellew of the UK/USA firm atelier ten—an international leader in high-performance design and integrated, sustainable design wizardry. The say it loud and say it proud: “We’re not just interested in the pipes and the wires, we’re interested in the whole building: how the systems are integrated, how people interact with it and how it performs over time. Issues of sustainability are an intrinsic part of the process: our design solutions are environmentally friendly and economically viable.”

This is the real meat of sustainable design.

If you’re one of the few (hundred), the proud, and the mighty lucky enough to attend this (sold-out) event at 5 pm on Sept. 24 here at the Gerding Theater, you’ll get an innovative earful as Bellew, who cuts a rather dashing, Albert Finney-esque figure, waxes on Integration is an Art. A founding director of atelier ten, Bellew, a Chartered Building Services Engineer, has been highly successful in integrating innovative technologies with noteworthy architecture (garnering him high acknowledged by the Royal Institute of British Architects, who have made him an Honorary Fellow, one of only three in his field).

If we’re lucky he’ll give us a glimpse into some of his firm’s stellar work—like the Baltic Flour Mills transmogrification into the Centre of Contemporary Arts for the North in Gateshead; Wohnen 2000, the landmark, ultra low-energy housing development in Hannover, Germany; or the stealthy energy work they did with Transsolar on the renovation of Mies van der Rohe’s iconic Crown Hall, home to the Architecture School at IIT–which significantly improved comfort and reduced energy consumption by fifty percent (while leaving the Miesian austere modernist architectural detail intact).

Cascadia scored with this rhapsody in Bellew.

Spring might finally have sprung–the reason we know? The Armory is busting out all over. Doubt is off and running with fantastic critical and popular kapow! ; The Little Dog Laughed is putting the pop back in paparazzi ; The Vera Katz Park had an amazing dedication and community celebration;and as June hits, we’re full-up with all manner of live art and conversation. So what’s up this week?

Luba Zarembinska/Bruno Schulz Panel
Monday, June 2, 7 pm
On the Mezzanine, The Gerding Theater at the Armory
Tonight we co-present (along with our friends from Hand2Mouth Theatre) a panel discussion with Luba Zarembinska, the Artistic Director of Poland’s Teatr Stacja Szamocin. She’ll be joined by several local theater and literary artists to look at Polish literary legend Bruno Schulz’s history and artistry, and Zarembinska’s transformative approach in bringing Schulz’s mesmerizing, idea-rich stories to the stage (in the H2M/Szamocin coproduction of From a Dream to a Dream running through June 8 at Artist Repertory Theatre’s Morrison Theater).

In Residence: NW Professional Dance Project
Monday, June 2-Friday, June 13, Open Rehearsals daily (times vary)
Rehearsal Hall
Throughout the next two weeks the NW Professional Dance Project takes up residence in our Rehearsal Hall pairing a handful of lucky professional and pre-professional dancers ages 16 to 25 with leading dance makers. While at PCS they’ll be working with a slew of guest choreographers–a who’s who of NW dance as we know it–Gregg Bielemeier,Lane Hunter, Mary Oslund, Jonathan Sadony, Sarah Slipper and the estimable James Canfield. Rehearsals are open to the public.

Now in its fifth year, the NWPDP gives rising dancers real-world experience, allowing them close-up face-time in direct collaboration with world-class directors, choreographers, mentors and luminaries like Thaddeus Davis (of Donald Byrd/The Group fame), from Chicago’s Hubbard Street Dance Lucas Crandall and Alejandro Cerrudo, Spanish wunderkind Cayetano Soto, Canadian-born, NY-based Aszure Barton, Barishnikov protegee and rising talent and our own golden son, Jamey Hampton of BodyVox, among others.

A short aside: while he won’t be here at PCS, but keep your eyes peeled around town in July/August for legendary African-American dancemaker Donald McKayle. For more than 50 years his vibrant work (e.g. his 1951 “Games” and 1959’s “Rainbow ‘Round My Shoulder,” fer instance) has been breaking ground. A generous artist and visionary, McKayle authored the permission slip for subsequent generations–with a bold embracing of social protest, raw searing, poetry and a masterful blend of folk form and Graham-Primus-Cunningham modernist movement. He’s a true national arts treasure.

Greenbag Lecture
Setting the stage: Stormwater & Green practice in the Vera Katz Park
Thursday, June 5, 12 – 1 pm
Vera Katz Park
Event is free and open to the public
Join Josh Lighthipe (KPFF Consulting Engineers), Creon Thorne (Portland Center Stage), Mike O’Brien (Portland Office of Sustainable Development) for a lively noontime talk focusing on stormwater conservation, Green building, and public space—from engineering, project management and overall green building perspectives—outdoors in the recently dedicated Vera Katz Park (north façade of the Gerding Theater at the Armory running along NW Davis Street between 10th and 11th Avenues). Cosponsored with AIA/COTE (Committee on the Environment)

First Thursday: Nick Jaina
Main Lobby, Gerding Theater at the Armory
6-7:15 pm
Free to the public
This Thursday, Nick Jaina, one of the keystones of Portland’s indie-pop scene alongside folks like Laura Gibson, Loch Lomond, and Menomena,performs his evocative music that OPB says is “full of the kinds of songs that sound as if they could have been written in any one of the past several decades, as comfortable next to Cole Porter as they are Tom Waits or (to a lesser degree) the Black Heart Procession.”

Visual Art spotlight: Bullseye Gallery presents the exuberant chromaticism of glass artist Ted Sawyer; and recent paintings by Michael Schultheis from the Charles Froelick Gallery throughout the Mezzanine, Lower Gallery and Studio Lobbies.