| E55 Dining at the Firms: Kennedy & Violich Architecture/KVA MATx 05/17/2008, 6:30 PM - 9:00 PM Join your colleagues over drinks and dinner as Sheila Kennedy and Frano Violich of KVA MATx (www.kvarch.net) host dinner at their new 2-story loft building in Boston's emerging Newmarket/Crosstown District. Built originally as the Blue Bird Bottling Plant in 1900, this free-standing building responds to KVA MATx's use of digital design, technology integration, and rapid-prototyping in their architectural and material research and practice. The KVA MATx studio offers an example of how a strategic and environmentally responsible re-adaptation of a neglected building can play a significant role in the re-visioning and new identity of a marginalized district. The evening will begin with drinks inside KVA's double-height "think-tank" (formerly an elevator shaft) and outside on multi-level terraces overlooking what used to be Boston's South Cove. Frano and Sheila will lead a dinner discussion about how architectural practice is responding to new demands on interdisciplinary research in materials and technology and why the firm has decided to create a practice that combines generous lab and shop spaces for analog tools, digital equipment, and solid-state electronics with conventional modes of architectural production. KVA MATx's Portable Light Project (www.portablelight.org) will be highlighted as an example of the work that can result from this new approach toward research and practice. This dinner includes shuttle transportation. E55 Saturday, 6:30-9 p.m., $125 |