Award-winning architect Edward Sövik, professor emeritus of art at St. Olaf College, will present a lecture titled “Silent Songs” at 7:30 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 13 at Carleton College’s Boliou Hall, Room 161. The lecture, sponsored by Carleton’s art and art history department, is free and open to the public.
Sövik will first discuss his design for the Christiansen Hall of Music on the St. Olaf College campus, for which he was recently given the 2003 25-Year Award by the Minnesota chapter of the American Institute of Architects. The award recognizes exemplary architectural projects 25 years or older that have withstood the test of time. “It manages to be a building of its time without being limited to its time,” said the jury of leading Minnesota architects who selected the building for the honor. The jurors particularly praised the building’s Urness Recital Hall saying, “Not only is this main room striking, but its acoustics are seamlessly integrated with the wood panels and the geometry of the room. It has a reserved quality without being austere. It’s rich and simple; a space that’s elegant yet doesn’t dominate the building and plays well with the other elements of the program.” In spite of its “secular” status as a music building, Sövik sees it as a metaphor of religious faith.
The second half of the lecture will focus on Sövik’s book, “Architecture for Worship,” written 30 years ago. This book, critical of traditional religious architectural ideas, was provocative when it was published and has brought recent criticism by some conservative religious figures.
Born in 1918 to American missionaries in China, his family moved to Minnesota when he was 17. He graduated with honors from St. Olaf College and studied at the Art Students League in New York City and Luther Theological Seminary in St. Paul. During World War II, he served as a combat pilot in the United States Marine Corps, where he rose to the rank of major and earned the Distinguished Flying Cross, Purple Heart and several Air Medals. Following the war, Sövik entered the Yale School of Architecture and graduated with first honors in 1949.
Sövik’s architectural career began when he returned to Northfield to teach architecture at St. Olaf and to practice the profession as a founder and chairman of the firm that is now SMSQ Architects. Before retiring in 1994, he led the firm in the design and renovation of several hundred churches and other building projects across the United States.
Sövik is Fellow of the American Institute of Architects and recently received the first Godfrey Diekmann Award from the North American Academy of Liturgy, recognizing his “seminal work” in designing modern worship spaces.
For information and disability accommodations call the Carleton art and art history department at (507) 646-4341.
For more information about Sövik, see the SMSQ Architects Web site.