The 2019 Edwin H. Simmons Creative Minds Series welcomes Chicago-based Architect Iker Gil and Designer Rick Valicenti.  They will present Interdisciplinary Collaboration: A Bigger Idea at 7:30 p.m. on Sept. 12 in the Thomas B. and Kathleen M. Donnell Theatre, Wolfe Center for the Arts. 

Creativity involves seeing, thinking and innovating.  Through interdisciplinary collaboration different disciplines come together to share their perspectives, ideas and knowledge in the process of creation.

BGSU alumnus Rick Valicenti and Iker Gil, who are always in search of the possibility of doing things differently in their individual practices, identified interdisciplinary collaboration as a means of impacting design.

Iker Gil and Rick Valicenti will address this from their Individual perspectives and professional experiences.

The event is free and open to the public.

Iker Gil is an architect and director of MAS Studio, an architecture and urban design firm based in Chicago. He is also the editor in chief of the design journal MAS Context and the editor of the book Shanghai Transforming(ACTAR, 2008). He is a faculty member at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Department of Architecture, Interior Architecture, and Designed Objects (AIADO). In 2015, he curated the exhibition BOLD: Alternative Scenarios for Chicago included in the inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial. 

Rick Valicenti, a 1973 BFA BGSU School of Art graduate,  is the founder and design director of Thirst, a communication design practice providing design and immersive environments for high profile clients in the architectural, performing arts, and education communities. His work is widely exhibited and in several permanent collections. In 2011, the White House honored Valicenti with the Smithsonian Cooper Hewitt, National Design Award for Communication Design. In 2006, he received the AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Arts) Medal for his sustained contribution to design excellence and the development of the profession.