Gensler Chicago architect Elva Rubio to speak March 21

Gensler Chicago architect Elva Rubio will speak March 21 at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Architecture. Her lecture, "Emerging Practice: Maintaining the Experimental," will begin at 4:30 p.m. in the Eloise Kruger Gallery in Architecture Hall-West, 10th and R streets.

Rubio will discuss how although the college design studio offers an excellent platform for fostering curiosity, inventiveness, awareness and experimentation, these values often become lost or severely diluted when graduates enter architectural practice. She will explain how her design studio at Gensler Chicago sustains a culture of learning, experimentation and collaboration within the context of real-world commerce, economics and corporate decision-making.

The lecture is free and open to the public and precedes an opening event for the new "Art and Architecture" exhibit in the Kruger Gallery.

Rubio maintains her own firm as well as serving as design director at Gensler Chicago. She has combined teaching with professional practice throughout her career at the School of the Art Institute, the Illinois Institute of Technology and the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her work is appreciated for its creative use of materials and concern for energy conservation. Rubio's design for Pond Studios -- a textile and carpet firm's new headquarters built in LaGrange, Ga. -- won both Distinguished Building and Interior Architecture awards from the Chicago chapter of the American Institute of Architects in 1997.

CONTACT: Mark Hinchman, Assoc. Professor, Interior Design, (402) 472-5930