Friday, October 30, 2009, 6:30 pm: An evening with Yung Ho Chang in conversation with Randy Gragg, food by Gregory Gourdet.

With design offices in Beijing and a position as head of MIT's Department of Architecture, Yung Ho Chang is truly one of China's contemporary design giants. He designed the Victoria & Albert Museum's CHINA DESIGN NOW exhibition that arrived this month at Portland Art Museum, and recently launched an ambitious urban plan for a "sustainable town" in the Jiading district of Shanghai. He is lead architect on the ambitious Shanghai Pavilion for the 2010 World Expo.


Join Yung Ho Chang at dinner on Friday October 30th, 6:30 pm, as the back room hosts him in conversation with Randy Gragg at Saucebox, with full sit-down meal for 55 people, menu and drinks by Gregory Gourdet. Live music by Jonathan Sielaff. Seats are $65/each, tout compris, and very limited. Reserve yours via credit card or PayPal online: This event is SOLD OUT. Yung Ho Chang's appearance at the back room is made possible through the generous sponsorship of his visit to Portland by the Portland Art Museum and the University or Oregon.


About Yung Ho Chang (from the MIT Spectrum): "His current projects under way include the MIT campus master plan and a lab building for pharmaceutical giant Novartis in Shanghai; redevelopment of the Qianmen district in Beijing; and a pavilion that will house 44 Shanghai companies for the 2010 World Expo to be hosted by the City of Shanghai. His recently completed projects include a publishing building in Korea, a teahouse in Chengdu, a ceramic dinner set at Maison et Objet in Paris, and an installation at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Chang says that his designs have been influenced by worldwide artists and writers, and also by the films of Alfred Hitchcock."




The back room is an occasional series of presentations/symposia/bacchanals in Portland, Oregon, replete with food, drink, music, and general boisterousness garlanding the central pleasure of bright intellects voicing their excellent texts, winging it in conversation, and screening or presenting various textual and visual delights. It is an "open source" social/cultural tool, developed and enacted by the various people who choose to use it.

Past guests include: Walid Raad, Lawrence Rinder, Dodie Bellamy, Kevin Killian, Laurie Reid, Anne Focke, Matthew Stadler, Wayne Koestenbaum, Gore Vidal, Gregory Crewdson, Pablo de Ocampo, Lawrence Weschler, Randy Gragg, Sutapa Biswas, Mary Gaitskill, John O'Brian, Lucien Samaha, Daniel Duford, Hadley+Maxwell, Lisa Robertson, Marc Joseph, Paul Stewart, Chris Riddell, John Trumbull, Peter Donahue, Tom Spanbauer, Christopher Zinn, Bill Ray, Joshua Berger, Tiffany Lee Brown, Jon Raymond, Darius Rejali, Amoreen Armetta, Molly Dilworth, Alex Krebs, Julie Shapiro, Stanya Kahn and Harry Dodge, and Thomas Sieverts and Aaron Betsky.

Past musical guests include: The Watery Graves, Thanksgiving, Adrian Orange, Drakkar Sauna, Andrew Kaffer, YACHT, Stephen Malkmus, Mise en Abyme, Calvin Johnson, Valet, Dave Longstreth, White Rainbow, Lucky Dragons, Honey Owens, Jonathan Esquibel, Zach Reno, Karl Blau, Jesse Durost, Carrie Brownstein, Gay Deceivers, Tara Jane O'Neil, and Krebsic Orkestrar Gypsy Brass Band.

A program of the Charitable Partnership Fund, a 501(c)3 organization, it has been supported by the Lehman Foundation, the Mancini Family Foundation, the Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, Reed College, and individual donors.