11 posts tagged “lecture”

Architectural design and production is becoming more and more a digitally-networked practice, and an outcome of  distributed activities within and across organisations that involves various collaborative interactions and embedding intelligence into the formation, organisation, performance and actualisation of spaces. 

Recent introduction and coupling of digitally mediated design and production environments facilitated a radical deviation from the traditional ways of using representations, knowledge assets, organisational forms and standards. At the core of the technological shift lies the 3D knowledge rich Parametric Design and Building Information Modelling (BIM) tools/systems. These systems offer radically new methodologies to merge design with execution. The relationship between the designer, the organisational structure of the collaborating parties and their interaction with different tools (e.g. Parametric design and BIM tools) at different stages of the design process and the extent to which this interaction contributes to innovation vary. Different tools and systems suggest different workflows and support different organisational structures and methodologies. As architectural design/production moving towards a more dynamic and process oriented model for digital practice, both the profession and the academy is in the process of coming terms with these new forms of thinking.

This sounds like a really nice event which is coming up here. SPAN has been invited to lecture about the work of the practice within a day long conference hosted by the Institut für experimentelle Architektur, Hochbau, TU-Innsbruck headed by Patrick Schumacher. The event will take place Monday january 19th the entire day. The lecture by SPAN will be at 4:30 pm. I will keep you posted on the list of lecturers which as far as I know now is going to be very exiting... The adress of the venue is Technikerstraße 13, Innsbruck, Tirol, Austria.

Please join in for the lecture of my partner Sandra Manninger on the work of SPAN at the conference LIQUID SKY - Horizons of Architecture and Design in the 21st Century. The conference is part of the program of the Austrian Pavilion at the EXPO in Zaragosa and explores the inherent qualities in the work of a group of Architects and Designers dedicated to advanced design methods. The Lecture of Sandra Manninger is entitled Liquid Codes and explains the desires and obsessions driving the forms and design of our practice as well as a series of projects in more detail, showcasing how we cast our explorations and inspirations from fields like the Life Sciences, Biology, Mathematics and Geometry into architectural projects. Among the projects shown in the lecture are the Blossom Store, the Brancusi Musem and the Gradient Scale.

Other lecturers include Dietmar Steiner (Director Az W), Peter Noever  (Director MAK), Enriq Ruiz Geli (Cloud 9), and Marta Male Alemani.

8th of September, Palacio de Congresos, Zaragosa, Spain.

Check out more about the program of the Austrian Pavilion here

 

 

Following an invitation by Kas Oosterhuis I travelled to Delft for a lecture at the Hyperbody Studio at the TU-Delft, followed by a short stint workshop. The Hyperbody Studios home is the, ONL designed, iWeb pavilion which was setup in front of the Architecture faculty within the TU-Delft campus. Kas Oosterhuis is the head of the architecture practice ONL as well as the head of the Hyperbody Studio. The Studio gained global fame for its explorations in the field of responsive, interactive architecture.

 The lecture I held focussed on the recent work of my practice SPAN, spanning issues such as the  compulsive desire to speculate about architectural opportunities in the presence of animated matter, organic entities and their underlying geometrical and mathematical presence and how this research is informed by a manifold variety of sources reaching from Science Fiction and Fashion to Biology and Botany. The workshop focused on issues such as spores, pollination and colonization, mainly steering along the line of scripted populations.

The 4 day long conference of the IASS (International Association of Shells and Spatial Structures) in Venice turned out to be a very interesting venue. The enormous amount of lectures included lectures about the strucutural engineering of complex obejects, advanced material applications, computational design methods for complex geometries, programmable molds for glass and concrete casting and more.

Some of the lecturers: Manfred Grohmann (Bollinger Grohmann), Werner Sobek, Rivka Oxman,  Sawako Kaijima and many more. Our paper Moments of Transition was accepted for publishing and oral presentation within the conference. It was interesting to join some discussion sessions dealing with contemporary approaches in architecture and engineering. Apparently there is a confusion in the discourse regarding the terminology. For example the meaning of the term Freeform Design: does it mean that it is free of form, as a result of the form finding process induced by the ideal mathematical, or physical models? Or does it mean that they are freeform because of the architects hand inducing an object freely with form? I tend to the first opinion, and tend to be suspicious about the second, as it lacks precision in the description of the form, especially in terms of computational design. Along with the presentations and the discussions the organizers of the conference put together a splendid program including a visit to the Guggenheim Museum Venice and a great Gala Dinner outside Venice in a Palladio Villa.

The Bauhaus Dessau staged a conference on the issue of Digital cities. Following an invitation by Neil Leach I was happy to join the board of speakers of this venue. The other speakers included:
Gisela Baurmann - Büro NY, New York, Alain Chiaradia - Space Syntax, London, Jürgen Mayer - J. Mayer H Architects, Berlin, Yusuke Obuchi - DRL Architectural Association, London, Kas Oosterhuis - ONL Architects, Rotterdam, Neri Oxman - MIT Computation Group, Boston and François Roche - R&Sie(n), Paris and Neil Leach, who presented the body of work his students elaborated troughout the period he acted as a visiting professor at the Bauhaus. The conference was an inspiring gathering of experts in the field of advanced, contemporary architecture. To mention some of the issues that were presented

within the daylong lectures: Alain Chiaradia presented some examples of the analytical software space syntax that works as a information retrieval software for urban structures. Some of the information that can be gathered precisely with this software include sustainability, accessibility, social cohesion & exclusion and more. Neri Oxman showed some examples of her work that rely on generative algorithms and material behaviour. It is staggeringly beautiful how results from natural science inform processes of architecture creation, as with the application of L systems for the creation of branching objects. Neris work definetly share some topics with the field of interet present within my own work, though we use different tools to achieve the results. In general it can be stated that the work of the panelists shared a common ground in the way how the obsession with the novel inform their work. The definition of the novel, on the other hand, is up to the individual practices.

Sorry for beeing so lame lately, things are going wild around this area now. So anyway, no need to bother you with this. The most recents action was an invitation to the University of Kassel to hold a lecture about SPAN´s recent works as well as a about the underlying research work that supports our design strategies. Kassel? Sounds familiar to you? Yes, right, it is that little town that is the center of the storm called artworld every 5 years or so by staging the Documenta.....and this year is one of those years....

Oliver Tessmann of the design group fur was so kind to invite us to open up this years lecture series on the institute of structural engineering. The name of the series is Design Reserach II, and the scope is the emerging notion within architects to position their work winside the field of scientific research that also includes design excellence and expertise.
It was also very interesting for me to see the works of students as well as faculty, as some of the works are on the edge of engineering skills as well as the application of advanced materials. especially the use of ultra high performance concrete looks very, very promising to me.
The image you can see in the background is from a project my practice designed about a year ago called the Engel, it is a design for a rooftopremodeling in Frankfurt, that includes a Bar. By now the authorities in Frankfurt have to deside  wether they allow us to buid it or not......what do you think??

Wednesday night, on La Cienega, in the Mandrake Bar it was time again for a bunch of architecture afficionados to gather and listen to a new session of the Outlet series, hosted by Sci-Arc Faculty Peter Zellner. This time it was Elena Manferdinis turn to talk about her recent works, which encompasses Architecture as well as industrial design and fashion. Elenas Lecture concentrated on the issue of cuttings, materiality and scale; she illustrated her notion versus machinic procedures applied to a variety of materials with projects which reached from the design of trainers to the scale of a pavilion which she designed for last years Beijing Biennale. It was interesting to see how the various materials, from fabrics for the fashion pieces, to the thick steelplates, for the pavilion, reacted on the same technique: lasercutting. In all pieces you could recognize the combination of spatial pattering techniques and the creation of incrementally changing conditions. This conditions can also be discribed as gradients in relation to the form.
Or just let me put it this way: Elenas work just kicks ass!

Following an invitation by Florencia Pita, professor of architecture at SCI-Arc and head of architecture firm FPmod, Matias del Campo and Sandra Manninger held a lecture about the research work and design progress within their practise SPAN as well as presenting the AMM Network. The AMM Network (Advanced Materials and Manufacturing) is, simply put,  a research laboratory of the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, dedicated to the research on progress in digital design means for architecture and the adjanced fabrication methods and advanced materials. The lecture encompased issues such as the combination of digital design excellence and computer controlled fabrication methods, the status quo of this approach as well as contemporary developments within the field in terms of design, software, fabrication method and materials. Concluding the lecture were examples of materials and digital fabrication methods, still in the phase of evaluation, but with potential for further development, such as contour crafting, tissue engineering, transgenic materials and more.