LEARNarchitecture

Architecture Talks about contemporary architecture and technology

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Gilles Retsin (2012) - Object Oriented Design

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Loughborough University (2010) - Additive Manufacturing Research Group

Concrete Printing Process developed at Loughborough University in the UK is capable of producing building components with a degree of customisation that has not yet been seen. It could create a new era of architecture that is adapted to the environment and fully integrated with engineering function.

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3D Modelling Symposium (2008) - Berlin

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Stephen Gage (2011) - A-Functional Architecture

I argue that the experience of architecture, the delight and wonder of finding oneself in beautiful places and spaces resides both in highly designed interactive spaces and events and in spaces from which close functionality has departed or in which close functionality was always transient. I describe the latter as a-functional spaces and places. The combination of transient functionality with a-functional spaces and places is a rich and challenging future for architecture. This paper is an attempt to suggest representations of the way that observers make sense of a-functional spaces and places and representations and models of the way that architects might design them.

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Mette Ramsgard Thomsen (2011) - A Sensitive Architecture: Designing for a Materially Graded Architecture.

Architecture is engaged in a radical rethinking of its material practice. Advancements in material science and more complex models of material simulation as well as the interfaces between design and fabrication are fundamentally changing the way we conceive and design architecture. This new technological platform allows for unprecedented creative control over materials design and production. This development is central to the emergence of a more sensitive approach to design. From the very small to the very large, the imagination of performative materials that are engineered in response to highly defined design criteria are challenging the traditional boundaries of design and representation. Performative materials can be structurally differentiated designed in response to a variegated load, materially graded responding to change in programme or property or computationally steered incorporating actuated materials designed for state change and environmental response. Hyper specified and designed, what they have in common is that they are developed in response to particular criteria by which the strength, structure, elasticity or density of a material can be devised.

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Avances in Architectural Geometry, Vienna (2008)

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Karl Chu (2010) - Genetic Architecture

Metaxy is Chu's architectural practice at the cutting-edge of the creation & implementation of new concepts for architecture and design based on the genetic paradigm. The studio deploys computation as a generative engine to arrive at the construction of possible worlds of architecture that are imaginative, surreal & enigmatic. As such, architecture is conceived as a generic construct situated within the emerging concept of the global brain: sublimation of collective intelligence through architectural form. In addition to solving architectural problems, the primary focus of the studio is directed toward the architecture of the Real: a phenomenology of affects invoked through artistic modulation of the underlying logic of form, both in terms of its intrinsic & extrinsic properties and relations. Karl Chu first conceived the contemporary notion of genetic architecture - a farreaching idea that transcends its biological origins. Genetics is thought of as an extension of the philosophical concept of genesis channeled through the medium of computation: deployment of logical systems for the propagation & mutation of hereditary information involved in the architectural design process. Chu is a professor of architecture at Pratt Institute. Chu has taught, lectured, published and exhibited his work internationally

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Philippe Rahm (2011) - From Solid to Vapor

Abordant la forme architecturale par son contenant atmosphérique, Philippe Rahm présente la composition spatiale du point de vue de la régulation climatique régie par le confort des occupants, les normes environnementales et donc, l'état vaporeux de l'espace qu'il ne considère pas comme vide mais plutôt comme la condition ou le conditionnement de l'architecture tel que conçu aujourd'hui.

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Skylar Tibbits (2011) - Can we make things that make themselves?

MIT researcher Skylar Tibbits works on self-assembly -- the idea that instead of building something (a chair, a skyscraper), we can create materials that build themselves, much the way a strand of DNA zips itself together. It's a big concept at early stages; Tibbits shows us three in-the-lab projects that hint at what a self-assembling future might look like.

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Katherine Hales (2006) - Intermediation

N. Katherine Hayles is the Hillis Professor of Literature and Distinguished Professor in the departments of English and Design/Media Arts at the University of California, Los Angeles. In this video she delivers the keynote address, Intermediation, to the National Humanities Center's 2006 Autonomy, Singularity, Creativity conference.

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Fabio Gramazio + Matthias Kohler (2009)

"We use the term digital materiality to describe an emergent transformation in the expression of architecture. Materiality is increasingly being enriched with digital characteristics, which substantially affect architecture's physis. Digital materiality evolves through the interplay between digital and material processes in design and construction. The synthesis of two seemingly distinct worlds-the digital and the material-generates new, self-evident realities. Data and material, programming and construction are interwoven. This synthesis is enabled by the techniques of digital fabrication, which allows the architect to control the manufacturing process through design data. Material is thus enriched by information; material becomes "informed." In the future, architects' ideas will permeate the fabrication process in its entirety. This new situation transforms the possibilities and thus the professional scope of the architect."

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Achim Menges (2012) - Material (in)formation

"Following in the footsteps of more progressive industries, digital fabrication in architecture is on the brink of shifting from task-specific computer numerically controlled (CNC) machines to more generic industrial robots. The change from machine hardware and control software developed to facilitate a specific fabrication process towards more open ended and generic fabrication devices enables architects to design custom fabrication processes and machine-control protocols."

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Nicholas Negroponte (1984) - 4 Predictions for the Future

"Speaking at the first TED Conference in 1984, Nicholas Negroponte waxes prophetic on the converging fields of technology, entertainment and design. Years before anyone was using the word “convergence,” Negroponte was thinking about TV screens as the “electronic books of the future” and computers as the future of education. In excerpts from his 2-hour talk (this was before TED’s 18-minute time limit), he foreshadowed web interfaces, touchscreen kiosks, the multitouch interface of the iPhone, and his own One Laptop per Child project. Oh, and there’s also a fascinating project called Lip Service, which … well, let’s just say it’s still ahead of us."

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Rem Koolhaas + Peter Eisenman (2007) - Urgency

"Rem Koolhaas and Peter Eisenman present the issues which, for them, represent the most critical in architectural discourse today. Both figures present ideas partly against the backdrop of their architecture, and conclude with a shared conversation chaired by CCA Founding Director Phyllis Lambert."

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Michael Weinstock (2011) - Metabolism of the City

"Geometry has always been the principal mathematical means of describing the form of a city, persisting from the plans of ancient cities through to many contemporary studies. In recent decades there has been an increasing interest in the application to urban analysis of mathematical techniques that are more commonly used in biological studies of the metabolism of individual animals and insects, in their social groupings and collective constructions, and in the relations of energy, information and material flows through ecological systems.

The hypothesis of our current research is that the combination of the study of energy, information and material flows and their networks in relation to the environmental physics of the urban surface and spatial patterns of the city, and how each acts upon the other over time, will be a significant step towards understanding of the dynamics of cities."

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Antoine Picon (2011) - Digital Crafting: Emergent reality or regressive utopia?

"The second Digital Crafting symposium discussed the future perspectives for a new integrated digital practice. Inviting practitioners from the fields of architecture, engineering and theory to share their experiences and present recent work, the symposium unfolded new visions for thinking the links between design, analysis and fabrication. With a focus on interdisciplinary collaboration, bottom up thinking and complex modelling it asked how the shared digital platform can create new material strategies for design."