Lecture's IaaC

13_02_09 “ArupAGU -Advanced Geometry Unit- The New Thinking: from Fractal to Fabrication” Francesco Sacconi Francesco Sacconi is a member of Arup AGU unit from year 2007 The Advanced Geometry Unit (AGU) is a research-focused design group within consultant engineers Arup. By examining the structural dynamics of everything from geometric shapes and patterns to naturally occurring phenomena, AGU strives to create exciting new architectural forms and solutions. Arup deputy chairman, Cecil Balmond, founded the AGU. It developed out of Balmond’s interest in the genesis of form and the overlap of science with art, using music, numbers and mathematics as vital sources The AGU’s approach is far from the narrowness of a formal Cartesian Modernist mind-set. Instead, Balmond welcomes irregularity, complexity, richness, in a way that is almost Baroque. He explains, “The Cartesian world is a limiting space, even though it is a good space: we use it and inhabit it. However, we know that there are other geometries. I want to resurrect geometry, in the best sense of the word, in the Greek sense, as a living organizational idea, with a philosophic root.” Image caption: AGU - Advanced Geometry Unit

http://www.arup.com/

06_02_09 \"Experimental seeds - Resist, rise your hands and create!\" Marco Galofaro To leave a sign we make use of the hand’s acceptance of agility and memory. Building a model has nothing to do with the practice of architecture. The first step exists before the project; it is a neutral space that is home to the first seed. This space is without borders, there are no walls, it exists only to capture intentions and other energies. It does not have the direct responsibility that the project will assume later, that of ensuring results. Entering into this field has meaning if we are seeking fragments. The seed is composed of two opposites, both long lasting: the ability to absorb nutrients from the soil and the ability to include part of its future and that of others in its evolution. It under¬stands evolution without demanding the right to survive at all costs. The seed inhabits this ‘before’, in which there is no wrong or reason; reason is an enclosed capsule that uses its voice to be heard. Seeds have no voice. They can become present only in the mind. MODELAB Modelab was founded in 2002 by the architect Marco Galofaro. Modelab is about the investigation and use of new, experimental materials, such as resin and rubber 3d printer, in the construction of architectural and design models with the more traditional materials of plastic, wood and plaster. Our primary objective is the construction of architectural and urban planning models; our primary concern is the creation of objects that are capable of surprising both our¬selves and our clients through the continuous reinvention of combinations and treatments of materials. Image caption: IaN+ | Tomihiro museum - Japan

http://www.modelab.it/

28_01_09 Stan Allen Stan Allen is an architect working in New York and dean of the School of Architecture at Princeton University. After graduation from Cooper Union in 1981, he worked for Richard Meier in New York and Rafael Moneo in Madrid. Since that time, he has pursued parallel careers as educator, writer and architect. He has taught at Harvard, Columbia and Princeton, and his architectural firm SAA/Stan Allen Architect has realized buildings and urban projects in the United States, South America and Asia. The emergence of landscape urbanism, along with the development of the protocols of digital design, must be counted one of the most significant developments in the field in the past decades. A catalog of practitioners and projects exists, academic programs have been developed, and an extensive theoretical literature is now available. To move forward from this strategic juncture, it is worthwhile to take stock of both the accomplishments and the limitations of the landscape urbanism approach, and to propose alternatives that complement and extend its potentials.

http://www.stanallenarchitect.com/

23_01_09 Bjarke Ingels Bjarke Ingels started his own office in 2005, Bjarke Ingels Group, after having co-founded PLOT Architects in 2001 and collaborating with Rem Koolhaas at OMA. Through a series of award-winning design projects and buildings, Bjarke Ingels has created an international reputation as a member of a new generation of architects that combine shrewd analysis, playful experimentation, social responsibility and humour. In 2004 he was awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale for the Stavanger Concert House, and the following year he received the Forum AID Award for the VM Houses. His latest completed project the Mountain Dwellings has already received numerous awards and nominations in 2008, most recently at the World Architecture Festival. By practicing what Bjarke Ingels likes to describe as ’programmatic alchemy’, BIG often mixes conventional ingredients such as living, leisure, working, parking andshopping into new forms of symbiotic culture. Image caption: PEOPLE`S BUILDING SHANGHAI Proposal for a hotel, sports and conference center for the World Expo 2010 in Shanghai. becomes the chinese sign for \"the People\".

http://www.big.dk/

16_01_09 Michel Rojkind Michel Rojkind began his professional practice in 1997 and founded rojkind arquitectos in 2002 with the idea of exploring new challenges that address contempo¬rary society, to design compelling experiences that go beyond mere functionality, and to connect at a deeper level with the intricacies of each project, he was recognized by Architectural Record in 2005 as one of the best ten “Design Vanguard” firms. By pursuing all projects that represent a particular design challenge, rojkind arquitectos has been able to develop a wide an ever-growing spectrum of designs initiatives, from the intimacies of small objects to the intricacies of large buildings and master plans.

http://www.rojkindarquitectos.com/

09_01_09 \"Calorie Counting with Soft Materials.\" Commonwealth Founded in 2005 by Architects Zoe Boira Coombes and David Boira, Commonwealth is an art and design studio based in New York City. Harnessing a new fluidity enabled by machine languages, Commonwealth\'s interests are as material and emotional as they are technical. Working within the world of contemporary art and industrial furniture design, Commonwealth aims to produce work that embodies a sense of elegant desire through an engagement with both the newest of tools and the oldest of techniques. Zoe Boira Coombes and F. David Boira present a catalogue of recent solo-works and collaborative projects which illustrate this bipolar modus-operandi that has taken them through three years in and out of Architecture.

http://www.commonwealth.nu/

19_12_08 \"Design is One\" Elena Manferdini Elena Manferdini`s work is based on the philosophy that design can participate in the new developments that are defining our culture, translating the complexity of contemporary technology into built form. Her architectural projects have been exhibited internationally in both architecture and art museums: her work is currently showcased at IIC, in Los Angeles. Two years ago, she was invited to design the West Coast Pavilion representing USA at the Beijing Biennale in the Chinese Millennium Museum. This year she is curating the West Coast USA session of the 2008 Beijing Biennale exhibition Recently the firm has collaborated with numerous industries: MTV, Fiat, Nike, Alessi, Ottaviani and Valentino are selected examples. In addition to leading her design practice, Elena Manferdini teaches design studios and technology seminars at SCI-Arc. Image caption: Ricami Stool by Arktura Photography: Teri Lyn Fisher Design: Elena Manferdini Arktura laser-cut metal stool is part of a comprehensive research on the relationship between fashion and architecture; ricami, the Italian name for embroidery, is a term that connotes the fusion of variegated figurations and ornaments through intricate and delicate connections.

http://www.ateliermanferdini.com/

12_12_08 \"The Making of Artificial Ecologies towards New Machinic Architecture\" EcoLogicStudio Claudia Pasquerro and Marco Poletto In an age of unprecedented interaction between the natural and the artificial realms we are confronted with the necessity to develop instruments of transformation equipped with an embedded capacity of constant adaptation and self evaluation. As nature is becoming more and more hybridized with embedded artificiality, the ethical paradigm of natural conservation is progressively losing its value and needs to be replaced with more adaptive mechanisms of management and direct evaluation of the effects of human transformation of natural ecosystems; we call this mechanism ecoMachines. ecoMachines provide a material and operational framework to deal with change and transformation, the two main defining qualities of our new understanding of urban ecology; moreover they support interaction between heterogeneous systems, such as social, infrastructural, architectural and environmental ones; they allow us to sense, register and manipulate in our daily life the unfolding processes defining our cities, our houses and our artificial environments. ecoMachines turns us all into ecologists in the most operational sense of the term. Image caption: STEMcloud v.2.0: the Guadalquivir Experiment STEMcloud v2.0 project proposes the development and testing of an architectural prototype operating as an oxygen making machine.

http://www.ecologicstudio.com

14_11_08 \"Latent Ecologies: New Urbanisms of Infrastructure\" Clare Lyster Latent Ecologies: New Urbanisms of Infrastructure explores how emerging infrastructural networks unfold as latent sites for alternative urbanisms. The lecture will present research on the sites, spaces and attributes of contemporary global infrastructures of ecology, mobility and information anchored through a presentation of the Federal Express Corporation and its superhub in Memphis, Tennessee, USA. Selected work from CLUAA (Clare Lyster Urbanism & Architecture) will augment the discussion as scenarios that support, test and interpret the research.

06_11_08 \"Grand Urban Studies” Alex Lehnerer Alex Lehnerer is an architect and urban designer with his office ALSO in Zurich, Switzerland. He has been teaching and researching at the ETH in Zurich for five years before coming to UIC in 2008. His interest lies in the contemporary metropolis and its playful future. His 010 Book Grand Urban Rules is published in spring 2009; it is based on his PhD research and contains a lot of affection for the city\'s inventiveness and will to steer its own fortune. As urban designer and partner of the urban (research) practice KAISERSROT, he is involved in a series of large scale urban design projects throughout Europe. Lecture will focus on Alex Lehnerer\'s book \"Grand Urban Rules\", which will be published March 2009. Image caption: Scheme of Central Waterfront of Hong Kong, ALSO Architects and Designers, competition 2007.