Lecture's IaaC

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.

22_10_08 “Speculations on” Neil M. Denari If the contemporary marketplaces of global life are conventionally thought to be limited by the minimization of risks of all kinds (cultural, economic, social, etc), and if architecture labors under this duress as a medium whose expense, weight, and intended permanence make it the most risk averse medium of all, then questions are raised as to how the attributes (new formalisms, new experiences, unwanted functions, etc) of an experimental architecture can redefine both the logic of capital and also the logic of its own system of production. Speculations On explores on the one hand the emergence of NMDA’s building practice, and on the other, the continuing trajectory of cultural analysis that the office is known for. Image caption: FLOUROSCAPE© Artificial light, now more than ever considered to be a building material on par with concrete and steel, is our environment\'s most malleable medium, capable of being projected, deflected, colorized, and animated, just to name a few ways in which light may be manipulated in a constructed environment.

http://www.nmda-inc.com/

07_10_08 “Architectural + Urban Evolutions” Douglas Garofalo Douglas Garofalo has established an internationally renowned practice in Chicago that produces architectural work through buildings, projects, research and teaching. The work of Garofalo Architects has been widely recognized, through commissions, awards, publications, and lectures for innovative and creative approaches to the art of building. He is working in varyscale and location, extending conventional design practice by taking full advantage of the capacity of electronic media. Among many notable projects, the firm has completed the new Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago, and was a collaborator on the award-winning Korean Presbyterian Church of New York, a project that gained international notoriety as the first building truly conceived and executed with digital media, and because it represents an alternative solution to adaptive reuse. Garofalo is currently a full Professor at the University of Illinois Chicago School of Architecture. In 2001 Garofalo was selected for the “Emerging Voices” program at the Architectural League of New York, was featured as “The New Vanguaurd” for Architectural Record, and had speculative work included in the “Folds, Blobs and Boxes” exhibit at the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh. In 1995 he won the AIA Chicago Young Architect Award. Image caption: GREEN BAY HOUSE Project consists of a series of additions and modifications to an existing wood frame structure on a steeply sloping, wooded site that offers panoramic views of the bay. The strategy of placement of these interventions are driven by clients \'interest in horticulture, bird-watching, and small scale electric slot car racing.

http://www.garofaloarchitects.com/

Masterplanning Futures Lucy Bullivant While spatial masterplans for cities historically set their physical structure and form, today’s masterplanners attempt to bring about on a more holistic basis the physical, social and economic revival of urban centres or districts. Their work is optimally part of a participatory, multidisciplinary process, and counteracts laissez-faire attitudes towards planning with various forms of urban identity management. For some planners, strengthening social equality of citizens is central to this process, while in other cases differentiating a ‘must visit’ destination and diversifying land uses is of highest priority. Whether top down or more bottom-up in attitude, masterplanners are more likely nowadays not to prescribe a rigid blueprint, but instead aim to incubate the future. Lucy Bullivant is an architectural curator, author and critic. The author of many books including Anglo Files: UK architecture’s rising generation (Thames & Hudson, 2005), Responsive Environments: architecture, art and design, V&A Contemporary, 2006) and 4dsocial: Interactive Spatial Environments (AD/Wiley, 2007), she has curated numerous exhibitions including Space Invaders (2001, British Council), Kid size: the material world of childhood (1997, Vitra Design Museum) and The near and the far, fixed and in flux (1996, XIX Triennale di Milano) and conferences such as Softspace (Tate Modern, 2007). She writes for The Financial Times, Domus, The Plan, a+u, Harvard Design Magazine and Indesign, and is preparing her next book on masterplanning and two new exhibitions in London. One explores the revalorisation of landscape design for public spaces in the UK; the other, new responsive architecture. Image caption: Rafael Viñoly Architects: aerial view of his masterplan for Battersea Power Station, London, a scheme announced in June 2008 that reinvents the site - the largest of its kind in the city - with a mix of uses and a new-build, green energy ‘Eco-Dome’.