The ceremony kicked off at 7pm with a speech by Willy Muller on behalf of Tony Vives, from the Ayuntamiento de Barcelona, followed by discourses on behalf of Manuel Gausa, IaaC Dean, Areti Markopoulou, MAA Director, and Xavier Gonzalez, MAI Director (together with Carlos Gomez).

The now IaaC Alumni from MAA01, MAA02, and MAI then walked down the red carpet to receive their Diplomas and shake the hands of all the before mentioned Directors, as well as the Academic Coordinator Silvia Brandi, and the Research Studio Tutors Willy Muller, Maite Bravo, Enric Ruiz Geli, Mireia Luzárraga, Claudia Pasquero, and Marco Poletto.

Aldo Sollazzo and Gabriela Gonzales Faria, the student representatives, were the invited to give a brief speech, sharing very nice words with us.

It was then the moment for this years awards, provided thanks to FabLab Barcelona. And the winners were…

EXPERIMENTAL ROBOTIC CRAFT AWARD /// to the project proposing new methods of fiber aggregation by robotic fabrication for the construction of ephemeral and growing natural structures based on varying local environmental and material forces:
Stigmergy: Jean Akanish (Lebanon), Ali Yerdel (Turkey), Jin Shihui (China) and Alexander Dolan (USA).

INNOVATIVE ENERGY AWARD /// to the project proposing new, adaptable and reactive infrastructure for filtering pollution particles in the city and enhancing air quality:
The Jungle: Moritz Begle (Austria), Dori Sadan (Israel), Stuart Maggs (UK) and Urte Naujetkaite (Lithuania).

BARCELONA INNOVATION AWARD: to the Project that through innovative ideas and ICT applications re-activates the public space of 22@ promoting social interaction, spatial and urban dynamics that adapt to the citizens and city future requirements.
Smart Street Hotel: Alejandra Díaz de León Lastras (México), Drew Carson (USA), Priyanka Narula (India) and Dulce Adriana Luna Hernández (Nicaragua).

MEGA STRUCTURES VISIONARY AWARD /// to the Project that envisions a city emerging from infrastructure, mobility and architecture promoting new ideas of urban inhabitation:
Contr-active: Jordi Vivaldi Piera (Catalunya) and Meropi-Eleni Skordalou (Hellas).

ADVANCED INTERACTION AWARD /// to the MAI Project that better combine Nature with new Technologies:
Electric Anthologies: Martin Lukac.

ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE AWARD /// to the project proposing innovative energy infrastructure systems for cooling and heating applications on buildings and urban spaces:
Knots: Gokulrajkailash Jayanthimala Thangarajan (India).

Congratulations to ALL 2013 IAAC ALUMNI!!!

The Festivities then continued well into the night with the Graduation Party!!!

Directors:

Xavi González
Carlos Gómez

Jury Board:

Manuel Gausa (IAAC Dean)
Elisabeth Plantada (BAU)
Eduard Martín (IMI)
Raffaela Fagnoni (Universitá degli Studi di Genova)
Roberta Bosco (El PAIS)
Ethel Baraona (DPR – Barcelona)
Behnaz Farahi (USC School of Architecture)

IAAC’s MAI at SONAR 2013 from Gerda Antanaityte on Vimeo.

Pulp fiction

The concept of the workshop was to develop 6 fields of play directed by 6 teams so as to produce a reflection around and on the new lines of thought in contemporary architecture and the contemporary position of the architect in this socio-cultural scenario. A mix between reflection and playing games, thought and action. A hybrid that mixes critics and actions. Finally, a critical action.

We had less than 48 hours to energetically produce a critical and propositive action.

An action-production whose definition was to be open to the individual criteria of the 6 invited production and thought groups, and that could be developed as a punctual action, as an active object , as a giant map or any special or material form of manipulation that activates the positive-critical reflection of the spectator.

The answer was to be festive and/or ludicrous. The aim was to answer the question posed through a process of “productive games”, both intense and rapid (object, action or installation) and to occupy or, in any case, transform a space inside IAAC (6 simultaneous spaces, like a multi-track circus).

The invited teams: 6 fields, 6 teams:

José Maria Torres Nadal and Antonio Sanmartín

Josep Maria Garcia Cors

Juan Alfonso Zapata

Studio G – Mathilde Marengo, Jeannette Sordi and Anna Varaldo

Joan Maroto, Lis Marrani and Ana Martinez

Luciana Asinari and Silvia Brandi

The structures and performances were presented on the 28th through an itinerant multi ring circus presentation party.

“2.3/seg” is the first project Alejandro showed us, which studies the death and birth rates of the human race around the world. The question posed was how often are people born and how often do they die? Alejandro underlined that he was not so interested in the accuracy, but more in the concept of this.
The results showed that 4 people are born and 2 people die every second, resulting in 2 new people on the planet per second. The data used to generate this project was collected through the World Census Bureau, and conceptually inspired by the work of Jagadish Chandra Bos, and in particular his invention of the Creschograph, a technology that allows a person to see a plant grow in real time.
“The laboratory to explore the birth of ideas” was a complex technology inspired by his father, who taught him how to generate electricity.
Alejandro then went on to explain how another of his projects was inspired by a dream in which fruit communicated…”hello world”. Would it be possible to make a computer out of fruit? An organic computer?
He then started working with ph levels present in fruit to generate a binary system, starting with the use of lemon and tangerine. This makes us reflect on how we create technology, questioning its historical generator, that is for attack or defence mechanisms…this could be a poetic way to create technology!
The fourth and final project showed was inspired by an image of the northern lights, a sort of connection between magic and nature. But what are these northern lights, and how are they created?
These are a consequence of solar explosions, the earth is therefore a natural sensor of these explosions. Alejandro wanted to find a way to get connected with them, a poetic way of depicting these explosions. He created a system that would turn the energy of these explosions into data, and in return transformed this data first into fire (a natural phenomenon becomes data to then rebecome a natural phenomenon), and then in later versions of this projects into explosions using gun powder. This was called “8 minutes (when the sun explodes we explode)”.
Finally, sometime was spent discussing the workshop underway with the MAI students, “white box” that aims to break the concept of technology as a black box, rendering technology more open and accessible, that is white, allowing us to experience the poetic, nature and magic of technology in everyday life.

Pablo Valbuena has become internationally recognized for his augmented architectures, dynamic forms where light and phisical structures combine to create a new hybrid language for form and space. Trained as an architect and having worked previously in videogames, his art projects in galleries and public space interventions preludes the explosion of “projection mapping” as a technique and has been extensively exhibited worldwide.

Jaime Serra is one of the most important names in the field of infographics today. Currently head of graphics at La Vanguardia, his body of work goes beyond the conventions of graphics for journalism and enters into the territory of information visualization and even visual poetry. His work is currently being exhibited at Ars Santa Mónica.

The conference will be streaming LIVE from IaaC’s youtube channel.