IAAC Lecture Series 2015/16

Monday 5th of October 2015
OPENING LECTURE
Greg Lynn
Greg Lynn Form
 
@ 18.30, IAAC Auditorium
Open to the Public

18.30 // Opening
18.45 // Welcome – Areti Markopoulou, IAAC Academic Director
19.00 // Lecture – Greg Lynn
20.00 // Refreshments

GREG LYNN was an innovator in redefining the medium of design with digital technology as well as pioneering the fabrication and manufacture of complex functional and ergonomic forms using CNC (Computer Numerically Controlled) machinery. The buildings, projects, publications, teachings and writings associated with his office have been influential in the acceptance and use of advanced materials and technologies for design and fabrication. As design opportunities today extend across multiple scales and media, his studio Greg Lynn FORM continues to define the cutting edge of design in a variety of fields. His work is in the permanent collections of the most important design and architecture museums in the world including the CCA, SFMoMA, ICA Chicago and MoMA. Because of his early studies in philosophy and architecture he has been involved in combining the realities of design and construction with the speculative, theoretical and experimental potentials of writing and teaching. This unique and innovative approach to design has also established him as an influential figure across many disciplines and led to consultations and collaborations with companies like BMW, Swarovski, Alessi, Vitra, Disney and Imaginary Forces. In 2002, he left his position as the Professor of Spatial Conception and Exploration at the ETHZ (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich) and became an Ordentlicher University Professor at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. He is a Studio Professor at UCLA’s school of Architecture and Urban Design where he is currently spearheading the development of an experimental research robotics lab. Since the turn of the century he has been the Davenport Visiting Professor at Yale University.

Greg Lynn was born in 1964 in Ohio. He graduated from Miami University of Ohio with degrees in both architecture (Bachelor of Environmental Design) and philosophy (Bachelor of Philosophy) and later from Princeton University where he received a graduate degree in architecture (Master of Architecture). He received an Honorary Doctorate degree from the Academy of Fine Arts & Design in Bratislava. He received the American Academy of Arts & Letters Architecture Award in 2003. In 2001, Time Magazine named Greg Lynn one of 100 of the most innovative people in the world for the 21st century. In 2005, Forbes Magazine named him one of the ten most influential living architects. In 2008, he won the Golden Lion at the 11th International Venice Biennale of Architecture. In 2010, he was awarded a fellowship from United States Artists.

The students built lamps, recycling locally found materials!

CRICURSA Company was founded in 1928 with the intention of bringing form, material and processing into high technology glass bending, in order to explore the possibilities of bent glass as a decorative element. After more than 8o years of experience, now offers architectural glass, curved and flat interior and exterior glass, and is present in many of the most famous architectural works around the world.
introduction of new glass-made solutions. Passionate about architecture, creativity and innovation, their aim is to continue inspiring the best engineers and architects in the world, in close collaboration with Facades and installers and all professionals, partnering CRICURSA to the efficiency and capacity to deliver ideas and concepts of the designers.

Students will be exploring and prototyping Robotic Fabrication, Adaptive Skins and Urban Orchards, towards the development of a 1:1 Scale final Prototype. Stay tuned to see the progress in real time.

Academic Director Areti Markopoulou meeting with with Dr. Thomas D. Meier, president of Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK), in the Connecting Space Zurich University of the Arts in ‪#‎HongKong‬ !
‪#‎SharingKnowledge‬ ‪#‎Connecting‬ ‪#‎LearningByDoing‬ ‪#‎FutureEducation‬‪#‎Arts‬ ‪#‎Architecture‬ ‪#‎Cities‬ ‪#‎BuildingTheFuture‬ ‪#‎now‬

Block 1 – Supervisors: Jordi Pagès and Lluís Viu

Emotions in Design – Richard Aoun – Proposing to rebalance emotions through design to improve the users mental health and conceptualize their happiness.

Rigidum Flexible S.C – Luis Leon Lopez – deform structures so that they can change shape according to their external environment, or load distribution in the building, generating a relation between rigidity and flexibility.

re-Form, development & application of self-assembly in the built environment – Ian Mann – a system which can spontaneously build a structure, allowing for example connectivity in flood zones, or support unstable post-earthquake structures.

The aesthetics of efficiency for sustainability, reducing the environmental impact of today’s cement factories – Alejandro Martinez del Campo – in order to increase factories sustainability, their designs must be driven by efficiently analyzed architectural intervention tools, generating new aesthetics based on performance and environmental impact.

Robustic – Sahil Sharma – based on active bending of plywood: taking advantage of the material performance and fabrication techniques to achieve a deformative behavior generating a dynamic structure.

Block 2 – Supervisor: Marcos Cruz

The architecture of decay, Bio-Scafold – Natalie Alima – through a process of biomimicary, it is time for architecture to grow and transform itself over time.

Bio-Concretion – Tobias Grumstrup Lund Øhrstrøm – seagrass possesses he special characteristic that it hardens over time, allowing the seagrass roofs shapeless surface character. This process is known, in the science of geology, as the process of concretion.

Liquef (A)rchitecture – Chung Kai Hsieh – cork, a unique healthy method of farming and material sourcing.

Living Screen – Irina Shaklova – explores the possibilities of creating living systems through novel fabrication techniques (robotics).

Hydro-Mediating Interface, water management in contaminated groundwater sources and related ecological systems - Alessio Verdolino – the spatialization of an innovative low-tech water desalination process.

Metabolic Architecture – Mohamad Yassin – behaviorologic architecture: man must stop making and manipulating, and instead allow architecture to happen.

Block 3 – Supervisor: Vicente Guallart

Charring Cities – Wen Shan Foo – in order to deal with carbon emissions from its root, it is necessary to investigate the global carbon cycle and interrogate the carbon network of our cities.

Hybrid Playgrounds – Mardet Gebreyesus – exploring informal agencies as sustainable expressions for hybridising urban environments.

Genius Ghetto, architecture towards activation – Ruxandra Iancu Bratosin – a proposal of social reactivation through architecture: a multiscalar approach based on top down analyses, multiple players, bottom up inputs, achieving a self-sufficient agenda through user empowerment.

Turbulentopolis, spatial and formal generation through archetypes for energy exchange – Robert McKaye – just as the city’s informational layer emerged through the digitalization of matter within the internet of things, so will the city’s sensational layer emerge through the electrification of similar means: the paradigm shift towards an architecture of sensitivity.

Redefining Urban Realities, towards a socially sustainable urban strategy for Beirut City – Rasha Sukkarieh – empowering the concept of sharing through innovative interactive spatial interventions, ensuring, in parallel, eco-friendly and environmentally sustainable standards.

The 7 projects presented, working in the the area of connection between the Port and Montjuïc, proposed the future of Barcelona as follows:

Surface on Demand – Ran Shabtay - a language, or a system that can be adapt anywhere any time, as long as the city has water sources and physical buildings. This system can be changed and adapted to any situation.

RHIZOME_Adaptable Network – Marina Lazareva, Igor Cegar, Tamara Ivanovic, and Teresa Lodoño - imagines a different city, a different era where a model of transporting people from city to city, in a way of adventures and experiences, is proposed.

HEDONIST MOD –  Adhitya Rathinam, John Koshy, and Zachary Trattner - project addressed the questions of what the architecture of a hedonist society could offer, and how could it be quantified, extending Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill’s concept ofhedonistic calculus with the parameters of sun vs. shade, space vs. proximity and exclusivity vs. inclusivity.

Triphibian_Social Constructionism - Ksenia Dyusemabeva, Asya Güney, Edgar Navarrete Sanchez, and Diego Ramirez Leon – where the term of triphibian is understood as a concept that embraces the three different dimensions that surround us: air, water and ground. This concept is not referred as a mere geometrical or physical representation, but as an operative posture that is encompassing and blending with the three-dimensionality of the environment.

BARCELO-D-ISM - Ayaan Barodawala, Rossana Graca, and Saad Saheen - project that attempts to seek ways of relating the Barcelona Port and the arrival (or departure) of goods. The consumption-focused lifestyle of an urban population adds fuel to the notion of distribution further. This is an area of immediate opportunity.

Responsive Habitats – Jinyang Han, Michelle Tseng, Prawit Kittichanthira, and Taiesha Edwards - a nexus of annual local and tourist social exchanges, leading to the spread of plant-life, wildlife and aquatic life. Real-time human behavior triggers the exploit of green-energy amidst Montjuic and the seaport, which then feeds the transition of Responsive Habitats.

Landscape of Experience - Joy Harb, Pia Grobner, and Yanna Haddad -  an attempt to draw the outline of the future shape of Barcelona. Through sensors and processors the structure will have intelligence, allowing it to respond to the conditions and react to the necessities. Kinetic structures allow the movement and changes.