Category Archives: Uncategorized

Today Neil Leach gave us a Theory Concept class on the MAA program in IAAC, exploring in two different parts the issues of the New Materialism and the Digital Tectonics, which are two of the main concepts in the relationship between the contemporary architecture and phylosophy.

During the first part of the class, Neil provided a theoretical background to the development of computational theory through the emerging new cultural paradigm of New Materialism. The development of this new paradigm will be charted against the backdrop of various intellectual traditions of the C20th – Modernism, Phenomenology, Structuralism, Poststructuralism and Postmodernism – from its origins in the work of French philosopher, Gilles Deleuze, through to its dissemination in the writings and lectures of Mexican ‘street philosopher’, Manuel DeLanda.

The second part of the class considered the development of digital design from its early manifestation in science fictional representations in the 1990s to the emergence of new techniques of understanding process and material behaviour in the early 2000s, to its integration within all aspects of the building industry in the early 2010s. The class showed how – in contrast to its early opposition between the digital and the tectonic – the digital is being used increasingly to understand tectonic behaviour, so that a new era of ‘digital tectonics’ has been initiated.

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IAAC Master students and Faculty visited the 25.000 sqm of the Arsenale international venue at the 13th Venice Biennale of architecture, under the Common Ground theme curated by David Chipperfield.
The Arsenale is the largest pre-industrial production centre of the world. Today is hosting one of the most important forum for the architectural thought.

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IAAC Master students and Faculty are visiting this weekend the  13th International  Venice Biennale Architecture Exhibition titled Common Ground, directed by David Chipperfield.
With this year’s theme, Common Ground, we go back to talking about architecture to help architects emerge from the crisis of identity they are going through, and at the same time offering the public a chance to look inside architecture, make it familiar and discover that something can be asked of it, that something different is possible, that we are not condemned to passive acceptance.
IAAC group of 65 students arrived in Venice today and the architectural visit started with the 29 international Pavilions of the Giardini Exhibition.

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In the context of the Smart City Exhibition that this year took place in Barcelona, IAAC invited Fabien Girardin and Josep Perelló, both leading researchers related to the relationships between cities and technologies. During one of the IAAC courses, they participated in a round table with the MAA and MAI students, exploring the principles and consequences of the Smart City concept. These were the main issues of the event:

1. Top down and bottom up. Which is the relationship between citizen participation and public policies?

2. Sensing and acting. What is data and what is information? How can we use information to intervene in the city?

3. Open Data. Which is the public domain of data?

4. Digital and physical flows. How information affect mobility decisions?

Tonight IAAC welcomed the german architect and computer technician Fabian Scheurer, who gave a lecture about the  RELATION BETWEEN DESIGN AND PRODUCTION.

Digital technology has widely expanded the solution space for architectural design. Powerful software tools allow the exploration of non-standard forms with intuitive user interfaces, and computer-controlled fabrication equipment create customized building components at almost the price of mass-fabrication. But it is really all that simple?

The talk presented work from Design to Production portfolio and showed case its practice based research method.

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