Bill Hillier at the IaaC
Lecture “Spatial sustainability in cities: or, do cities really have neighbourhoods?”
7th of May // 19:30 // IAAC Auditorium // C/Pujades 102 BARCELONA

Bill Hillier is Professor of Architectural and Urban Morphology in the University of London, Chairman of the Bartlett School of Graduate Studies, Director of the Space SyntaxLaboratory in University College London and a director of Space Syntax Limited. He was the pioneer of ‘space syntax’ in the nineteen seventies, and authored The Social Logic of Space (Cambridge University Press, 1984, 1990) with Julienne Hanson, Space is the Machine’ (CUP 1996), and over a hundred and fifty publications on space and other aspects of architectural and urban theory. Current research interests are in space syntax as a theory of the city, the relation between cities and urban societies, the syntax of generative buildings, the links between objective spatial laws and spatial cognition, the aesthetics of space, and the space syntax paradigm as a philosophical position.

The Dictionary of Received Ideas wishes to investigate both Practice and Ideas, or Theory and Design, that is ideas that have an effect on your design.

For this project Enrique was inspired by two writers in particular:

Georges Perec, relative to self imposed and volontary constraints, resulting in a different way of producing, in this case architecture;

And Gustave Flaubert, relative to looking at what we take for granted without critically processing it.

This of course applied to the architectural field, that is to examine clichés in the world of architecture, ideas that we take for granted, but with regards to design techniques.

The Dictionnaire des ideés recues by Flaubert, project from which Enrique’s research gets its name, was an inventory of ready made phrases that you had to use in 19^th Century France to be socially accepted. Flaubert wanted people to start thinking before talking. He provided instructions rather than giving definitions.

Enrique aims to chart clichés used in architecture in his Dictionary of Received Ideas…

But what is a Received Idea in Architecture? What is an architectural Cliché?

It is a technique that had intensity and was effective, that then gets used excessively, deleting it of its efficiency through its abuse. Or a solution to a problem that is no longer there.

Through his work Enrique hopes to give new use to these clichés…

Enrique Walker at the IaaC

Enrique Walker is an architect and Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Columbia University, where he also directs the Master of Science program in Advanced Architectural Design. His publications include, Tschumi on Architecture: Conversations with Enrique Walker (Monacelli, 2006) and Lo Ordinario (Gustavo Gili, 2010).

The Dictionary of Received Ideas is a decade-long project (2006—) whose aim is to examine received ideas—in other words, ideas which have been depleted of their original intensity due to recurrent use—in contemporary architecture culture. Based on Gustave Flaubert’s unfinished project, Le dictionnaire des idées reçues, this ongoing series of design studios and theory seminars proposes to disclose, define, and date—and in the long run archive—received ideas prevalent over the past decade, both in the professional and the academic realm, in order to ultimately open up otherwise precluded possibilities for architectural design and architectural theory.

“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.

Alejandro Tamayo at the IaaC

Lecture “Technology: between magic and everyday life“

Alejandro Tamayo is an artist, researcher and teacher working in the intersections between artistic practice, science, technology and everyday life. He has been a tutor at Medialab Prado interactivos? workshops including Technologies of Laughter (Mexico) and Neighborhood Science (Madrid) and has teaching for over eight years at various art and design schools in Colombia including the Art Department from Los Andes University and the School of Fine Arts from the National University. He has been a guest speaker in various venues including Pixelache University-Reinventing the Teaching Situation (Helsinki), CIANT gallery (Prague), and the International Image Festival (Colombia).