After a warm Welcome, to the new students and Eric Owen Moss, on behalf of the academic coordinator Silvia Brandi, the night was kicked off with some kind and interesting words on behalf of Mr Antoni Vives, the Deputy Mayor for the Urban Habitat of the Barcelona City Council.

Manuel Gausa, IaaC Dean, was then invited to share some words of welcoming, then recounting the very interesting story, and history, of IaaC, its founding, , its achievements, and its future goals.

Areti Markopoulou, Masters Program Director, then extended her official welcoming, as well as some inspiring words, going deeper into IaaC, its community, and also the stimulating context that Barcelona offers IaaC.

The Inauguration Lecture with Eric Owen Moss (Eric Owen Moss Architects, SCI-arc Director) then officially commenced.

Make it New

The Chinese Emperor Cheng, perhaps 4,000 years ago, made a comment that continues to be useful to us today. According to the story, each morning the Emperor arose and went to his washbasin, and repeated the inscription he had written there: Make it New. Each day his job was to Make it New.

That admonition is of special interest to those who argue that making it new in architecture is not an enduring premise. After all, how long can one continue to re-new the new? But that’s not the point. The inscription suggests that the world isn’t a redundancy, and that it’s essential to continue to consider the possibility that we haven’t reached the end, or the conclusion, or the solution. Never, ever.

It’s our job, in perpetuity, to re-think the possibility that the world ought to be other than it is, and to suggest how we might make it so. Every morning.

After a question and answer session, a final “thank you” to all was given by Silvia Brandi, then inviting us all to a toast, thanks to Moritz Barcelona, to celebrate the begining of the new academic year.

Too much is not enough

16th of October

19.00, @IAAC Auditorium

Open to the Public

Eric Owen Moss was born and raised in Los Angeles, California.  He received a Bachelor of Arts from the University of California at Los Angeles. He holds Masters degrees in Architecture from both the University of California at Berkeley, College of Environmental Design and Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design.

Eric Owen Moss Architects was founded in 1973. The office, located in Los Angeles, is currently staffed with 25 professionals designing and constructing projects in the United States and around the world. The firm has garnered over 100 local, national, and international design awards.

Moss was honored with the Academy Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1999. He received the AIA/LA Gold Medal in 2001. He is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architecture and was a recipient of the Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of California, Berkeley in 2003. In 2004 he received the Dedalo Minosse International Prize in Milan.  In 2007, he received the Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize, recognizing a distinguished history of architectural design.  In 2011 he again was awarded the Dedalo Minosse International Prize for Samitaur Tower in Los Angeles.  Also in 2011 he was awarded the Jencks Award by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA).  In 2012 Moss received the International Design Award for Samitaur Tower, and the AIA|LA 25 Year Award for the Petal House.

There are 16 published monographs on the Eric Owen Moss office, including three by Rizzoli and one, Gnostic Architecture by Monacelli Press. Most recent are Eric Owen Moss – The Uncertainty of Doing, published by Skira in 2006; Eric Owen Moss – Provisional Paradigms, published by Marsilio in 2007; and Eric Owen Moss – Construction Manual (1988-2008), published by AADCU Press in 2009, and Eric Owen Moss, l Maestri dell’Architettura, Hachette, Italy, 2012.   Who Says What Architecture Is?, volumes 1 and 2 were published in 2012 by AADCU Press.

Eric Owen Moss first taught at SCI-Arc in 1974, and was appointed director in 2002. He has held chairs at Yale and Harvard universities, and appointments at the Technische Hochschule in Vienna and the Royal Academy in Copenhagen, and the UAE.  He received the Most Admired Educator Award from the Design Futures Council in 2013, and The AIA|LA Educator of the Year in 2006.  Moss continues to teach at SCI-Arc, and to lecture around the world. 

The evening was kicked off with a few words of welcoming on behalf of the Academic Coordinator Silvia Brandi, followed by the IaaC Dean Manuel Gausa.

The Master Program Director Areti Markopoulou then presented the Institute, showing past projects developed in IaaC, among which Hyperhabitat, the FabLab House, the Endesa Pavilion, and the Smart Citizen Platform. The presentation continued with an excursus of the future lines of research development that will be undertaken during the Masters in Advanced Architecture, giving the new students an idea of what extents they can potentially reach during their time in IaaC.

Nuria Diaz, the Director of the Valldaura Self Sufficient Labs, presented her domain, outlining the Labs’ current development and advancement in the field of self-sufficient and sustainable living, and its potential future development, in which the students will have the opportunity to partake.

Finally the new students were called up to the stage to briefly present themselves, giving an idea of their hopes for their future experience in IaaC, as well as being given a cnc FabLabBcn fabricated bag, a small token of the potentials of the cnc machines and prototyping that they will shortly get into.

IaaC will be Welcoming the MAA 2013-2014 Students on the 2nd of October.

Stay Tuned for more information on the Inauguration Ceremony featuring a Lecture with ERIC OWEN MOSS, to be held on the 16th of October.

Marcos Cruz at IaaC

Lecture “Neoplasmatic Design”
13th of June // 20:00 // IAAC Auditorium // C/Pujades 102 BARCELONA

Marcos Cruz is the Director of the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, where he is also a Reader and Studio Master of Diploma/MArch Unit 20. His varied teaching activity has been carried out at University College London and University of Westminster in London, University of California Los Angeles, Tunghai University and Feng Chia University in Taiwan, Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts School of Architecture in Copenhagen, among others. Cruz studied at the Escola Superior Artística do Porto – ESAP (1997). In London he gained a master’s degree with distinction in Architectural Design at the Bartlett (1999) and got a PhD (2007). His investigations about Neoplasmatic Architecture, focused on a contemporary discussion about the body and the impact of bio-technology on architecture, won the RIBA President’s Research Award for Outstanding PhD Thesis (2008). Cruz founded with Marjan Colletti the atelier marcosandmarjan in 2000, combining the practice and teaching of architecture, along with experimental design research. The work has been extensively published and exhibited. This includes the participation in the Venice Biennale (2004) and the solo exhibition Interfaces/Intrafaces at the iCP Hamburg and TU Braunschweig (2005/06). Apart from numerous exhibition installations, they built two pavilions and worked on a large entertainment complex in Beijing.

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.

in Architecture

Computation, in its most basic meaning, refers to the processing of information. In this way, both machinic processes operating in the binary realm of the digital, as well as material processes operating in the complex domain of the physical can be considered computational. The lecture will introduce Achim Menges’ work on exploring the territory where machine computation and material computation potentially overlap, where they not simply co-exist but intensely interact in the design process. He will present the related design research – conducted at the Architectural Association, at Harvard University and at his new institute at the University of Stuttgart University over the last ten years – along a series of constructed prototype buildings. This will include the institute’s latest research pavilion, which was entirely constructed by robotic carbon and glass fibre filament winding processes.

Lecture “Material Computation in Architecture”
3rd of June // 19:30 // IAAC Auditorium // C/Pujades 102 BARCELONA

Achim Menges, born 1975, is a registered architect and professor at University of Stuttgart where he is the founding director of the Institute for Computational Design (since 2008).  In addition, he has been Visiting Professor in Architecture at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design (2009-10), at the AA School of Architecture in London (2009-current) and at Rice University in Houston (2004). Achim Menges graduated with honors from the AA School of Architecture in London (2002) where he subsequently taught as Studio Master of the Emergent Technologies and Design Graduate Program (2002-09) and as Unit Master of Diploma Unit 4 (2003-06).
Achim Menges practice and research focuses on the development of integral design processes at the intersection of morphogenetic design computation, biomimetic engineering and computer aided manufacturing that enables a highly articulated, performative built environment. His work is based on an interdisciplinary approach in collaboration with structural engineers, computer scientists, material scientists and biologists. Achim Menges has published several books on this work and related fields of design research, and he is the author/coauthor of numerous articles and scientific papers.  His projects and design research has received many international awards, has been published and exhibited worldwide, and form parts of several renowned museum collections.

Tonight at IAAC, Enrico Dini, an italian civil engineer, gave us a lecture explaining how he developed his idea of printing houses. Enrico showed some images about his first attemps, and then he explained how he figured out the whole process. Finally a debate took place and several students could ask and comment some of the issues that the lecture rise up.

3D Printing applied to a large scale is a new Construction Science.
The pages of this book are all blank and need to be written from scratch.
Building through 3D Printing means : a new machine; but, what embodiment? how big? How tall? How fast? How accurate?
A new process using new materials or old materials in a new way, but what binders? what fibers? what additives? What methods to achieve structural performance?
A new Building technique : just one? Maybe many? Which should be adopted first?
But the biggest question is : what should be done with the 3D printer, a new tool for a new architectural language? what to print? what to sell? How to design?
Freedom of Creation:
Is it really true? What are the constraints? How to solve practical matters? Printing on site or off site?
Enrico Dini has spent the past seven years facing hundreds of questions and answering roughly just a few of them.
During his lecture Enrico will explain the story of a challenging, painful, exciting invention process, still on going and full of surprises, mistakes and discoveries.
He found his way: mimicking nature.

Enrico Dini at IaaC

Lecture: “D-Shape: petrified algorythms”
30th of May // 19:30 // IAAC Auditorium // C/Pujades 102 BARCELONA

Enrico Dini is an Italian civil engineer who spent most of his career in automation and robotics for the footwear industry.
Since the late 90′s Enrico came into contact with rapid prototyping techniques used to facilitate the design of the shoes.
In 2003, while he was 3D printing a shoe sole, Enrico had a vision of this technique applied on a large scale and imagined a new free form architecture. Enrico decided to return to its original skill enriched by his experience in robotics and since then has devoted his life to developing a new construction technique based on the principles of stereolitograpy. In 2007 helped from his trusted brother Riccardo, Enrico tested successfully his large scale D-Shape printer prototype and the following year he printed the Radiolaria, the first free-form building structure ever. Today Enrico Dini is immersed in developing D-Shape, 3D Printing Building technology to bring innovation to the architecture and construction industries.