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.

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.

Stefano Boeri at IaaC

Lecture: “Mar Adentro”
23rd of May // 19:30 // IAAC Auditorium // C/Pujades 102 BARCELONA

Stefano Boeri, born in 1956, is a Milan-based architect and founder of “Stefano Boeri Architetti”. From 2004 to 2007 he was editor in chief of Domus international magazine. From 2007 to 2011 he was editor in chief of the international magazine Abitare. Professor of Urban Design at the Politecnico di Milano, he has taught as visiting professor at Harvard GSD, MIT and Berlage Institute among others. He is the founder of Multiplicity international research network dedicated to the study of contemporary urban transformations. Co-author of different volumes such as Mutations (Actar, 2000), USE (Skirà, 2002) and Cronache del Abitare (Mondadori, 2007), Biomilano (Corraini, 2011) and author of Anticittà (Laterza, 2011). Stefano Boeri, with his texts and reflections, is a regular contributor to several magazines and newspapers. Together with Burdett, Herzog and MacDonough, Boeri was part of the Architecture Advisory Board in charge of developing the guidelines for the urban transformations to be implemented within the frame of the 2015 Milan Architecture Expo.

ArchiLab, the international laboratory of architecture, was created in 1999 by Marie-Ange Brayer and Frederic Migayrou in Orleans, France. It is an international laboratory engaged in research and experimentation, aiming to defend the young generation of architects, and presents the conceptual and pragmatic transformations taking place in the field of architecture.

In 1999, the first edition of ArchiLab explored the paradigm shift brought by the emergence of digital technologies within the newly emerging computational space.

The next edition, that is the 9^th, will take place in September, and will be dedicated to the interactions between digital architecture and life sciences (biotechnology, neurosciences, genetics, etc).

Today, the utilization of a new generation of software programs for designing architecture, along with techniques that make organic simulation possible, is enabling architects to explore the specific principles of evolution on the living realm with increasing precision. The same processes now revolutionizing the scientific disciplines, architecture, art and design, are being used by designers to achieve ever greater degrees of complexity. They are also bringing about a profound mutation in the very concept of nature.

During her presentation, Marie-Ange presented the works of some of the architects, designers and artists invited for the 9^th edition, such as Alisa Andrasek (www.biothing.org), Roland Snooks & Robert Stuart-Smith (www.kokkugia.com), Marc Fornes (http://theverymany.com), Andrew Kudless (http://matsysdesign.com), Skylar Tibbits (www.sjet.us), Neri Oxman (http://web.media.mit.edu/~neri/site/), Joris Laarman (www.jorislaarman.com), Achim Menges (www.achimmenges.com), Gramazio & Kohler (www.gramaziokohler.com) with Raffaello D’Andrea (http://raffaello.name), Theo Spyropoulos (www.minimaforms.com), Claudia Pasquera & Marco Poletto (www.ecologicstudio.com), Zoe Coombes & David Boira (www.commonwealth.nu), Thom Flauders (www.flauders-studio.com), B+U (www.bplusu.com), SOMA (www.soma-architecture.com), Ulrika Karlsson & Marcelyn Gow (www.servo-stockholm.com), Jenny Sabin (http://jennysabin.com), Akihisa Hirata (www.hao.nu), Kunya Ishigami (www.jnyi.jp), Matias del Campo Sandra Manninger (www.span-arch.com), Iris Van Herpen (www.irisvanherpen.com), Isaie Bloch (http://eragatory.blogspot.fr), Michael Hansmeyer (http://michael-hansmeyer.com), Casey Reas (http://reas.com), and Perry Hall (www.lovebrain.net).

Marie-Ange Brayer at IaaC

Lecture: “Naturalizing Architecture”
21st of May // 19:30 // IAAC Auditorium // C/Pujades 102 BARCELONA

Since 1996, Marie-Ange Brayer has been director of the Centre Regional Contemporary Art Collection [FRAC, Centre] in Orléans, France, where the collection is channelled towards the linkage between art and research architecture. The FRAC Centre has been putting together a collection to do with architecture in its utopian and experimental dimension, from the 1950s up until the present day. In 1999 she founded with Frédéric Migayrou the Orléans International Architectural Conference, ArchiLab, which brings together younger international practitioners involved in the latest forms of architecture.

In 2002, M.-A. Brayer was appointed with Béatrice Simonot as curator of the French Pavilion of the Venice Biennale of Architecture’s 8th International Exhibition of Architecture. In 2008, she was associate curator of the 3rd International Biennial of Contemporary Art of Seville (BIAC) for the “Youniverse” exhibition, with Peter Weibel as general curator. In 2013, she will curate ArchiLab « Naturalizing the architecture » with Frederic Migayrou. Art and architecture critic, Marie-Ange Brayer has published numerous articles in her domain in magazines and catalogs .She is currently working on a doctorate treating the architectural model since the Renaissance by tracing the history of its representation at the EHESS (School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences) in Paris.

Axel Sowa spoke first, with a 5 part presentation revolving around 5 different re-positions in architectural theory history relevant to understand today’s re-position. The division in 5 parts was not a casual choice, as Candide itself is divided into 5 sections: Analysis, Essay, Project, Encounter and Fiction.

But before starting with the 5 parts, Axel spoke briefly about the concept of Re-positioning…In Architecture, theory often deals with the origins, or the myth of this discipline, Architecture Magazines offer a break from this means of dealing with theory…

1_Re-postionaing materials and the making of Architecture.

With industrialization in the 30s architecture is in some way marginalized and therefore is forced to re-postion itself with respect to industrial production. In a way, the Advanced Architecture of the 30s was cast-iron Architecture.
Two main magazines of interest of this period, that both depict this situation well: The Builder, presented in a weekly paper format, that aimed to create a community in which to share knowledge in a neutral way, presenting a new idea of building professional knowledge for architects in the form of a trade magazine; and Le Génie Civil, that, in its first edition, presented the Ecole Centrale, a school that provided its students with a new idea of empirical knowledge.

2_Re-positioning the Future.

This is clearly based on the idea that there is a future, linked with the ideas of making plans, a key element to architecture, which is in some ways a kind of utopian element. Here Axel spoke about Esprit Nouveau by Le Corbusier, a man who built himself as an architect using the media. He was a networker. Le Corbusier presented a 3D version of his magazine, the ”Pavillon de l’Esprit Nouveau“, at the Paris Exposition des Arts Décoratifs of 1925. He produced this pavillion as a space projected towards the future, but also a space to advertise his magazine.

3_Re-positioning Affinity.

After the 50s, the first period of modern architecture, a series of “family magazines” that is a magazine based on a network of friends. The magazine becomes a sort of family album, a form of elective affinity, such as Team 10 (Smithson) or Archigram. The later has a very playful relation to the media, preenting the idea of the family as a kind of instant pleasure, there is no tolerance for the long run.

4_Re-positioning the Discipline.

Here Axel spoke of his experience at L’Architecture D’Aujourd’hui where they reconsidered the discipline in a moment in which the star system was starting to flail, focusing on which might be the problems of the next 20 years, such as: Financing, presenting a research on what you can obtain for 1000euro/m2 around the globe; or aging, Europe is an aging continent, how do people live in their space, and how one can make design inclusive…

5_Re-positioning Knowledge.

In this moment Axel invited us to think about the position of journals and magazines in our time, and also to reflect on Architecture theory…is it a science?

For Axel Architecture theory is: first of all an encyclopaedic discipline, rooted in literary traditions and customs; it is constantly evolving; as an academic discipline, it can not rely on commonly accepted methods; and it stimulates curiosity and engenders the construction of questions.

Candide is a direct reference to Voltaire, and even more so to its full title Candide: or, Optimism…Axel is still optimistic, and considers theory crucial in order to produce sound objects.

Ricardo Devesa began his presentation with the Wikipedia definition of Architectural Theory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architectural_theory), then asking us to reflect on what it means to build up theory from an architectural magazine. He developed his position through 4 editorial experiences.

1_Quaderns.

Every issue was a different topic revolving around contemporary issues. How do we theorize…through current projects, a conceptual theory frame, links with other disciplines…

2_Verb, Architectural Boogazine.

What is the best way to show and write about a project…photography and manipulation, or extra information added, no longer using common photographic techniques…What does the building mean to the consumer?

3_Basa.

How can we theorize a context, like that of the Canary Islands…How to understand an ultra peripheral territory? How to study this touristic architecture in a cultural way? Why does this architecture work in this context? Through photographs these questions find their answers.

4_DC Papers.

A more scientific academic approach…

In the end the 4 experiences define 4 positions, that can be related to the positions proposed by Axel: Quaderns re-positions the future, Verb re-positions affinities, Basa re-positions the discipline, and DC Papers re-positions knowledge.