Afroditi Psarra (Athens, 1982) is a multidisciplinary artist and a PhD candidate at Complutense University of Madrid, in the field of Image, Technology and Design. Her work explores the boundaries between traditional handicrafts, pop culture and science fiction. Her artworks include a wide variety of media, from electronic embroideries and wearables to interactive installations and sound performances. She has presented her work in numerous media art festivals and she has worked as an intern at Disney Research in Zurich.

Fathoms, a unit of length equal to six feet (1.8 metres), chiefly used in reference to the depth of water. The original sense was ‘something which embraces’, ‘the outstretched arms’; hence, a unit of measurement based on the span of the outstretched arms….

John Palmesino proposes the term “Fathoms” to question how we approach architecture, intended as a comprehensive and transdisciplinary field:

What is our time? How do we measure it?

We are confronting the rise, extension, deployment and stabilisation of a series of new spaces: territories are reshaped, political connections cut through, agricultural structures reshaped, cities intensified, infrastructures severed and reorganised, resources accessed and exploited. A new series of human spaces is taking form at a dimension unprecedented, sweeping across existing relations, establishing new compounds and moulding new industrial and financial supply chains.

Architecture sets out to measure, sense, imagine and interact with these unfolding form-generating processes: it engages with them, it stabilises them, it amplifies and sustains them, often with disruptive and dislocating outputs. Separation, segregation, disconnection, severance, containment, exclusion are operative architectural forces that are reshaping human activities in our time; as well as reaching out, interconnecting, circulating, globalising, linking and spinning. Do we have the courage to think architecture at the intersection and in interaction with these new, vast, coercive and consistence forms? Can architecture re-imagine them? Dislodge their brutality?

Before the Lecture, both John and Ann-Sofi were guest crits, along with Maite Bravo, in the mid-term presentation of the Emergent Territories Research Studio, led by Willy Muller, with Pablo Ros and Jordi Vivaldi.

Mr Brillembourg presented Urban-Think Tank (U-TT), an interdisciplinary design practice dedicated to high-level research and design on a variety of subjects, concerned with contemporary architecture and urbanism. The philosophy of U-TT is to deliver innovative yet practical solutions through the combined skills of architects, civil engineers, environmental planners, landscape architects, and communication specialists. U-TT’s work concerns both theoretical and practical applications within architecture and urban planning. Working in global contexts by creating bridges between first world industry and third world, informal urban areas, they focus on the education and development of a new generation of professionals, who will transform cities in the 21st century.

This was elaborated during the lecture through the presentation of a series of key projects regarding Public Buildings, Infrastructure and Housing projects, with the aim of confronting realities to create realisable utopias, pushing designers to step out of their comfort zones and onto the ground, giving up the concept of “signature architecture”, and ultimately designing structures that will be finished by others, according to the specific needs at hand, transforming architecture into a moderator.

Shigeru Ban visited IaaC in 2011, as part of the 2011 IaaC Winter Lecture Series, presenting a Lecture entitled: ¨ Works and Humanitarian Activities ¨.

In his presentation, Mr. Ban shared a series of his projects with the audience such as: the Paper House, the Nomadic Museum, the Centre Pompidou-Metz and more. In the development of the Lecture Mr Ban elaborated both the conceptual background that supports these projects, as well as input regarding the Structural Performance of each one. He explained the influence of modernism, in particular Mies Van de Rohe, in terms of transparency and structural strategies, on his projects, using the Farnsworth house and the Barcelona Pavilion as main examples.

The Lecture took place just one week after a devastating Earthquake in Japan, and it was interesting to see how Shigeru Ban is in fact greatly involved in humanitarian works developing with disaster relief projects such as Paper Log House (Kobe of Japan in 1995, Turkey in 2000, India in 2002), Paper Church (Kobe,1995), Tsunami Reconstruction Project (Kirinda, Sri Lanka, 2005), Temporary Elementary School (Chengdu, China, 2008), L’Aquila Temporary Concert Hall (L’Aquila, Italy, 2011) and his proposal for temporary shelters in Japan (Onagawa, Japan, 2011).

To watch the Lecture, CLICK HERE.