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.

Philippe Rahm is architect, principal in the office of Philippe Rahm architectes, based in Paris, France. His work, which extends the field of architecture from the physiological to the meteorological, has received an international audience in the context of sustainability. In 2002, he was chosen to represent Switzerland at the 8th Architecture Biennale in Venice, and was one of the 25 Manifesto’s Architects of Aaron Betsky’s 2008 Architectural Venice Biennale. He is nominee in 2009 for the Ordos Prize in China and in 2010 and 2008 for the International Chernikov Prize in Moscow where he was ranked in the top ten. He has participated in a number of exhibitions worldwide (Archilab, Orléans, France 2000; SF-MoMA 2001; CCA Kitakyushu 2004; Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2003-2006 and 2007; Manifesta 7, 2008; Louisiana museum, Denmark, 2009; Guggenheim Museum, New-York 2010). In 2007, he had a personal exhibition at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal. Mr. Rahm was a resident at the Villa Medici in Rome (2000). He was Headmaster at the AA School in London in 2005-2006, Visiting professor at the Mendrisio Academy of Architecture in Switzerland in 2004 and 2005, at the ETH Lausanne in 2006 and 2007, at the School of Architecture of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts of Copenhagen in 2009- 2010, in Oslo at the AHO in 2010-2011. From 2010 to 2012, he held the Jean Labatut Professorship in Princeton University, USA. He has lectured widely, including at Harvard School of Design, Cooper Union, UCLA and the ETH Zürich. He is working on several private and public projects in France, Taiwan, Italy and Germany. His recent work includes in 2011 the first prize for the 69ha Taichung Gateway Park in Taiwan, an office building of 13000 m2 in La Défense in France for the EPADESA; a convective condominium for the IBA in Hamburg, Germany; the white geology, a stage design for contemporary art in the Grand-Palais on the Champs-Elysées in Paris in 2009 and a studio house for the artist Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster in 2008. Monographic books include Physiological architecture published by Birkhaüser in 2002, Distortions, published by HYX in 2005, Environ(ne)ment: Approaches for Tomorrow, published by Skira in 2006 and Architecture météorologique published by Archibooks in 2009.

Eva Franch is an architect and founder in 2003 of OOAA (office of architectural affairs). Since 2010, Franch is the Executive Director and Chief Curator of Storefront for Art and Architecture. She studied at TU Delft and earned an M. Arch from ETSAB-UPC, and an M. Arch. II from Princeton University. She has lectured internationally on art, architecture and the importance of alternative practices in the construction and understanding of public life. Franch has taught at State University of New York Buffalo and at Rice University where she directed the Masters Thesis studio. At Storefront, her most recent projects include the launch of a new publication Series in partnership with Lars Müller, exhibitions such as No Shame: Storefront for Sale and POP: Protocols, Obsessions, Positions, the launch of the Storefront International Series and projects such as WorldWide Storefront, commissioning major design projects such as the Speechbuster, and developing projects like the Competition of Competitions. Most recently Franch, together with a curatorial and design team, has been selected by the State Department of the United States to represent the U.S. Pavilion at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale.

In the audience Vicente Guallart, Chief Architect of the Barcelona City Council, Manuel Sanroma, President of the City Protocol Society, Joan Subirats, Full Professor of Sociology, as well as Antoni Munne and Montae Ingla, Arcadia editors were all present for the discussion that Barber proposed.

Barber discussed themes of city governance, starting with some brief historical notes, to then elaborate the potentials city governance and the city itself has in future of democracy with respect to the older Nation state models. Cities and their leaders are now taking decisions that were once reserved to the nation states relative to climate change, immigration, and much more. Cities, with their multicultural connotation, are, in contraposition to the States an their monocultural connotation, in a position to face these imposing problems, together, in a sort of global democracy. The aggregate force of cities has the potential to have a powerful and direct effect on the market place, and not only. Cities, and their citizens, need to be heard, they need to have a larger voice.

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.