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Thursday 19th of February // Alfredo Brillembourg, Urban-Think Tank // The Open Village
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Alfredo Brillembourg, Urban-Think Tank // The Open Village
Tonight we had the pleasure of hosting the IAAC Winter Lecture with Alfredo Brillembourg of Urban-Think Tank, The Open Village. The lecture focused on the concept and practical design of urban villages with mixed-income housing, small-scale commercial spaces and public amenities in diverse city environments. What is the notion of an urban village?
Ranging from open building structures to a mixed-use housing community that allows various occupation scenarios over different time periods, Urban-Think Tank is actively exploring the architectural, social, and economic systems that could create new modes of living.
Open building concepts have been present in the architectural discourse since LeCorbusier’s famous depiction of the Maison Dominoconstruction principle. N.J. Habraken in his seminal book SUPPORTS took the idea of an open structure even further by imagining it as a means to anticipate changing user demands without relying on too much architectural design. Hans Widmer, swiss author of the 1980’s anti-capitalist utopia called “Bolo’ Bolo”, provided a potent vision for alternative communities that would reject market-oriented lifestyles and cherish collective mixed-use environments. The Chinese Urban Villages in Shenzhen represent built examples of diverse high-density communities for low-income residents within urban environments facing high economic pressures. Altogether, these examples at different scales will provide architects with a powerful set of ingredients in order to develop high-density, low-income and mixed-use communities for central urban areas.
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Thursday 26th of February // Alberto Diaspro // Does the aesthetic sense also exist at the nanoscale?
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Thursday 19th of February // ACTAR-D Pop-Up Bookshop
ACTAR-D POP UP BOOK STORE & DISCOUNTS – Architecture, Art & Design
Thursday 19th of February 2015 - 21.00 @IAAC Main Hall
After next Thursday’s Winter Lecture with Alfredo Brillembourg, ACTAR-D representatives will be setting up a Pop-up bookshop in the main hall of IAAC, offering Students, Faculty and Architects a 10% Discounts on Architecture, Art and Design books.
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Andrew Watts – Newtecnic // Façade System Design
Andrew Watts, along with Iker Flores, from Newtecnic were our guest speakers tonight as part of the IAAC Winter Lecture Series, taking us through their professional experiences of facade system design.
Newtecnic is an office specialised in the design of facade systems for high profile projects around the world. The office is involved at different design stages; from concept to tender, to construction documentation such as fabrication drawings, installation drawings and logistics.
With the recent increase in popularity of new digital tools, architectural practises are starting to propose more and more highly geometrically complex or fully free form projects that cannot be achieved by the current generation of mass produced facade systems.
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PLUJA DE LLUM // Luminescent Rain @ BCN LLUM 2015
PLUJA DE LLUM // Luminescent Rain
The intimacy of the existing courtyard, located at Carrer de Santa Llúcia, 1, its distinctive elements, among which the lovers palm tree and fountain, as well as the well-known tale of the Saint Eulalia, together fed the concept of Pluja de Llum.
The concept of the installation follows a mixture of the elements of the tale of Santa Eulalia, in particular her tears, transforming these into a conceptual rain. A luminescent rain, a rain of light, emanating from one of the protagonists of the courtyard, the palm tree.
When entering the courtyard, the visitor is not fully made aware of the scenography that the courtyard beholds. The internal patio area is seamed off, leaving the visitor to meander through the porch of the courtyard, and being able to perceive, through a series of small holes in the sealing of the interior patio, or snapshots, what is in fact happening: the luminescent rain falling from the central palm.
The visitor is then called upon reach up to the superior level of the patio, through a sound interaction system, defining the intensity of the light, and finally opening them to the infinite rain of the courtyard. The visitors look down upon the luminescent rain, into an apparently infinite well – reminiscing the existing fountain -, the courtyard itself, transformed through the implementation of a reflective surface – water flooding the ground floor of the patio – making the patio finally seem never ending through the infinite reflection, as the rain of light itself.
Hence Pluja de Llum – or luminescent rain – proposes itself as the dialogue between the intimacy of the existing courtyard, as the tears of a young girl, and the proposed infinity that emerges, reflecting the perseverance of the tale of Santa Eulalia, and finally the festivities invoked by the BCN Llum 2015 festival.
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