Everyday life at the Institute for advanced architecture of Catalonia
Students of the MAA 02 presented their state of investigation as well as their digital and physical experiments, as they are developed in the second year of the MAA_02.
Final reviews of Selfsufficient Studio RS2, tutored by Javier Peña and Rodrigo Rubio, took place on tuesday 26, closing the studio presentations.
After a first approach to the research, by the means of abstract environmental physical prototyping, and after a first test-bed performed at PobleNou’s 22@, students applied their experimental lines on Torre Baró neighborhood, an informal settlement drawing the limits between Barcelona and Collserola, the perfect workbench to test artificial-natural feedback relationships. Teams presented their proposals based on material investigation, dynamic structures, reactive skins, embeded metabolic cycles. Students worked mainly through physical prototyping with the aim of understand the real material behavior, but digital climatic modeling, parametric distribution logics and electronics implementation were crucial in the development of their processes.
In response to the main topic of the Studio: ‘provide material processes for building with additive manufacturing techniques on site, using highly available/local materials’, the results of this year’s Digital Tectonics Research Studio show a wide range of solutions that go beyond the obvious and open up new paths for architecture and design.
A diverse and highly qualified jury including architects, engineers, physicists and cultural managers was at the final presentation and took a critical view on the projects, gave crucial feed back and provoked interesting discussions.
MAA 2011-12 started yesterday the final week of the Master with the presentations of Emergent Territories studio, tutored by Willy Müller and Maite Bravo.
Exploring the Port of Barcelona and the ways that an already constructed city could adapt to new realities, offering at the same time to the citizens a flexible and responsive to their needs environment, the students developed distinctive strategies realized in innovative architectural proposals. More specifically, the students of this research line explored the potential of new technologies and real time data information in the scale of the city working in different layers of city functions. Digital presentations and Interactive models demonstrations were part of the reviews.
To mark the closure of the Master in Advanced Architecture 2011-2012, IAAC organized a roundtable of experts and projected Yona Friedman´s interview by Willy Müller and Marta Malé-Alemany at his studio in Paris. After the screening of the interview containing the statements and views of one of the most influential theorists of architecture and urban planning.
Dennis Crompton, one of the world famous “Rock stars” of Architecture (Co- founder of Archigram) , Ricardo Boffil, one of the most important Catalan Architects and the CEO of Barcelona Regional Willy Müller formed the debate panel sharing ideas an thoughts coming from historical social moments and reaching the today´s political and social scenery. Ideas for people, ideas for the user, how we architects should create the environment that would generate the playground the citizen will need to enjoy life.
Nikos A. Salingaros is a mathematician and polymath known for his work on urban, architectural, complexity and design philosophy and theory. Salingaros has a harsh critical analysis of conventional modern architecture. He began to explore the deep connection between science and architecture and writing papers looking at architectural problems in a scientific way making important contributions to the field. During his lecture at IAAC he spoke about the cities as systems of informational architecture with a high-level functionality. Information exchange in urban systems includes visual input from the environment, personal contact, telecommunications, and the movement of people.