Digital Play - 3rd May - Munich

By the use of more and more complex building automation and communication technologies architecture increasingly turns into adaptive systems, which react to the environment and the user. Architects and designers have to use these technologies also as a design medium and develop a digital sensuality which is more than the simulation of our physical environment.

At the occasion of the launch of the book Digital Utopia, We-are-plan-A is organising an evening talk at the Technical University of Munich entitled Digital Play. Together with´Fabian Hemmert (Design Research Lab, Berlin), Conny Freyer (Troika, London) and Dr. Silke Claus (bayern design), I will address the playful and sensual experiences and possibilites offered by digital technologies.

 This evening is the last of a total of 4-part series of events linked to the publicaiton of "Digital Utopia - On dynamic architectures, digital sensuality and spaces of tomorrow" to be released in May 2012 by the Academy of Arts, Berlin.

Persistent Modelling Seminar

 Wednesday 2 May 2012, 10h-16h30

Marking the publication of the title Persistent Modelling by Routledge, edited by Phil Ayres, this seminar draws together members of CITA and current CITA collaborators who have contributed to the book.

The seminar will examine and discuss the relationship between representation and the represented through the notion of persistent modelling. This notion is not novel to the activity of architectural design if considered as describing an iterative engagement with design concerns – and evident characteristic of architectural practice. But the persistence in persistent modelling can also be understood to apply in other ways, reflecting and anticipating extended roles for representation.

Drawing upon both historical and contemporary perspectives this seminar will discuss ways in which the relation between representation and the represented have, and continue to be, reconsidered. Through the presentations three principle areas will be identified in which extended roles for representation are becoming apparent within contemporary practices contributing to realisation of the built environment:

• the duration of active influence that representation can hold in relation to the represented
• the means, methods and media through which representations are constructed and used
• what it is that is being represented 

 In addition, this seminar will provide critical insight into the use of contemporary modelling tools and methods together with an examination of the implications their use has within the territories of architectural design, realisation and experience.

Venue

The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts – School of Architecture

Auditorium 3

Philip de Langes Alle 10

1435 Copenhagen

 Denmark

Speakers:

Phil Ayres (CITA)

Sarat Babu (Bartlett, UCL)

Prof. Mark Burry (SIAL, RMIT)

Dr. Rachel Cruise (University of Sheffield)

Paul Nicholas (CITA)

Brady Peters (CITA)

Martin Tamke (CITA)

Prof. Mette Ramsgard Thomsen (CITA)

The seminar programme can be found here.

This is a public event, all are welcome.

Please register by email to phil.ayres@kadk.dk

Vacant PhD scholarship "Complex Modelling"

Though it is not specifically related to textiles, I thought I would just mention this great opportunity for PhD studentship as it might interest some of our architects and digital crafting friends. The PhD will take place at CITA, Centre for IT & Architecture, The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture from the 1rst of April 2012. The Scholarship is for 3 years and fully funded. The position is placed within the framing research topic Complex Modelling.

A bit more content is provided below with introduction to the context of research but for full details about the application please visit this link.

Over the last 30 years, we have witnessed a large-scale digitisation of archictectural practice. Contemporary architecture is almost exclusively produced using digital tools, and the computer has become a key tool in the way architecture is thought of, designed and produced. Today, digital tools have an impact on architecture on the most simple level to the most complex one. If on the one hand, the computer is a simple drawing tool that we use to represent our surroundings, its is on the other hand also the medium through which we seek solutions to complex contemporary issues that our society faces. It is through these digital tools and their potential to compute large amounts of data with a high degree of complexity that we as a knowledge society seek to find solutions to the urbanisation of mega-cities, globalisation and sustainability.

This shift has placed new demands on our represenation forms. The new information models that are able to actively calculate the economic, environmental and spatial effects of a proposal, have transformed architectural representation into a dynamic and flexible medium that is able to interface directly with outside knowledge fields. However, information models also have there own inherent problems. They become larger because they contain data from the many practices that constitute the construction industry, they become longer because they are expanded to include several of the building phases and they become deeper because the specific volumes of information, which the models must be able to handle, are growing.

This results in a dramatic increase in complexity, and leads us to question the fundamental ways in which information models are organised. If we as architects and engineers must work with large datasets and must be able to simulate and analyse these in ways that make sense, it is necessary that we consider how these models may be presented.

Today, information models are reproduced in accordance with architecture’s traditional development in three dimensions. As an automation of plans and section views, the 3D model serves as a continuation of the traditional architectural drawing hall. This PhD project will explore how other forms of information organisation may help to create intelligent tools for architectural design, analysis and realisation. To manage these digital models concretely and optimally, it is essential to have a critical understanding of how parametric and generative computer models may be developed and monitored.

Applications are to be handed in no later than Wednesday 1 February 2012 at 12.00 noon.

The Role of Material Evidence in Architectural Research: Drawings, Models, Experiments

The Role of Material Evidence in Architectural Research: Drawings, Models, Experiments, by Anne Beim and Mette Ramsgaard Thomsen is one of the recent publications of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture, Design and Conservation discussing what is regarded as valid evidence in arhcitectural research and how to evaluate these materials.

The publication gathers the results of the debates initiated during the seminar of the same name organized at the school in November 2010. It gathers texts and interviews from guest researchers as for instance Jonathan Hill discussing Design Research as a 500 hundred years tradition or Yeoryia Manolopoulou talking about Enaction Drawing. The book is also an introduction to on-going PhD projects at the school which range 'from tectonic inquiries into material qualities and properties to computational crafting and model making, to the creation and testing of theoretical models for simulation or articulation of tectonic principles in ordered pictograms'. A modest but rich contribution to the debate of practice-based research methodology.

With contributions by

Researchers

Jonathan Hill, Yeoryia Manolopoulou, Peter Bertram, Billie Faircloth, Karin Søndergaard, Merete Madsen, Mikkel Kragh

PhD Students

Anne-Mette Manelius, Aurélie Mossé, Peter Andreas Sattrup, Ofri Earon, Nanet Krogsbæk Mathiasen, Jacob Riiber Nielsen, Søren Nielsen, Johannes Rauff Greisen, Jan Schipull Kauschen, Cecilie Bendixen, Tore Banke

Digital Crafting Consequences: Symposium

Today digital technologies inform all levels of building practice. As a link between representation, design, analysis and production, digital technologies are both practical tools by which to optimise existing practice as well as speculative media by which to explore its future. By facilitating exchange and feedback between the different knowledge fields of design, engineering and crafts, digital technology holds the potential to effect new answers to the complex challenges of contemporary building practice.

The second Digital Crafting symposium will discuss the future perspectives for a new integrated digital practice. Inviting practitioners from the fields of architecture, engineering and theory to share their experiences and present recent work, the symposium aims to unfold new visions for thinking the links between design, analysis and fabrication. With a focus on interdisciplinary collaboration, bottom up thinking and complex modeling we ask how the shared digital platform can create new material strategies for design.

Digital Crafting is hosted by CITA Centre for IT and Architecture, Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture, Design and Conservation.

Date:                     25. Nov 2011 - 10.30h - 17.30h

Venue:                 Royal Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture, Design and Conservation Google maps

Auditorium - Rhytmisk Musikkonservatorium

Leo Mathisens Vej 1, Holmen, Copenhagen

Program:

10:15                     Registration and coffee

10:45                     Welcome and introduction Martin Tamke

11.00h Session 1:  Consequences for making

chair: Phil Ayres (CITA)

Antoine Picon - Harvard Graduate School of Design / Cambridge

Fabio Gramazio – ETH / Gramazio Kohler architects / Zuerich

14.00h  Session 2:  Consequences for material practice

chair: Christoph Schindler (schindlersalmeron)

Jan Knippers – TU Stuttgart / Knippers Helbig Engineers / Stuttgart - New York

Marta Malé-Alemany – IAAC Barcelona / AA London

16.00h Session 3:  Consequences for design practice

chair: Mette Ramsgard Thomsen (CITA)

Tobias Nolte - Gehry Technologies / Paris

Reinhard Kropf – Helen Hard Architects / Stavanger / Norway

17.30 Closing remarks and and of Symposium

The DigitalCrafting symposium addresses practitioners, researchers and students from the fields of architecture, engineering and construction. The symposium is open to the public and free of charge. Due to demand and to support organisation we ask you email your participation: martin.tamke@karch.dk

Ambience Conference 28-30 November 2011

The University of Borås is hosting a very promising conference and exhibition next fall, gathering researchers, artists, designers and architects who challenge the boundaries between art, design and technology. With a foundation in artistic practice the conference will be organized as a meeting place where art, design, architect and technology communities can come together to discuss and share ideas on the interfaces between art and technology development; a place where art, design, architecture and technology can meet and interact, to inform each other, and to bring new ideas back to their own community.

The full programme is about to come but I can already let you know that Jane Scott and I will respectively present a paper. All the details for the conference are available on the conference's website. Looking forward to seeing you there.

Reef exhibited at 1:1 research by design

Reef is the design of a self-actuated ceiling questioning how adaptive minimum energy structures can contribute re-establishing home in a synergic relationship with nature. Composed by an archipelago of electro-active modules, Reef constantly re-designs its own landscape as its modules change shape according to the exterior. Like a sail, they open and close gradually following the pulse of the wind, materializing the invisible flow of energy that connects the inside with the outside. Like corals, Reef is calcifying over time as the supporting technology is becoming obsolete, transferring its actuation back to the inhabitant as natural airflow is invited to come in.

Reef is currently displayed as a part of the 1:1 research by design, an exhibition by Institute 4 at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture, Copenhagen until the 10th of April 2011. All the details about the exhibition here.

Design: Aurélie Mossé
Collaborators: Guggi Kofod, David Gauthier
Photography: Mathilde Fuzeau

With the precious help of Kristine Agergaard Jensen, Anca Gabriela Bejenariu, Lucie Benech, Aude Béranger, Liv Elbirk, Vibber Hermansen, Bori Kovacs, Jessica Meek, Paul Nicholas, Matteo Oliverio, Brady Peters, Martin Tamke.

Smart Geometry

Smart geometry is a key event in the field of architecture. 'To the new generations of designers, engineers and architects, mathematics and algorithms are becoming as natural as pen and pencil. Smartgeometry promotes the emergence of this new paradigm in which digital designers and craftsmen, are able to intelligently exploit the combination of digital and physical media taking projects from design right through to production.'

This year the event is hosted by CITA in Copenhagen from 28th of March until 2dn of April. The event is organized around a series of workshops and conferences time, including the following speakers:

Ben van Berkel UN Studio

Usman Haque Haque Design + Research Studio

Billie Faircloth KieranTimberlake Director of Research

Craig Schwitter + Gijs Libourel Buro Happold + Adaptive Building Initiative

Lisa Amini IBM Smarter City Lab, Dublin

Mette Ramsgaard Thomsen Head of Center for Information Technology and Architecture (CITA)

Find out more about the exciting programme on smart geometry.

Call for participation / electro-active polymers

Do you want to find out more about smart materials? Aurélie proposes you an immersion in the world of electro-active polymers: plastics changing shape with electricity. As a part of her PhD exploring the boundaries between textiles and architecture, she is looking for benevolent(s) to assist her for the making of a responsive installation. The installation will consist in a ceiling surface made out of electro-active modules, changing shape according to wind intensity and direction. It will be displayed within the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture, Copenhagen this coming month of March. Exhibition opens on the 11th of March and will be on until end of April.

Beyond the joys of team work, this is a great opportunity to discover the research environment CITA (Centre for IT & Architecture) as well as to get hands on and learn how to build electro-active modules. You will also get an insight on digital crafting methods, including laser-cutting and screen-printing techniques.

She would be happy to have help during these two key phases:

• 21rst of February – 6th of March: making of electro-active polymers
• 7th - 10th of March: setting up of the installation

If you are interested, please get in touch directly with Aurélie asp:

aurelie.mosse@karch.dk

+45 50 36 62 38

Inhabitating Adaptive Architecture Workshop

Extended deadline for what sounds like a very exciting workshop:

Inhabitating Adaptive Architecture
Saturday 5 March 2011

Chaired by Holger Schnädelbach and Jonathan Hale [The University of Nottingham]

Deadline for papers extended to Friday 28 January

Announcement of acceptance 4 February 2011

This workshop will bring togehter experts from the various disciplines contributing to Adaptive Architecture to discuss the challenges faced by inhabitants (individuals, groups & organisations) in occupying adaptive buildings over various time scales.

To download the call for papers (pdf) click HERE.

Please submit a one-page A4 document to include a brief bio and a position statement (of no more than 500 words), reflecting on what it means to you to inhabit Adaptive Architecture. Participants will be selected from all submissions based on peer-review. Submission should be formatted as MSoft Word document, 12 point Arial, singled spaced. It should also include five key words (normal type), your name, institution, qualifications, role, contact address, contact e-mail address, telephone number at top of document (bold type).

Papers should be submitted by 28January 2011 to adaptivearchitecture@buildingcentre.co.uk. If the file is larger than 10MB please send an ftp link or similar and we will download from there.

Source

Adaptive Architecture Conference

An International Conference at the Building Centre, London,
3-5 March 2011

Architecture has always been inventive and adaptable. However, our current era is unique in its technological potential combined with societal and environmental challenges. The need to generate sustainability, developments in design techniques and technology advances are leading to the emergence of a new Adaptive Architecture.

The built environment is becoming truly responsive in terms of physical, real-time changes acting under intelligent control. Adaptive Architecture can be characterized by four key attributes; it is Dynamic, Transformable, Bio-inspired and Intelligence.

Drawing on these themes, the Adaptive Architecture Conference will bring together leading practitioners, researchers and industry experts who will present built work and practical research. Presenters will demonstrate new types of reconfigurable architecture, and will show how adaptive strategies can extend a building’s life cycle, enhance energy efficiency and optimise resource utilisation.

The conference will be organised into four modules:

Dynamic Facades
Next-generation, responsive facades will be examined, including the creation of a building fabric that is both intelligent and communicative. Presenters will demonstrate systems that are capable of reducing energy demands, enhancing occupant comfort and integrating energy generation into contemporary architecture.

Transformable Structures
Methods to create building-scale structures that change their size and shape will be demonstrated. Speakers will discuss architecture that adapts over different time-scales, whether daily cycles or long term response to changing economic demands, climate adaptation, weather patterns, emergencies and other external factors

Bio-inspired materials
Nature creates responsive organisms and materials that transform, heal, and change colour. These functions originate at the molecular level and scale up to create adaptive systems that actuate by chemical and physical cues. Utilizing insights from the natural world, researchers are now creating a new generation of adaptive materials and devices. Speakers will present state of the art research, and discuss how nature’s strategies can provide inspiration for design

Intelligence
As buildings develop the capacity to adapt, the challenge is to implement effective control where building automation systems, user interfaces and services can interact seamlessly, to embed intelligence within the architecture. Speakers will present current strategies as well as explore the future potential of intelligent systems.

---

Adaptive Architecture international conference will be running a peer reviewed stream for research papers.

The review committee is composed of:

Philip Beesley, Philip Beesley Architect Inc. and University of Waterloo
Professor Ulrich Knaack, TU Delft
Professor Robert Kronenburg, University of Liverpool
William McLean, University of Westminster
Andrew Scoones, The Building Centre
Holger Schnädelbach, University of Nottingham
Bob Shiel, Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London
Professor Michael Stacey, University of Nottingham

If you are interested in participating in the Adaptive Architecture international conference please contact
adaptivearchitecture@buildingcentre.co.uk

website

Organisers: The Building Centre and The Architecture & Tectonics Research Group of the University of
Nottingham.

Digital Relations in Architecture

A PhD Symposium organized by CITA to investigate the impacts & challenges of digital technologies on the way we build and understand space.

I have been part of the organization and I can't wait to present my work in such a context where 17 PhD from three research centres concerned with IT & Architecture: SIAL (Australia), Bartlett (Uk) and CITA (Dk) will be gathered in dialogue with key researchers in the field including, among others, Mark & Jane Burry, Mette Ramsgaard Thomsen or Sean Hanna.

Architectures of time

In Architectures of Time, Sanford Kwinter offers a critical guide to the modern history of time and to the interplay between the physical sciences and the arts. Tracing the transformation of twentieth-century epistemology to the rise of thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, Kwinter explains how the demise of the concept of absolute time, and of the classical notion of space as a fixed background against which things occur, led to field theory and a physics of the "event." He suggests that the closed, controlled, and mechanical world of physics gave way to the approximate, active, and qualitative world of biology as a model of both scientific and metaphysical explanation.

Kwinter examines theory of time and space in Einstein's theories of relativity and shows how these ideas were reflected in the writings of the sculptor Umberto Boccioni, the town planning schema of the Futurist architect Antonio Sant'Elia, the philosophy of Henri Bergson, and the writings of Franz Kafka. He argues that the writings of Boccioni and the visionary architecture of Sant'Elia represent the earliest and most profound deployments of the concepts of field and event. In discussing Kafka's work, he moves away from the thermodynamic model in favor of the closely related one of Bergsonian duree, or virtuality. He argues that Kafka's work manifests a coherent cosmology that can be understood only in relation to the constant temporal flux that underlies it.

This book is of immense inspiration to discuss the notion of time in respect to responsive architecture and the idea of an architecture of the event as a fruit of modernity. I am now exploring how it can inform the thinking of self-actuated textiles.

Source

From Gesamtkunstwerk to Complexity – Architecture in All Scales

Dear colleagues,

You are kindly invited to join an international seminar in Tampere, Finland on 22 – 24.4.2010. The seminar is part of the annual seminar series of the Nordic Association of Architectural Research, this time organized by the Tampere University of Technology/ School of Architecture.

The theme is:From Gesamtkunstwerk to Complexity – Architecture in All Scales

In the Gesamtkunstwerk idea all arts were combined to create a total environment – is the same now discussed under the concept of complexity? If complexity is a unifying theory for different sciences, can it also be understood as a new synthesis of arts?

What is complexity in architecture? It has been said that there are three kinds of complexity: 1) visual, as the term was used in Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, 2) cybernetic, referring to machines, and 3) biological, meaning the complexity of nature and its applications in algorithms. This may be a valid categorization – but what else?

1. History & theory

Art, science and technology as the model for architecture – then and now? Concepts come and go, but some are more durable than others. Gesamtkunstwerk seems to be one of them, resurfacing whenever there is a need for a comprehensive multifaceted outlook. Is such an outlook needed today? What was Gesamtkunstwerk originally?

2. Morphology

How does the understanding of complexity change our approach to urban form? Morphological transformations are multi-scalar - what is the linkage between the transformations in urban form and in architecture? What is the current design challenge of cities?

3. Ethics

If the environment is characterized by complexity, is it ethical to create idyllic enclaves of presumed safety? Is there a place for ethics in architecture? If not, what is in the center of architecture? Has humanity been cast aside?

4. Planning and design processes & methods

What is the relationship between reality and virtual reality? Between metaphor and model? Are there other ways to handle complexity in architecture besides computer modeling? Could integrated design approaches be the answer? Or can complexity be handled? If the goal is to understand, should not methods be found to somehow guide complexity?

Those who wish to speak at the seminar on a topic that may fit under the above mentioned four sub-themes, please send an abstract of a maximum of 250 words to the address architecture@tut.fi by February 15, 2010.

Those who have been informed that their abstracts have been accepted, and also wish to prepare a paper for the seminar, should send the paper (max 40 000 characters) by April 9, 2010 to the address architecture@tut.fi . The papers will be published in a conference CD-rom, and selected papers will also be published in an issue of Nordisk Arkitekturforskning.

Those who wish to participate without presenting a talk or a paper are invited to fill the registration form on the conference website (in function from February 2010).

The talks and papers should preferably be in English. Further information will be available soon from the following website: www.tut.fi/ark.

Conference e-mail: architecture@tut.fi .

Abstracts in by 15.2.2010

Registration by 31.3.2010

Paper deadline 9.4.2010

Seminar 22.4. – 24.4.2010.

Francois Roche in Copenhagen

French Architect Francois Roche from the innovative studio R&Sie will give a talk at the house of Architecture in Copenhagen. Come and check his work:

14th of january, 17h30
Arkitekternes Hus – Strandgade 27A
1401 Copenhague
Free entrance

More info here

Digital Architecture Event at Bartlett

As part of the Bartlett School of Architecture International Lecture Series there will be a FREE Digital Architecture Event this coming Wednesday.

Date:Wednesday 9th December, 2009 from 6.30 PM (GMT)
Open to public, arrive early to avoid disappointment.

Organiser of Digital Architecture London Conference, Ruairi Glynn has brought together some of London's most prolific recent graduates in a group presentation of innovative and inspiring projects examining the scope of 'digitally enabled' architecture. Presenters include this years' President's Silver Medal Winner, Nicholas Szczepaniak, the Bartlett's Christian Kerrigan and Ric Lipson, AA's Adam Nathaniel Furman, AA DRL's 'Shampoo' Group and RCA's Jordan Hodgson.

To place this in context: from the first generative algorithms of John Frazer, to Cedric Price and Gordon Pask's proposed interactive buildings, to the technologically inspired hinterlands of Archigram's walking, reconfigurable, and instant cities, London has long been a provocateur of digitally enabled architecture.

This spirit of speculation and provocation continues in a young generation of designers who slip with ease between computational algorithms and hand drawings, paper models and robotic manufacturing. In November 2009 Ruairi Glynn and Sara Shafiei co-authored and published 'Digital Architecture: Passages Through Hinterlands' which went further than the exhibition, revealing the processes behind leading graduate work alongside interviews with young practices including Amanda Levete Architects, Plasma Studio, JDS Architects, sixteen* (makers), and marcosandmarjan - discussing how the these innovative explorations have begun to make their mark on the built environment. Following the lecture, there will be a book launch of 'Digital Architecture: Passages Through Hinterlands' at the Bartlett. It can also be previewed online at

www.passagesthroughhinterlands.com

Climate & Architecture - towards an atmospheric architecture

In correlation with the Climate & Architecture exhibition, the Royal Academy of Fines Arts, School of Architecture, Copenhagen is hosting a promising seminar embracing the idea of an atmospheric architecture.

Date:	10.12.09 - 10.12.09
Location:	The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture The Exhibtion Hall Danneskiold-Samsøes Allé 51 Holmen
Time:	13.00
Event holder:	The Nantes School of Art & The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture

Today the climate has become the main aim of architects and architectural practice changes in order to integrate the goal of safeguarding the climate. But as the balance with climate and its protection becomes the goal of architecture, it is also possible that climate becomes the ressources and tools of architecture.

Thus weather vocabulary used to describe atmospheric phenomena (convection, pressure, depressions, temperature, heat, relative humidity, reveberation, for example) becomes an architectural language.

The Nantes symposium of Copenhagen 2009 "Climate & Architecture - towards an atmospheric architecture" seeks to integrate the climate mission of architecture not only as the purpose of the contemporary architecture, but also as the process.

The full programme can be downloaded here.