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The Contemporary Practice: Beyond the Crisis invited designers, clients, developers, and educators to discuss interdisciplinary challenges affecting the built environment.

Symposium logotype

Regional and international speakers with multi-disciplinary backgrounds initiated discussions about: political vision and the built environment (Leadership); specialisation, scale and region (Construction); process, fabrication, education (Design). The initiative supports the Research Cluster Design and Technology for a Sustainable Built Environment launched by the School of Architecture and the Built Environment, KTH, in January 2010.

Among the speakers were Christer Larsson (Director of Development, Malmö), Kristina Alvendal (Vice Mayor at City of Stockholm), Sarah Jackson (Director of Design Review, CABE, UK), Klaus Bode (founding Partner, BDSP, London), Hugh Whitehead (Specialist Modeling Group, Foster and Partners, London), Rikard Espling (Skanska Sweden), Frank Barkow (Barkow Leibinger Arkitekten, Berlin), Erik Stening (Skandinaviska Glassystem, Gothenburg), Neri Oxman (MIT, Cambridge), Ole Gustavsson (Snöhetta, Oslo) and Cristiano Ceccato (Zaha Hadid Architects, London).

The event was organized by Architectural Technologies Research at the KTH School of Architecture, through Tim Anstey, Hanif Kara, Lina Martinsson and Erik Törnkvist, in association with the cross-department Forum for Industrial Building Practices (KTH FIND) and with the support of Stockholms Arkitektförening. I was an advisor on early stages of planning, and a moderator for the second session (with Louise Masreliez), themed: Construction – Specialisation, scale and region.

Cover of Conditions # 4

Article published in Conditions # 4: THE PRODUCTION OF ADDED VALUE , 2010

This issue of CONDITIONS is an investigation into the production of added value in architecture. The economic crisis has put architecture under increased pressure. Everybody wants “more for less” from architecture. The promise of “more” is everywhere in the world of architecture. Architects are in danger of getting reduced to mere service providers, unless they are able to increase the ambition beyond the given assignment.

Abstract:
The past 15 years have seen an open-ended, innovation driven development in the field of digital design in architecture, where the current ambitions are focused on fabrication and production. In many ways this is concluding a phase of free exploration by proving that things before envisioned can be actualized as built work. In parallel, the discourse has targeted critical practice, suggesting its replacement with projective practice, and design intelligence has been defined as a mode of operation that allows innovative architecture in a commercial arena. Recent attempts to conjecture a heterogeneous discourse into a collective manifesto, as well as a regard of the first decade of this century being characterized as “un-serious” in its formal approach, has been answered by critical voices that suggest that this trajectory of architectural development is superficial, internal, self-absorbed or even subversive.

This text is investigating the shifting field of digitally based design within architecture, and its recent turns, including internal discourse, external debate, and samples of especially potential design. It suggests that we need to multiply our agendas and combine techniques with agency. This needs to be supported by the establishment of new conceptual tools that incorporate digital techniques, the notion of the parametric and the potential of network practices in order to step up to the challenges of the future while building on the recent past. The text is illustrated by the work of Elliot Krause, Diploma Unit 16 2010.

www.conditionsmagazine.com

Background image by Jung Joon Yun, AA DIP16

This lecture introduced notions of digital and physical prototyping as techniques and effects as an introduction to a five day workshop exploring parametric principles and Islamic patterns. Examples from contemporary built architecture suggested how this field is expanding into practice, and the experimental work of Krets as well as selected student projects from AA Dip16 provided in depth ideas of different approaches. As the curriculum at Virginia Commonwealth University in Doha covers interior design, fashion and graphic design, a particular focus was given on small scale and installation work.

Team leader Brett Kearney presenting project outcome

This short but intense workshop at the Virginia Commonwealth University in Doha  was looking at parametric adaptation of Islamic patterns. It was conducted as team efforts, with students and teachers collaborating on projects in different scales. Rhinoceros and Grasshopper were introduced as the working platform, and the projects explored how a contemporary view of patters could be implemented in terrain, furniture or product scale. Facilitated over five evenings, the teams managed to both get a basic understanding of parametric principles, and deliver project outcomes. I was invited by assistant professor Johan Granberg, teaching in the department of interior design, but the participants came from several departments including fashion and graphic design.

Model by Lotta Alm

I was invited as a jury member in the diploma reviews at the KTH School of Architecture, along with Maria Larsson and Bård Helland. Since the jury by definition is external, this was a rare opportunity at a time when I have no affiliation to the architecture school. After 10 years of teaching this was a first time in the diploma jury for me, and a chance to discuss the conditions of the diploma thesis as well as to review a wide range of projects with different supervisors from an outside perspective. With my return to teaching in the fall, it will probably be a while before I do this again.

Abstract:

As the agenda of many digitally driven practices has shifted to physical fabrication and full scale production, this paper suggests that new conceptual layers need to be integrated into the design agenda. Throughout the field, architects are formulating conceptual frameworks for future development, often defined by aesthetic identity or fabrication principles, and in some cases full manifests for implementation of parametric principles in all scales of the built environment are stated. I would argue that there may be alternate ways of widening the scope of experimental digital practice by looking at fields outside of architecture all together, and I suggest that one such field is literature, in particular Science Fiction. Rather than seeing the possibility of rational fabrication as the only motivation for the full implementation of recent digital explorations, or considering the digital design field mature enough for the establishment of a common manifest, this line of thought suggests a more open framework, situated between technology and utopian thought. By looking at a number of concepts identified within Science Fiction theory, the paper proposes that a design approach in analogy with the way an SF author designs worlds to be explored through a narrative, could be a fruitful way forward as the digital design field risks either an introverted discourse or a mundane application.

Unpublished paper

A course given by the department of Project Communication looking at IT and Information Systems from an organizational and business perspective. Supported by guest lectures the 4th – 5th year engineering students developed team projects investigated one of four given cases by interviewing IT managers, CIOs and IT management consultants. Focus was given on the strategic levels of IT as incorporated in companies. I was coordinating the course which ended in December 2009.

Component model of student proposal

I was invited to the final review of the Perfromative Design studio, a 4th and 5th year studio at the KTH School of Architecture. This year´s theme is Architectures of Recursion: Compounds, Contours and Colloids, with task for the semester being An architecture of the interior – connective tissue for an academic environment.

Based on the formal concepts of Compounds, Contours and Colloids, the students were asked to design a building for the Emergent Materials full scale research laboratory, a series of services including bike workshop/bike shop, small bookstore and re-use bookstore, deli and student housing / guest research housing at KTH Campus. The task was set in response to a desire to create a “living campus” for the KTH.

An additional conceptual layer was added through the notion of micro climates, defined as:

A microclimate is a local atmospheric zone where the climate differs from the surrounding area. Addressing issues of microclimates, whether they are artificial, conceptual or biological, is a way to approach aspects of environmental performance on a conceptual, programmatic and material level. Creating an ecosystem, the combined physical and biological components of an environment, a system or network of relations.

The students accomplished very well developed proposal after a very short semester, that also included a study trip to the cave dwellings in Cappadocia, and the discussions that emerged around techniques, formal strategies and the functional requirements were very rewarding.

Rendering by Michael Ahlers

Final reviews in DIP16, with interesting new progression that deals with urban conditions. Students have at this stage initiated their investigation of a 1 hectare area, in which their material system, based on particular fabrication techniques will be deployed. This year our students are selecting their own sites around the world, but an initial urban understanding has been built up collectively through a Beijing study trip.

Presentation by Johan Knutas

I was invited critic in the technical seminar titled Integrated Parametric Design, run by Lina Martinsson Achi and Gunnar Tibert. The seminar is part of the new course structure in the 4th year curriculum, as a support to the design studios. A short introduction to the seminar as follows:

The overall aim of the course is for the students to develop a software independent work method that takes structural mechanics as a creative starting point for parametric design, linking parametric modelling with structural analysis.

The students were working with software such as Grasshopper, ForcePad and PointSketch to explore the relation between geometry and structural mechanics, and how this link may be investigated and developed through analysis modelling. The seminars constitute an interesting new opportunity to go deeper into certain aspects of design, and it was very nice to see projects that explored actual structural behaviors.