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

Jonas Lundberg introducing DIP16

We introduced Diploma unit 16 at the Architectural Association at the start of the new year, followed by interviews and student selection. We have a good team and look forward to the coming year. Jonas Lundberg and Andrew Yau will head the unit this year, assisted by Thomas Tong. I will be focusing on the fortcoming AA Agendas publication that will feature the design based research of the unit over the first five years, and do regular London trips for specific unit events.

More on the work of the unit at dip16.net

Future Exhibitions

Future Exhibitions is a new publication from Swedish Travelling Exhibitions (Riksutställningar), edited by Mårten Jansson. I was interviewed about the work of Diploma Unit 16 at the Architectural Association, together with Mats Brodén, who has given strong support to the work, and has a special interest in bimomimetics.
www.riksutstallningar.se

The publication has also been reviewed on www.we-make-money-not-art.com.

thesis cover

My licentiate thesis Architectural Prototypes is now available for purchase in the Konstig bookstore in Stockholm. Very limited number of copies.

Networks and Environments

Krets projects PARCEL and SplineGraft are featured in Networks and Environments, a monograph on Servo published by DAMIDI Architecture Publishing CO, Korea.

damdi.co.kr/dd27.html

Krets projects PARCEL and SplineGraft are featured in Hatch: The New Architectural Generation.

“Hatch” showcases 114 architects who will define the physical fabric of our cities for the next 30 years, as well as the theoretical and interpretive background of architectural practice worldwide. These are practitioners for whom the old categories do not hold, and for whom modernism is no longer the orthodoxy. As the role of architects in cities changes, young practitioners pursue a range of work as writers, critics, curators, teachers, fashion designers, computer programmers, club promoters, materials experts, engineers, installation artists, developers and builders. Critically selected, the work of each architect, writer and photographer in “Hatch” is examined in detail to uncover the approaches that will reach their full fruition in the coming years and decades. In this work, 800 photographs and drawings of projects give more than just eye candy. With this book you can decide for yourself how good these young stars are.

Hatch: The New Architectural Generation, Kieran Long, Laurence King Publishing, 2008

On the making of Holocene, a mutimedial event at Berwaldhallen, by Jonas Bohlin, Majgull Axelsson and Lars Siltberg. Performed by Sveriges Radios Symfoniorkester conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen and Radiokören with Malena Ernman.

Column in Rum journal 10/2008

SplineGraft featured in Swedish journal Arkitekten, 2006 (in Swedish).

Ylva Gunterberg Ädelqvist and Jonas Runberger interviewed on their experiences from their study on Swedish modular housing, and their vision on the future role of the architect.

Interview in Swedish design magazine RUM

Article speculating on the future role of the architect in industrialized production. Relating recent experimental practices to developments within other disciplines, such as Lean Thinking emerging in the automobile industry, the article also shows examples of best practice such as several project by the New York based architecture firm SHoP.

Published in Swedish in Arkitekten