Doctoral Thesis cover
The doctoral thesis Architectural Prototypes II: Reformations, Speculations and Strategies within the Digital Design Field was defended at KTH School of Architecture in Stockholm on June 8th 2012 with opponent Mette Ramsgard Thomsen (PhD, Professor and Head of CITA, Copenhagen). The research studies were conducted at the Division for Project Communication, with thesis subject Architecture. Read more here.
Ulrika's wonderful introduction that set the standards of the feast
On June 8th 2012 I defended my doctoral thesis, and passing the procedure, I received a doctorate of Archtiecture. The end of a journey starting in 2005, it was a challenge, a moment of great joy, and a time of despair. Looking back, I have to express my gratitude most strongly to many. My family; my mother Else, my sisters Anna and Camilla, my brother Hans, their spouses Colin, Martti and Lotta, my nieces and nephews Mathilda, Emma, Max and Jonathan (the photographers), and Amelie, my love, and her parents Bo and Suzanne, and sister Ebba with Pete.All for making this event something that joined professional passions with the most personal issues.
For making the endeavor possible: my professor Örjan, advisor Katja, opponent Mette, chairman Tina, and review board Lars-Henrik, Thomas and Marcus. For the celebration again my family, Amelie, Bo (in charge of the barbecue), Suzanne, Anna-Lisa, Birgitta, and Erik, and collegues Desireé. Erika, Nina, Hamia, Milad and Sander.
For speeches far beyond my expectations; Anna, Örjan, Nina, Bo, Daniel, Marja, Elsa, Ulrika. For making it possible to celebrate in a marvelous spot, Karin and the White Stockholm office. End friends travelling from far; Kjell and Emilia.
For coordinating, providing the atmosphere, and making git all possible; Ulrika, and again Amelie! While the thesis itself exposes little of the joy and sadness of this day, it can be read here. And for absent loved ones; my father and his partner; Svante and Ulla-Britt, sincerely missed and never forgotten.
Michael Speaks at White Arkitekter. Photo: Thomas Zaar
We were very happy to have Michael Speaks as a guest at White Arkitekter, in a lunch conversation organized by Dsearch in collaboration with White R&D. The theme was research and design in practice, and Speaks made the interesting statement that universities start to behave like companies, and large companies start to look at knowledge in a similar way as universities. He suggested that there is an urgent need to re-educate experienced architects, and that this can be accomplished by a more innovative mode of practice in addition to classical training. As a concluding remark, he stated that the only remaining value of vanguard architects is the vanguards of practice, the architects that reform the mode of practice itself.
Michael Speaks in the seminar with students from Perfromative Design and Architectures of Interdisciplinarity
As a collaboration between KTH Performative Design studio, we were happy to have Michael Speaks as a guest. The Dean of University of Kentucky, Speaks is previously known for introducing design intelligence as a source of innovation in practice, as well as introducing Dutch architecture to a wider international audience in the 1990s. He gave a public evening lecture at the KTH, and held a seminar with our two studios on the topic of design and research in teaching and practice. The events were organized by myself in collaboration with Daniel Norell of the Performative Design studio.
We were fortunate to receive additional funding from the KTH School of Architecture for this event.
The ACSA Flip Your Field advert
I presented the paper Cognitive Estrangement in Digital Design Practice at the 2010 ACSA West Central Fall Conference in Chicago. The theme of the year was Flip Your Field, implying to a return to issues explored in architectural research over the past fifteen years in order to define ten opportunities for ideological re-investment with the aim to trade up the discipline. I was part of the Versions panel, and I suggested that there is a need to link speculative design work with global issues in order to not do less experimental work, but rather more, but tied into narratives that opens up the field of exploration.
The paper suggests that there are concepts and definitions within Science Fiction studies that may be useful in order to establish frameworks for this mode of speculative design. This is a trajectory that will be continued in my forthcoming PhD thesis.
UFO members in Athens September 2010
The annual UFO meeting in Greece included a very enjoyable 3-day sailing trip around the Saronic Islands, in preparation for the final meeting on the hill facing Acropolis. A much needed getaway for all of us, and a very rewarding conversation on where our field of architectural exploration is heading in the near future.
We have now launched the new design studio Architectures of Interdisciplinarity at the KTH School of Architecture. The teaching team consists of Professor Hanif Kara, Lina Martinsson Achi, Paul Scott and Jonas Runberger. The studio is part of the 4th+5th year curriculum and will focus on design based collaborations between different disciplines.
Studio agenda
Studio 11 will seek to synthesise technological investigations and design through an interdisciplinary discourse to produce Architecture. We will research architectural, cultural, sociological and technological implications of contemporary design strategies. The studio will emphasise methods for testing proposals and evaluating relative values of quantitative and qualitative modelling with the aim of testing a real proposition on a chosen site. Our interests will include high performance materials, digital design technique, rapid prototyping methods and computer aided manufacturing systems.
Each year the studio will select a particular typology and, during the 2010-2011 cycle of the studio, the overarching theme will be industrial architecture with a final project combining an Energy-from-Waste power plant with a public program.
The studio is founded on inter-disciplinary design methodologies led by Architects; linking technology and concepts at the intersection of architecture and structural/environmental engineering in order to develop innovative design solutions. Students will learn how to employ advanced digital design techniques at a strategic and detailed level. The interdisciplinary approach will provide skills in communication and collaboration with external specialists, as well as a general understanding of advanced structural and environmental concerns. Principles of fabrication, production and construction will be developed in the final output.
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.
Background image Claudia White, AA DIP16
I presented the work of AA DIP 16 at this event which gathered researchers, entrepreneurs, decision makers and architects for a focused discussion on Biomimetics and Biomimicry in a symposium at KTH Albanova, Stockholm. Additional speakers included Christopher Allen and Denise DeLuca from the Biomimicry Institute, Vincent Bulone and Lars Berglund representing Biomime at KTH, Richard Bonser from the University of Reading, Ulrika Karlsson of Servo and KTH, Antonia Ax:son Johnson as founder of Antonia Ax:son Johnson Foundation for Sustainable Development as well as a number of researchers and representatives from the city of Stockholm. My focus was partly on giving examples of biomimetic references in the work of the students at AA DIP16, but also to introduce the student design project as a platform for collaboration and a testbed that could prove beneficial to interests outside eduction. My hope is that this event will lead to new collaboration in student work as well as in my own research.
Images from my licentiate thesis
I presented my PhD thesis project at the KTH Department of Real Estate and Construction Management (which my department Project Communication is affiliated to), in the weekly series of lunch seminars. My focus was to give an overview of my field of research into architectural design processes and the different contexts that I relate to, including parametric techniques, fabrication and industrial processes. This was my first presentation in this context since I moved from Industrial Engineering and Management in April. I concluded with defining the current challenges of the project, including establishing more firm links between design driven techniques and design- and production processes in the building industry.