While I do appreciate the theme Architectural Machines, it is more for its systemic connotations than for the more pragmatic approach of seeing architecture as adaptive, responsive or interactive. A few interesting notions were brought forward. Philippe Morel was really pushing the idea of optimization, and presented his chairs which have evolved only taking in the parameters of structure. I thought it was very biased, and did not really problematize how optimization can be single minded, and many other qualities can be lost en route. Carlo Ratti suggested that the architecture of the future would be a living architecture, in which responsive and interactive features would completely replace form and matter. Not so surprising from MIT, but again, I felt that a more inclusive approach in which formal design, material application and responsive system can work in synergy.
I think both myself and Ulrika Karlsson felt that we partly have left the context of responsive environments. I am still very interested in issues related to this however, such as the interfoliation of technical and other systems and the development of projects that perform on different levels.
Brett started the panel with the question of what happens when the architectural machine fails, or when the project suffers serious problems. In this discussion, which was quite interesting, issues of the experiment (that can be succesfull even if it ”fails”, prototypes, risktaking, digital perfromance versus material design etc were put forward? Bret finalized with an open question not yet covered; the importance for these machines in collaborative design. This I would have been very interested in discussing at length.
Full list of speakers:
Marie Ange Brayer introduces the symposium and presents YOUNIVERSE exhibition
Stefano Mirti (idLab with Elio Caccavale) [Animal Pharm]
Theodore Spyropoulos (AADRL/minimaforms) [Memory Cloud]
Jonas Runberger (AADip16/Krets) [PARCEL]
Claudia Pasquero and Marco Poletto (AAInter10/ecoLogicStudio) [STEMcloudv2.0]
Ulrika Karlsson (Servo) [SPOORG]
Philippe Morel (EZCT) [CHAIR PROJECT]
Carlo Ratti (SENSEable city lab/Carlo Ratti Associati) [DIGITAL WATER PAVILLION]
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