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International architecture luminaries to explore digital tools and the classic opposition between structure and ornament.
On Saturday, November 8, the Georgia Tech College of Architecture will host “Textile Tectonics,” a day-long symposium featuring some of the world’s most celebrated thinkers in architecture. The event is organized by Lars Spuybroek, Thomas W. Ventulett III Distinguished Chair and Professor of Architecture at Georgia Tech, and Principal of Dutch architecture and art studio NOX. The event is open to the public and free of charge, although reservations are required by October 31. Continuing education credits will be available.
The discussion will center on Gottfried Semper’s understanding of textile as the key component of architecture. “In general, structure is associated with simple geometry and straightforward strength,” said Spuybroek. “Yet today, digital tools allow us to understand structure as being integral to material complexity and aesthetic delicacy.” This event will explore tectonics not simply as structure, but as the expressivity of matter itself, where the classic opposition of structure and ornament, or abstraction and empathy, begins to dissolve. “For Alberti, ornament was added to structure to make it empirically beautiful but digital tools seen in the tradition of Semper understand structure and ornament within a single continuum,” explains Spuybroek.
A series of lectures will close with a panel of each of the speakers. Brief bios of all participants follow.
Since the early 1990’s Spuybroek has researched the relationship between art, architecture and computing. He received international recognition after building the Water Pavilion in 1997, the first building in the world fully incorporating new media. In 2004 NOX finished the D-Tower, the Son-O-house and a cluster of cultural buildings in Lille, France (Maison Folies). In 2006 Spuybroek was selected for the Thomas W. Ventulett III Distinguished Chair of Architectural Design at Georgia Tech to further his research, outreach and intellectual development. The Chair was endowed by and named after the 1957 Georgia Tech alumnus whose global architecture firm designed many of Atlanta’s landmark buildings.
As Executive Architect and Researcher to the Temple Sagrada Família in Barcelona, Spain, Professor Mark Burry has published widely on the life and work of the architect Antoni Gaudí. He is director of RMIT’s Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory (SIAL) in Melbourne, Australia, a holistic transdisciplinary research environment dedicated to contemporary spatial design activity. The lab has a design-practice emphasis and acts as a creative think-tank accessible to both local and international practices, including ARUP in Melbourne and London, dECOi in Paris and Gehry Partners in Los Angeles. He is also a member of the Australian Research Council College of Experts and serves on the Advisory Board of Gehry Technologies in Los Angeles.
Evan Douglis is Undergraduate Chair of the School of Architecture at Pratt Institute in New York and Principal of Evan Douglis Studio. His research is focused on computer aided digital design and fabrication technology, new materials and multi-media installations. He has previously taught at Columbia University and Cooper Union in New York, The International University of Cataluyna in Barcelona, Hubei Fine Arts Institute in Wuhan, China, the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, and SCI-Arc in Los Angeles. His work has been widely published including Sign as Surface, INDEX Architecture, and Naked City, ARCHILAB Catalog (2004). He received the 2006 ACADIA Award for Emerging Digital Practice. His work was featured in Distinguishing Digital Architecture, The Brick: The Book, and Architecture Now 5 (2007).
Michael Hensel is an architect, urban designer, researcher and writer, and has taught at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London (AA) since 1993. He is Director of the Emergent Technologies Master Program at AA and a partner in OCEAN, an international, interdisciplinary and independent research network that conducts research by design at the intersection of architecture, urban and landscape design, industrial and product design, computational science, biology, music, engineering, climatology and other interdisciplinary fields. He is also a board member of BIONIS - Biomimetics Network for Industrial Sustainability, and the co-author of numerous books and journals including Versatility and Vicissitude (2008), Morpho-Ecologies (2008), and Emergence: Morphogenetic Design Strategies (2004).
Andrew Benjamin is Professor of Critical Theory and Philosophical Aesthetics in the Centre for Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. He has written extensively on the work of Martin Heidegger, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Julia Kristeva and Jean-François Lyotard. He has been Visiting Professor of Architectural Theory at Columbia University, Visiting Critic at the Architectural Association, and Professor of Critical Theory at the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia. He is the author of numerous books and publications including Style and Time: Essays on the Politics of Appearance (2006), Walter Benjamin and History (2006), Architectural Philosophy: Repetition, Function, Alterity (2001), and Reiser + Umemoto: Recent Projects (1998).
Cecil Balmond is the Paul Philippe Cret Practice Professor of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and an internationally renowned designer, structural engineer, author and Deputy Chairman of the multi-disciplinary engineering firm Arup. He the recipient of the Gengo Matsui Prize in 2002, the highest recognition for structural engineering in Japan, and the Charles Jencks Award for Theory in Practice of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 2003. He recently collaborated with Rem Koolhaas on the 2006 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, and previously in 2005 with Álvaro Siza and Eduardo Souto de Moura. He is the author of Informal (2002), Number 9 (1998) and co-authored Serpentine Gallery Pavilion (2002) with Toyo Ito, and Unfolding with Daniel Liebeskind (1997).
For more information, contact Daniel Baerlacken at daniel.baerlecken@arch.gatech.edu or call 404-894-4885.
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