LaN - workshop proposal from Lauren

Hi School,

This is a feeler email - I'm trying to see if there would be interest from students, former students, or faculty in attending a workshop by Live architecture Network (LaN)

WHERE: Toronto (or maybe Cambridge if there's enough local interest)
WHEN: 3 days (consecutively) between April 16 -21

WHO THEY ARE: http://www.livearch itecture. net/

LaN approaches architectural development through interdiscipl inary collaborations enabled by DIGITAL DESIGN + FABRICATION. LaN recognizes the power of digital fabrication, not merely as a toolset of a high technical caliber, but as the driver of particular groupings of resources–an organization of human, economic, and material assets–varying widely based on project circumstances. LaN’s mode of operation is PARAMETRIC in nature, and seeks to re-associate architecture with a flexible, collaborative, & data-rich practice of SPATIAL DESIGN. >>

THE WORKSHOP: Critical Practices of ‘LIVE ARCHITECTURE’ http://www.livearch itecture. net/archives/ 5230

3 day seminar on LIVE aspects of digital design & fabrication for architecture

Its clear in 2010 perhaps more than ever that significant shifts in economies and culture can occur extremely rapidly; climatic crisis can devastate enormous populations in seconds. Our architectural response time is critical. The architectural recourse of one crisis needs to be more than a temporary fix as it is often the only opportunity to implement further preventative measures for a future occurrence.

Parametric practices are moving architectural design on a micro-scale through dynamic modeling & on more significantly on a macro-scale towards a dynamic architectural medium–a Live practice. LaN asks you to abandon representation modes of design and practice LIVE.

NOTE: The workshop is a combination of lecture and instruction labs in Rhino. For those of you who are interested in attending, but who aren't confident in your Rhino skills (like me), we can arrange a half-day intro tutorial to bring you up to speed.

COST: between $225 and $350 depending on how soon you sign up

IF YOU'RE INTERESTED: Let me know! They are interested in bringing the workshop here, but only if people will show up. So if I don't here from you - it won't happen.
You can respond to me at laurenbarhydt@ gmail.com
Also, the workshop would be open to anyone so pass it around to your working friends!

best,
Lauren

WCC article

here is the article madeline wrote in WCC (see previous post) called:

City Changing: Re-mixing Built Environments

city as text

Hi Sarah. It's great to meet you (assuming I didn't bump into you in the crowd at SciBarCamp). As Mark said, I'm working on a WCC piece regarding how people re-mix urban spaces. I'm trying to think of the city as a text, rather than as a machine or a body. Toronto's recent brouhaha about bike lanes brought this home for me, because the lanes involve a literal re-writing of the street's surface, turning the road into a palimpsest of sorts. Am I way off-base in that reading of the city? And can you think of other examples of re-mixed spaces? Are there any other thinkers (besides Bruce Sterling) who think of built environments in this way? Thanks, Madeline

hi madeline this sounds like an interesting article! i think that the idea of city as text is a bit outdated in the field of architecture...the discourse at the moment is more direct: the city fabulous metaphor in itself and doesn't need an additional metaphor to describe it. there's a belief that the meaning of form in architecture is irrelevant, and that people will appropriate and use any space however they desire. rem koolhaas' "delirious new york" is the seminal text in this way of thinking. this has led architects to focus more on material research and innovation, rather than social experimentation (not me, of course). the idea of the palimpsest was very popular in architecture in the 80s and 90s. that was an era of architectural theory, based on deleuze and guattari's writings on literary theory, which was very focused on destabilizing the dominant regimes - social and political - through architectural form. this was appropriate at the time (before the fall of the berlin wall) but not at this present moment of globalization and economic instability. that being said, one of my favorite theorists, robert venturi, is from that era and uses semiotics to analyze architecture and urbanism. the difference, i think, is he looked for new ways architecture expressed meaning, rather than dismissing the idea that architecture can/should affect social change. look at "learning from las vegas" by robert venturi and denise scott-brown for a great analysis of the way commercial architecture "speaks" to the citzens of and visitors to las vegas. (one of the arguments in my thesis is that he developed a language that described the elements of an "emergent" system, the city, and that his methods should be used now as a basis for a new social/semiological language for architectural design which treats the group of users of an urban building as an adaptive emergent system) other architects/writers you may want to look at are jan gehl, who talks about "streets for people" (and is speaking at the design exchange next wednesday), and teddy cruz, who's work in with immigrant and low income populations in sandiego and tijuana is empowering and inspiring! there are increasingly urban "movements", which often inlcude architects, which simply appropriate space in the city: Banksy (a graffiti artist from the UK), guerrilla gardening (and bike lanes and park benches), the white/ghost bicycles (monuments of urban cyclist deaths), and knitta please (knitted "graffiti"). hope this helps s

thinking allowed - architecture is contingent

this is an interesting episode of a fantastic program on "how society works" from the BBC discussing the relationship between the abstraction the architect indulges in during design and the building as used post-construction.

Thinking Allowed

are architecture students up to the task?

the monocle's weekly podcast (episode 16) has a great interview with ilse crawford on the quality of recent graduates from design and architecture schools. she speaks starting at around 33 minutes until the end of the podcast. there is apparently an associated print article, but i haven't had any luck locating it yet.

"there is a fundamental problem with the way that many perceive design - it's not funny shape-ism. it's about giving form, framing the way that we live...in a way that gives greater meaning, greater depth, that shapes the way we behave, that shapes the way we interact, that changes our values around our experience..." -ilse crawford