Location: Architectural Association

Co-ordinated by Marie-Ange Brayer (FRAC Center Orleans) and Claudia Pasquero (AA INTER10/ecoLogicStudio) in collaboration with the FRAC Collection – Orleans, this symposium is inspired by the YOUNIVERSE exhibition curated by M-A Brayer in Seville for the BIACS3 and by research work done in the AA by various undergraduate units and postgraduate programmes. The symposium will host speakers both from the YOUNIVERSE EXHIBITION and from the AA.

The relationship between architecture and science has been evolving throughout history mainly reflecting the ever-changing relationship between society and nature. The last century was shaken by a sudden jump in human’s understanding of his surrounding environment: from an intuitive/philosophical/mathematical understating of complexity and the turbulent dynamic of natural processes we moved into a measurable, material one; supported by our ever-increasing computational power we can now feel, measure, read and visualise complexity; this condition has allowed a direct material engagement with dynamic processes to escape the restricted field of science and permeate society at many levels. In architecture the effect is becoming evident and, most of all, nuanced: from purely metaphorical and figurative the new relationship between architecture and science is emerging as material and, ultimately, prototypical.

Moreover the ‘material’ of architecture has radically expanded its meaning, incorporating aspects that are virtual, potential, dynamic, and informational: we can now perhaps define this expansion as the most noticeable and important effect of computation in architecture and design. The symposium should present this emerging diverse palette of ‘material’ approaches indicating strands of research that are redefining both the relationship between science and architecture and between architecture and the architect itself.

10.45 Welcome
11.00 Marie Ange Brayer Introduces the Symposium and presents YOUNIVERSE exhibition
11.30 Elio Caccavale and Stefano Mirti (Idlab) (Animal Pharm)
12.00 Theodore Spyropoulos (AADRL/mimaform) (Memory Cloud)
12.30 Jonas Runberger (AADip16/Krets) (PARCEL)
1.00 Claudia Pasquero and Marco Poletto (AAInter10/ecoLogicStudio) (STEMcloudv2.0)
1.30 Lunch Break
2.30 Ulrika Karlsson (SPOORG)
3.00 Philip Morel (CHAIR PROJECT)
3.30 Carlo Ratti (WATER PAVILLION)
4.00 Discussion with Brett Steele audience