Constructing Realities Lecture Series Spring 2019

Generously supported by Populous.

About

This informal lecture series invites speakers to explore the current trends in the making, process and design of our built environment, looking at how new technologies are shaping the future of the spaces around us. Lectures include themes of fabrication, bio-technologies, forensic architecture and a critical look at the algorithms and political uses of architecture and data.

We will hear from artists, architects, designers, scientists and other interdisciplinary practitioners who are at the fore-front of their industry and understand how different disciplines influence and challenge the thinking of other practices. 
 
This series is discursive and offers opportunities for students, academics, industry professionals and the wider public to learn from and question the people who are constructing the realities we inhabit.

Joining Us

This events series is free and open to all. No booking is required. Keep the conversations going and enjoy complimentary light refreshments before and after the lecture.

Lecture schedule

24 January: Malkit Shoshan

Architect Malkit Shoshan explores the impact of war and violence on the built environment and how to design a future space in which to live and inhabit in these contexts.

Biography

Malkit Shoshan is the founding director of the Amsterdam and New York-based architectural think-tank FAST: Foundation for Achieving Seamless Territory. FAST initiates and develops projects on the intersection of architecture, urban planning, and human rights in conflict and post-conflict areas. 

Currently, Malkit is the Area Head of the Art Design and the Public Domain MDes programme at Harvard Graduate School of Design, where she also teaches a course called Spaces of Solidarity. She is also a visiting scholar at the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University.

Malkit is the author and the mapmaker of the award-winning book Atlas of Conflict: Israel-Palestine (Uitgeverij 010, 2010). In 2016, she curated the Dutch Pavilion for The Venice Architecture Biennale with the exhibition BLUE: Architecture of UN Peacekeeping Missions. 

Image: BLUE: Architecture of UN Peacekeeping Missions. Venice, 2016. Photography by Iwan Baan.

07 February: Stephanie Chaltiel

Architect Stephanie Chaltiel discusses her experimental approach to fabrication, combining traditional materials and processes with new and adapted technologies including drones. Her discussion will consider the manufacture of "mud shell" structures and how future realities could be constructed through the uses of this kind of fabrication.

Biography

Stephanie Chaltiel has over 15 years of experience as an architect and has completed many projects throughout Europe and North and South America, using sustainable materials and techniques for housing solutions. 

Stephanie directs the Architectural Association Visiting School in Lyon and in Indonesia where she has investigated and explored the use of digital technologies in conjunction with earth construction.

Since 2015 Stephanie has been developing her research on drone spraying through the European funding and network Innochain. Her resulting projects have been exhibited at the Angewandte in Vienna, at the COAC in Barcelona and more recently at KADK in Copenhagen. Her work on robotic fabrication for mud shells has won the ACADIA Autodesk award for Emerging research in 2017 at MIT.

Image: Alina Cristea, ©CIRECA Domaine de Boisbuchet

21 February: 1024 Architecture

Creative studio 1024 Architecture share their performative approach to designing immersive environments and temporary experiences. Working predominantly with light and sound, they discuss the complexity and possibilities of working in an interdisciplinary practice bringing together architecture, design, art, digital and construction.

Biography

1024 Architecture is a creative studio founded in 2007 by Pier Schneider and François Wunschel. Far from the usual considerations of the discipline, the studio focuses on spatial practices, digital technology, and visual effects to create unique artworks, installations, and performances. 

1024 sees architecture and inhabited spaces as evolutive structures. Pier and François devise new and original experiences through installations, stage design, visual arts, performances, and lighting structures. From one-day projects to perennial installations, 1024 designs unique artworks that interact with their environment. 

Image: VORTEX, by 1024 Architecture. Photography by Emmanuel Gabily.
 

07 March: Ramon Amaro 

Engineer and philosopher Ramon Amaro discusses racial profiling in data analysis and machine learning and the role of technology in creating future spaces for particular types of people.

Biography

Ramon Amaro is a design engineer by degree and researcher in the areas of machine learning, the philosophy of mathematics, black ontologies, and philosophies of being. Ramon completed his PhD in Philosophy in the Department of Media, Communications and Cultural Studies (the former Centre for Cultural Studies) at Goldsmiths, while holding a Masters degree in Sociological Research from the University of Essex and a BSe in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. 

14 March: Carole Collet

Researcher and bio-designer Carole Collet, along with designer and engineer Helene Steiner and Brenda Parker, Programme Director of The Bartlett’s Bio-Integrated Design, discuss the implications of designing with living systems and the new possibilities arising from the field of bio-design. How do we design when intersecting species? How do we travel scales when exploring biomimetic principles? How do we navigate the hand-made, the man-made and the grow-made to develop innovative design propositions?

Biography

Carole Collet is Professor in Design for Sustainable Futures at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts, London where she was appointed CSM-LVMH Director of Sustainable Innovation in 2017. In this role, Carole set up Maison/0, an incubator of sustainable intelligence designed to provoke creative practices and challenge our collective futures.
 
Helene Steiner is a designer and engineer who works at the interface between technology and science. She co-founded Open Cell with the mission to provide affordable lab space to early stage startups innovating at the intersection of design and biology. She is the co-founder of a biotech company, Cell-Free Technology, where she develops computational and biological design tools for proteins and materials and leads the biomaterial platform at the fashion department at the Royal College of Art.

Dr Brenda Parker is a lecturer in the Department of Biochemical Engineering. Her research focuses on industrial biotechnology, in particular using algae for sustainable chemical production. Her approach to nature-inspired engineering involves working at the interface between engineering, molecular biology and synthetic biology.

Image: Self-patterning mycelium, by Carole Collet

Lead image: Sasha Englemann – Aerocene

Access

If you have any access requirements please let us know, send an email or call 020 3108 7337

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