Implementing Advanced Knowledge
bits
6.0 X-crossing editorial team
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IaaC Lecture Series Reinier de Graaf
Questions and Answers Carlo Ratti
The Heterodox Pedagogy M. Aiolova & M. Joachim
Reinier de Graaf (born 1964) is architect and Partner of architecture and design office OMA, founded by Rem Koolhaas, with offices in Rotterdam, New York, Beijing, Hong Kong and Doha and projects in over 35 countries.
Carlo F. Ratti (born 1971 in Turin, Italy) is an Italian architect, engineer, inventor, educator and activist founder of Carlo Ratti Associati and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he directs the MIT Senseable City Lab
Terreform One (Open Network Ecology ) is a non-profit architecture group that promotes smart design in cities.
VDNH Laboratory IaaC Research
Interview Alessio Erioli
IaaC Lecture Series Jan Knippers
IaaC is an international centre for Education, Fabrication and Research dedicated to the development of architecture capable of meeting the worldwide challenges in constructing 21st century habitability.
Alessio Erioli is Engineer and Senior Researcher at UniversitĂ di Bologna, MArch in Biodigital Architecture, PhD in Architectural Engineering. His interests interweave teaching & design ecologies in Computational design, focusing on relations among matter, information, agency, space, aesthetics.
Jan Knippers born in 1962 at Dusseldorf is professor at the ITKE where ha has been leading and supporting many seminars and studios, achieving great results as some of the most renowed pavilions.
Opening Closed Cities Katya Larina
Atnight: Visions through Data P. Martínez & M. Santamaría
Interview Greg Lynn
Katya studied urban design at BTU Cottbus in Germany and St Petersburg State University in Russia, graduating in 2002 with a Masters in Architecture and Urban Design. Katya has lectured at St Petersburg State University, the AA in London and Strelka in Moscow.
300.000 is developping projects, building tools and researching ideas. They experiment with reality, editing products and comunicating their learnings. However its compromise is to achieve a more inhabitable architecture and city.
Greg Lynn was born in 1964 in Ohio. He graduated from Miami University of Ohio with degrees in both architecture (Bachelor of Environmental Design) and philosophy (Bachelor of Philosophy) .
Fab City Whitepaper Tomas Díez & CO
Fab Textiles IaaC / Fab Lab Research
Rome 20-25 IaaC Research
Fab Lab Barcelona is part of the IaaC, where it support different educational and research programs related with the multiple scales of the human habitat. It is also the headquartes of the Fab Academy in collaboration with Fab Foundation and Mit’s Center for Bits and Atoms
IaaC is an international centre for Education, Fabrication and Research dedicated to the development of architecture capable of meeting the worldwide challenges in constructing 21st century habitability.
IaaC is an international centre for Education, Fabrication and Research dedicated to the development of architecture capable of meeting the worldwide challenges in constructing 21st century habitability.
6.0 X-crossing
One of the main notions that in the last five editions we have underlined with a lot of emphasis is the contrast in between the particularities of each bit and the common background that all of them share. As it is explained in those introductory texts, this common background is understood as an “ideological or transversal vector”, which gives a direction to the ensemble, even if each one of its units is coming from different institutions from all over the world. Metaphors referring to relieves, sequences or enclaves have been used in order to communicate this idea with all the richness that it embraces. In this edition, we are not loosing this tension in between a general notion that orients the whole group and the specificities of each one of them, but we are underlining a different aspect of it: the X-crossing. In his essay “The Ring Cultuur”, Willem Jan Neutelings, in the nineties was paying special attention to that particular crossing situation of the urban infrastructural node, as a scenario that is really fruitful (a scenario that, in fact, had previously interested to other authors as Victor Gruen or Hans Bernard Reichow at the starting moments of the mass mobility). In that essay Neutelings presented different examples of those nodes, explaining how the crossing nodes would be the perfect place to execute new programs. Its position in between the urban centre and the periphery would ensure through its interconnection an easy accessibility to the user. Moreover, it would guarantee as well an absolute potential for a massive use. But what is even more important to note, in this particular configuration understood a a spatial and complex device, is that the minimum intervention can create the maximum of events. In a certain manner, there is a strong link in between on the one side the trajectories of the mobility and the logistic interconections (transport and conection) and on the other side the mobility and the intelectual interconections in between readings, thoughts, interpretations...
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Indeed, the treatment of the surfaces as big and colourful spaces and the incorporation of “synthetic nature” and proper illumination, would convert that scenario into a fruitful point placed in between the notion of a plastic landscape and the idea of an infrastructural landscape. This concept of operatives nodes has already been seen in many architectonic and urban operations, even if not always developing all the potential power that this kind of proposals encloses. However, what is particularly relevant of this scenario is the complexity of the crossing that is generating, because it is not a simple 2D crossing, but on the contrary is a multidimensional crossing, what in many fields is named as a hyper crossing or an X-crossing. It means that the there are many flows that converge in one singularity, converting that space in a extremely richness and fruitful territory to be colonised, as Neutelings would say, in order to “create the maximum of events (and conceptual trajectories) with the minimum of interventions”. And this circumstance is exactly the one that we want to underline in this edition. Neither the bits as singularities, nor its ensemble as an orientation, but the richness of the virgine spaces that can be found in between them. Indeed, what is crucial to keep in mind during the reading of this edition is the need of identifying those open and approachable territories left by the X-crossing of these 12 documents. The opportunity of it consist in driving us to a new, plural and complex approximation to the cultural contemporaneous phenomena.
Cover - X-crossing, IaaC Archive
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IAAC BITS
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IAAC SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE:
Manuel Gausa, IaaC Co-Founder
EDITORIAL COORDINATOR Jordi Vivaldi, IaaC bits Editorial Coordinator
EDITORIAL TEAM Manuel Gausa, IaaC Co-Founder Silvia Brandi, Communication & Publication Jordi Vivaldi, IaaC bits Editorial Coordinator
ADVISORY BOARD: Areti Markopoulou, IaaC Academic Director Tomas Diez, Fab Lab Bcn Director Mathilde Marengo, Academic Coordinator Ricardo Devesa, Advanced Theory Concepts Maite Bravo, Advanced Theory Concepts
Nader Tehrani, Architect, Director MIT School Architecture, Boston Juan Herreros, Architect, Professor ETSAM, Madrid Neil Gershenfeld, Physic, Director CBA MIT, Boston Hanif Kara, Engineer, Director AKT, London Vicente Guallart, IaaC Co-Founder Willy Muller, IaaC Co-Founder Aaron Betsky, Architect & Art Critic, Director Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati Hugh Whitehead, Engineer, Director Foster+ Partners technology, London Nikos A. Salingaros, Professor at the University of Texas, San Antonio Salvador Rueda, Ecologist, Director Agencia Ecologia Urbana, Barcelona Artur Serra, Anthropologist, Director I2CAT, Barcelona
DESIGN: Ramon Prat, ACTAR Editions
IAAC BIT FIELDS: 1. Theory for Advanced Knowledge 2. Advanced Cities and Territories 3. Advanced Architecture 4. Digital Design and Fabrication 5. Interactive Societies and Technologies 6. Self-Sufficient Lands
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