IaaC Bit 8.0 by IAAC bits

Implementing Advanced Knowledge

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8.0 Ambiences editorial team

IaaC Lecture Series Neil Leach

The Human Swarm Iacopo Neri

Responsive Cities Symposium IaaC Research

Neil Leach is a Professor at the European Graduate School, Visiting Professor at Harvard University and Tongji University, an Adjunct Professor at the University of Southern California, and NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts Fellow.

Iacopo Neri is an Italian architect, urbanist and researcher. Currently he is developing his “Master City and Technology” at IaaC and participating as assisting faculty in some seminars.

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.

Interview Zoe Romano

Rethinking mexican techniques Drumming with style Yessica G. Méndez Sergi Jordà

Zoe Romano is a co-founder of WeMake, an makerspace in Milan. It is a workshop focused on creating innovation at the intersection between digital manufacturing, wearable technology and the development of local fashion brand 2 communities.

Yessica G. Méndez is an is a mexican architect, researcher and urbanist. During last two years she was developing her 2 years master at IaaC, focusing in the notion of “Climate responsiveness” as a key argument for advanced architecture.

Sergi Jordà is a Catalan innovator, installation artist, digital musician and Associate Professor at the Music Technology Group, Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona.

IaaC Lecture Series Philippe Block

ºAtmosphera Asya Guney

Torre Baró Self-Sufficient Dis. IaaC Research

The Block Research Group (BRG) at the Institute of Technology in Architecture at ETH Zurich is led by Prof. Dr. Philippe Block and Dr. Tom Van Mele. Research at the BRG focuses on several core areas, including analysis of masonry structures, graphical analysis...

Asya Guney is an architect, researcher and urbanist. During last two years she was developing her 2 years master at IaaC, focusing in the notion of “Atmospheres” as a key argument for advanced architecture.

Symbiotic Associations NOUMENA

Responsive Manifolds Nina Jotanovic

(New) Resilient Landscapes Giulia Garbarini

Noumena is a collective group focused on design, research and education based in Spain, with nodes in Austria, India and Italy. They investigate between the boundaries of new digital paradigms and design strategies applied to architecture,

Nina Jotanovic is an architect, researcher and urbanist. During last two years she was developing her 2 years master at IaaC, focusing in the notion of “Responsive Manifolds” as a key argument for advanced architecture.

Giulia Garbarini is an architect, urbanist and researcher from Italy. Her actual interest lay on the notion of “Resilient Landscapes” as a key argument to deal with contemporary territories.

8.0 Ambiences

In our last edition (IaaC Bits Edition 7) we replaced the usual reflection around the contrast in between the particularities of each Bit and the common background that all of them are sharing, by the notion of Cracks. A concept which was emphasising the importance of all those circumstances and projects that break the solid disciplinary conventions in order to open fruitful and unexplored fields of opportunities to develop. In this edition we are not focusing that much in the idea of “cracking” a solid and rigid “corpus” of knowledge but in the notion of “Ambiences”, that is to say, these vaporous environments in which a game of densities and clusters define different ecosystems. However, it is important to remark that when we are mentioning the concepts of propagation, gradient and dissemination, we are very close to terms like atmospheres, vapours or nebulas, notions that have been largely used in other architectonic contexts, in particular under the phenomenological architecture produced by architects such as P. Zumthor, Herzog & de Meuron and Steven Holl. Indeed, architectures as well known as the Termas de Vals of P. Zumthor seem to be done in order to illustrate publications as his book “Atmospheres” (2006), in which there is a certain celebration of poetic and metaphoric values produced by this kind of resources. Vaporous and nebulous environments are the kind of resources that we can also find in many projects that we would include as a particular type of Distributive Systems, which are built based on

Cover - Cracks, IaaC Archive 4

gradients and continuities. However, there is a crucial difference that makes impossible to understand the nebulous environments of Termas de Vals as Advanced Architecture: its construction of a vaporous environment is not performative, informational or interactive, but strictly phenomenological, that is to say, symbolic and metaphoric. This is not reducing its disciplinary value as a architectonic contribution, but is moving it away from any kind of Advanced Architecture understanding, which develops projects in which the value cannot be reduced to merely contemplative, simbolic or sensual characteristiques, but to an interactive operativity and a real time information. These means that these kind of projects as the Blur Pavilion celebrate a certain performativity that let them manipulate climatic and measurable values that can conform literal environments, which instead of being isolated bubbles are deeply rooted on the ecosystem where they are placed. Therefore, what is crucial to keep in mind during the lecture of these 12 documents is the â&#x20AC;&#x153;mapâ&#x20AC;? of operative ambiences that it generates on the main stablished cultural domain. Each one of these ambiences is a window to a new architectonic, social and technological approach that leads us to participate in the construction of our cultural contemporaneous scenario.

IAAC BITS

IAAC

DIRECTOR:

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

PUBLISHED BY: Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia ISSN 2339 - 8647 CONTACT COMMUNICATIONS & PUBLICATIONS OFFICE: communication@iaac.net

Institut for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia Barcelona Pujades 102 08005 Barcelona, Spain T +34 933 209 520 F +34 933 004 333 www.iaac.net