Arquine Conference nº14: Space

Architects could never explain space. When we think about space, we have only looked at its containers. As if space itself is invisible.
Rem Koolhaas
History has granted architecture the role of dividing up space. It manifests itself in providing lodging and orienting humankind, who inhabits this fragmented whole we call space and which is interwoven with time at a tacit and essential level.
We live in space, in these spaces, in these cities, in these fields, in these corridors, in these gardens. It is plain to see. And yet, it is not possible to quantify space or give shape to it: it is extension and connection, fact and certainty through time and movement. Space may be travelled through and narrated, experienced and actuated. Space contains and is contained, situates and signifies.
Arquine raises the question “what do we talk when we talk about space?” in order to explore the different meanings it conveys. The conference presents multi-disciplinary perspectives to redeem the value of each of these and thereby reveal the “Species of Spaces”.
The Arquine Conference Nº14 will gather important architects throughout the world discussing these matters. David Chipperfield, Atelier Bow Wow, Delugan Meissl, and Denise Scott Brown will be part of one of the most important architecture events in Latin America, taking part from March 11 to March 12 in the Teatro Metropólitan at Mexico City, Mexico.
The problem isn’t so much to find out how we have reached this point, but simply to recognize that we have reached it, that we are here. There isn’t one space, a beautiful space round about, a beautiful space all around us, there’s a whole lot of small bits of space…
George Perec
More information (in Spanish) can be found here.
Norwegian University of Science and Technology Spring Guest Lecture Series

The Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), recently launched their Spring 2013 Guest Lecture Series in architecture, titled “DigitalAnalog”, which is free and open to the public. Most lectures take place at 6:00 pm in Dokkhuset, Dokkparken 4, Trondheim, Norway unless otherwise noted with the first lecture taking place this coming Thursday, February 14th. The series will focus on the differences and commonalities between analogue and digital workflows. Keynote speakers include Michael Hansmeyer, Anette Spiro and Lund &Skare. For more information, please visit here.
3rd International Green Roof Congress 2013

The latest technological developments and new areas of application in the field of Green Roofs will be presented at the 3rd International Green Roof Congress, which will be held in Hamburg. Organized by The International Green Roof Association (IGRA), the event will take place May 13-15, where acknowledged international Green Roof experts from various disciplines will discuss the status quo and the future trends of Green Roofs with architects, designers, landscape contractors and more. If you are interested in ‘Building with Nature’, this unique event will encompass a range of related topics To register, and for more information, please visit here.
‘VIII BIAU – With the Sea in Between’ Exhibition

Taking place February 15-March 31, the 8th Ibero-American Architecture and Urbanism Biennial (VIII BIAU)’s ‘With the Sea in Between’ exhibition will be in the Galeria Boavista in Lisbon. The exhibition, which will also include conferences by keynote speakers, represents a selection of exemplary works of architecture, public spaces, publications and research, rewarded at the VIII BIAU. Attendees will be invited to travel through the architecture of the nine countries rewarded: Brazil, Portugal, Spain, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay and Chile. For more information, please visit here.
‘I Love, Love, Love : to Build’ Exhibition

The ‘I Love, Love, Love : to Build’ Exhibition, which will be on exhibit from February 10 – March 24, offers architects the opportunity to exhibit and share their private thoughts on their production. This series of invitations is in line with the Villa Noailles‘ querying on architects’ roles in our society, on the issues on which they work. Curators Jean-Pierre Blanc and Florence Sarano have simply decided to query each creator on his work: yesterday, today and tomorrow. The lecture by the architects will take place February 10th at 10:00am. For more information, please visit here.
‘Porous City – Open the Tower’ Exhibition

The Innovation Forum MIPIM recently announced that it will feature the “Porous city – Open the tower” exhibition presented at last year’s Venice Biennale for the first time. Held in Cannes, France from March 12-15, the exhibition uses Lego towers to explore futuristic concepts of urban design imagined by the professor and architect Winy Maas, founder and director of the MVRDV architectural practice in Rotterdam and director of The Why Factory, a research institute for the city of the future. Nine three-meter high skyscrapers will rise up during the four days of the show, acting as visual support to debates on the new processes and the role of research in Europe’s urban future. For more information, including a complete program, please visit here. More images after the break. (more…)
Furniture Fair Installation / Gert Wingårdh

On view now until February 9th, the installation by Swedish architect Gert Wingårdh at the Furniture Fair in Stockholm suggests a church interior, with rows of high tables in front of an ‘altar’ where panels hold sway. In collaboration with Finnish illustrator Kustaa Saksi, their creative teamwork has resulted in a design that will set the stage for talks on design and architecture at the fair. Starting out from their own perspective while adhering to a shared vision, the entire dome-like structure consists of stacks of paper sheets that hang from the roof in a Venetian blind-like construction. More images and their description after the break. (more…)
Registration now open for 2013 AIA National Convention

It’s that time of year again: the 2013 AIA National Convention is gearing up to provide architects with the latest technological, conceptual and design innovations over the course of a three-day conference in Denver, Colorado. This year’s theme: Building Leaders, is an opportunity for architects to see leading achievements in the profession as well as build upon their own knowledge.
‘Culture:City’ Exhibition

Taking place March 14-May 26, the ‘Culture:City’ exhibition encourages us to think consistently about the future of our cities from this perspective. Curated by Matthias Sauerbruch for the Akademie der Künste, the exhibit takes a critical eye to the relationship between architecture and the social reality of the 21st century and shows the impact of art and culture on cities and architecture. Art and culture have in many ways become key motors of innovative and successful urban design and planning, without which the world’s metropoles would no longer be worthy of the name. More information on the exhibition after the break. (more…)
Architecture Film Festival Rotterdam

Taking place October 10-13, this year’s Architecture Film Festival Rotterdam, which is considered the world’s largest architecture film festival, is expected to attract an audience of approximately 5,000 international visitors. The event will include screenings of over 100 movies, docs and shorts. For more information, please visit their official website here.
‘The City That Never Was’ Symposium

Organized by Christopher Marcinkoski and Javier Arpa, in cooperation with the Architectural League of New York, ‘The City That Never Was’ symposium will be taking place Friday, February 22, from 9:00am-5:30pm EST at the Scholastic Building in New York. The one day event will use the current economic and housing crisis in Spain as a lens to reconsider how planners, designers, politicians, and financiers conceive of and realize large-scale contemporary urbanization and settlement. It will be organized through four primary themes — infrastructure, waste, landscape, and instant urbanism – in order to explore new possibilities for how future patterns of urbanization can be conceived, financed, planned, deployed, and inhabited. For more details, including the complete itinerary and speaker information, please visit here.
Henri Labrouste: Structure Brought to Life

MoMA’s upcoming exhibition Henri Labrouste: Structure Brought to Light celebrates the impact of this 19th century architect on space, materials, luminosity and on great places of assembly. The exhibition will run from March 10th to June 24th, 2013 and will be the first solo exhibition of Labrouste’s work in the United States.
More on ‘Henri Labrouste: Structure Brought to Light’ after the break.
Building Pulitzer Colloquium

Taking place February 8-9, the Building Pulitzer Colloquium, which is free and open to the public, will bring together key participants in the design and construction of this iconic building. The colloquium will provide unique insight into the extraordinary collaboration and dedication required to realize this project. Hosted by the The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts and Washington University in St. Louis, the event focuses on how this building, designed by an internationally recognized architect, was completed. Topics will include the working structure between Tadao Ando’s office and the St. Louis-based team, the realization of Ando’s design intent through the translation of American methods of construction, and the creation of a work environment that fostered construction excellence. More information on the event after the break. (more…)
Possible Mediums Conference

Taking place February 7-10, University of Illinois at Chicago School of Architecture, Ohio State University Knowlton School of Architecture, University of Kentucky College of Design, and University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning will be presenting the Possible Mediums Conference. Taking place in Columbus, Ohio, the event is composed of a series of workshops and panel discussions revolving around four “possible mediums” which places a group of designers in productive dialog, unpacking their collective foundations and futures. Challenging the boundaries of architectural convention, the invited workshop leaders employ exploratory processes rooted in mediums external to the discipline (such as film or comics) or developed from atypical applications of more conventional mediums (such as drawings or models). For more information, please visit here.
‘White Cube, Green Maze: New Art Landscapes’ Exhibition

Opening February 14, and on view until May 4, Yale School of Architecture‘s ‘White Cube, Green Maze: New Art Landscapes’ exhibition will examine emerging trends in museum design through six new art sites that share the common thread of moving beyond the traditional “white cube” gallery space, and that juxtapose the experience of culture, art, architecture, and landscape. Featuring newly commissioned photography of these sites by Iwan Baan, each site represents a unique expression of the ambitions and collaborations of patrons, architects, landscape architects, artists, and curators. For more information, please visit here.
AA Istanbul Visiting School 2013: Vertical Interventions

In its third year, the AA Istanbul Visiting School, Vertical Interventions, in collaboration with Istanbul Technical University, will continue to rediscover verticality through novel generative design techniques and large-scale physical prototypes. Abstracted as a fusion of various sub-systems, each subsystem of the tower will be investigated in relation to their various performance criteria. The correlations between the separate sets of performance criteria and evaluation methods will be analyzed, leading to the generation of unified design alternatives for a vertical system typology. In addition to the custom-made digital design and evaluation tools supporting the core methodology, Vertical Interventions will also highlight the fabrication and assembly of a large scale working prototype integrating the performative characteristics of each system in examination.
As in 2012, the design agendas of AA Athens and AA Istanbul Visiting Schools will directly create feedback on one another, allowing participation in either one or both Programmes.
INGLASS 2013 International Architecture Conference

Organized by the Order of Architects of Romania and ABplus Events, this year’s INGLASS International Architecture Conference, which takes place March 5, will feature Professor Wolf D. Prix, co-founder, Design Principal and CEO of Coop Himmelb(l)au, Austria, as the special guest. “Glass architecture and engineering”, will be the general topic in the discussion of glass construction, architecture and engineering, facade systems and solar energy. The event will also address the entire glass industry, architects, engineers, glass producers, processors, equipment providers. More information after the break. (more…)
AA Athens Visiting School 2013: CIPHER CITY – Recharged

Following the initial challenge of amplifying connectivity, adjustability and interaction for its Correlations cycle, AA Athens Visiting School scales up its design intentions in order to investigate links among discrete individual architectural systems in its 2013 version, Recharged.
Recharged with interconnectivity on different levels, the theme of investigation will revolve around the design of semi-independent design prototypes acting together to form elaborate unified results. The driving force in Cipher City: Recharged is the synergistic effect behind complex form-making systems where interactive design patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple rules.
modeLab Advanced Data Trees Webinar

Taking place February 1 from 2:00-4:30pm EST, Advanced Data Trees: The Art of Navigating and Manipulating Data Structures in Grasshopper will focus on how to effectively navigate and use multi-dimensional data in creative ways. Effective use of Data Trees cannot only help accelerate project development and increase productivity, but in many cases, implementing an advanced Data Tree strategy can lead to greater communication across a team. Through a series of short presentations and “live” case studies, learn to streamline your parametric workflows using advanced Data Tree strategies. To register, and for more information, please visit here.
‘A Confederacy of Heretics: The Architecture Gallery, Venice, 1979′ Exhibition

Taking place at SCI-Arc‘s campus in downtown Los Angeles March 29-July 7, Pacific Standard Time Presents: Modern Architecture in L.A.: A Confederacy of Heretics: The Architecture Gallery, Venice, 1979 exhibition. The exhibition examines the pivotal role played by the temporary gallery held in the home of architect Thom Mayne for several weeks in 1979. An immersive showcase of spectacular models, drawings and media will be mounted in two spaces located on the SCI-Arc campus, the main gallery and the Kappe Library Gallery. More information on the exhibition after the break. (more…)
