The Project
Environment Review Days – Summary Programme Wednesday 10 April – Friday 12 April 2013 KTH School of Architecture
On the Project
As a verb and a noun ”project” emerges in the earliest recorded architectural theory and in the everyday conversations of architects today. This seminar series investigates the nature of the project through three keynote lectures with accompanying roundtable discussions. The series is organised by the Swedish Strong Research Environment “Architecture in the Making” and seeks to produce a discourse that moves fluidly between contemporary design practice, technology studies and the history and theory of architecture. For more information see www.architectureinthemaking.com
Overall and Session Themes
The project has been integral to the discourse of architecture. Yet the project challenges many of the points of departure that allow us to talk of a disciplinary discourse at all. On one side a discipline such as architecture might be said to have a project in and of itself – a collective intention shared by its members to which they must pledge allegiance and through which their common identity as architects would be manifest. But for architects the project also contains another set of significances. A building project is, by definition, a place and operation that forms new and strong bonds between materials and individuals that otherwise belong in separated groups and classes. It forms illicit interfaces where new kinds of exchange can occur. Allegiance to this kind of project may mean a sacrifice of disciplinary identity. In this sense projects are by their nature anti-disciplinary; subversive of the status quo; ambiguous.
Architecture in the Making
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Keynote Speakers
Adrian Forty is Professor of Architectural History at The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London. His main interest is in architecture's role in societies and cultural contexts. As of lately, he is concerned with the history, aesthetics, and cultural significance of concrete as a construction material. His key publications include Words and Buildings: A Vocabulary of Modern Architecture, London (Thames and Hudson 2000) and Concrete and Culture: A Material History (Reaktion Books 2012). Bernard Cache is an independent theorist, architect, and industrial designer living in Paris with a workshop-based practice, Objectile. Cache researches the use of digital tools and computational techniques for architectural conception and production, and overlaps this with scholarly work on early architectural theory, particularly on the text of Vitruvius. Recent works include Projectiles in the AA Architectural Words series (2011) and Earth Moves: The Furnishing of Territories (1995). Mario Carpo is an Italian architectural historian. He is Associate Professor at École d'Architecture de Paris-La Villette and was a Professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology since 2009-2012, and has been Vincent Scully Visiting Professor of Architectural History at Yale University since 2010. His publications include The Alphabet and the Algorithm (MIT Press, 2011), Architecture in the Age of Printing (MIT Press, 2001).
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The Project Programme Wednesday 10 April Architecture in the Making
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Venue: KTH School of Architecture 16.30 -18.30 A6 The material and the written Session chair: Tim Anstey ● 16.30 Environment review days introduction
● 16.45 Keynote: Adrian Forty, “Concrete and print; buildings and words” ● 17.30 Pause
● 17.45 Roundtable: “The material and the written”
Building projects create interfaces – between materials, but also between disciplines and their discourses. The moment, or collection of moments, when this happens, is charged. Materials cease to be classed, insured, valued according to one system and begin a life within another; different disciplinary discourses are forced to confront each other. What happens in this superimposition of the written and the material? And should the allegiances that building projects command be seen as defining or challenging the identity of the various actors involved? With: Adrian Forty, Oliver Tessmann, Catharina Gabrielsson, Bernard Cache
Thursday 11 April Venue: KTH School of Architecture 09.00 – 15.30 A3/A4 Environment review meeting ● 9.00 Mingle/Coffee ● 9.30 P roject reviews
Session 1 (A3) Session chair: Juri Soolep ● Ulrika Karlsson, Hydrophile
● Oliver Tessmann, Topological interlocking assemblies ● Jo Leikens, Architecture’s Provoking Instrumentality ● Stig Anton Nielsen, Embedded sensors
Session 2 (A4) session chair: Michael Asgaard Andersen ● Kerstin Barup, Conservation practice and the history of architecture
● Daniel Norell, Architecture at the front ● Nils Björling, Key Urban Projects
Architecture in the Making
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● Fredrik Nilsson, Doctorateness in the Making Disciplines ● 11.30 Planning lunch – 2013-2016 (in camera) ● 13.30 Project reviews
Session 1 (A3) session chair: Helene Frichot ● Thierry Berlemont, Making is More
● Frans Magnusson, The design-user interface ● Nel Janssens, Poetic knowledge building and meta-urbanism ● Michael Asgaard Andersen Asplunds city library in Stockholm
Session 2 (A4) session chair: Kerstin Barup ● Frida Rosenberg, From Object to Field
● Marja Lundgren, Tectonics and morphology for “near-zero” architecture ● Kim Hye Kyung, Mechanisms and outcomes
● Jüri Soolep, The things of the Order ● Janek Ozmin, Vävda Tält
16.30 – 18.30 A6 Where is the Project?
Session chair: Ulrika Karlsson ● 16.30 Keynote: Bernard Cache “Durer – Vitruvius – Plato. Instruments of thought” ● 17.00 Pause
● 17.15 Roundtable: Where is the project?
Today it seems proper and reasonable to ask the question ”where is the project”, both in terms of the disciplinary aspiration of architecture, and in terms of the multi collaborative networks within which architects work. What is an architectural project today? Where and when does it start and stop? What is its history within architectural discourse? And what factors are liable to change its status and configuration? With: Helene Frichot, Michael Michael Asgaard Andersen, Daniel Norell, Mario Carpo ● 19.30 Conference Dinner: Hotel Skeppsholmen, Gröna gången 1, Stockholm (by invitation)
Architecture in the Making
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Friday 12 April Venue: KTH School of Architecture 09.00 – 11.30 A6 The project and disciplinary agency Session chair: Tim Anstey ● 09.00 Mingle/Coffee
● 09.30 Keynote: Mario Carpo: “Media shifts and disciplinary responsibility” ● 10.30 Pause
● 10.45 Roundtable: The project and disciplinary agency
The idea that architectural agency involves ethics as well as expediency is a strong one. While enmeshed in the trappings of capital as few other disciplines are, architecture simultaneously claims a potential beyond providing this or that tyrant with comfortable accommodation, and a responsibility beyond realising the designs of the empowered. What is the history of this ambition, and how does it interface with the changing face of architectural practice today? With: Mario Carpo, Catharina Dyrssen, Lars Marcus, Bernard Cache
11.30 – 13.30 A3/A4 Environment review meeting ● 11.30 Project reviews
Session 1 (A3) session chair: Jonas Runberger ● Anna Maria Orru, A Biologically-centered framework in Urban foodscapes ● Daniel Norell & Einar Rhode, Erratic
● Pablo Miranda, Networks of Digital Architecture ● Staffan L undgren, Governing Reason ● Andrej Slavik The strange case of parametric architecture.
Session 2 (A4) fsession chair: Tim Anstey ● Catharina Gabrielsson, More Housework
● Lars Marcus, Spatial Capital ● Thordis Arrhenius, Mediated Architecture ● Catharina Dyrssen, Transvaluation
13.30 – 14.30 A6 The project - Histories and Trajectories ● Final discussion, Future plans
Architecture in the Making
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