Iaac Blog

IaaC Conference Hall, April 11th 2008

In October 2000, Julian Vincent took the newly-created Chair in Biomimetics in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, thus becoming the only biologist in the world to occupy such a senior position in an engineering department. His MA (zoology) was from Cambridge; his PhD (insect hormones) and DSc (insect cuticle) were from Sheffield.
He spent most of his research career in the Zoology Department at the University of Reading, studying the mechanical design of organisms and working out ways in which aspects of the design can be used in technology. During his last 9 years at Reading he ran the Centre for Biomimetics, which he had started with a professor from the Department of Engineering in Reading, and attracted over £2M in grants and industrial contracts. He has published over 220 papers, articles and books and has been invited to give conference lectures (mostly plenary) and research seminars around the World. His interests are very wide, covering aspects of mechanical design of plants and animals, complex fracture mechanics, texture of food, design of composite materials, use of natural materials in technology, advanced textiles, deployable structures in architecture and robotics, smart systems and structures. He is a professional Member of the Institute of Materials, which awarded him the Leslie Holliday Prize in 1980. In 1990 he won the Prince of Wales Environmental Innovation Award. In 1997 he gave the Trueman Wood lecture at the RSA. He is a member of the Arts Council England Interdisciplinary Arts Taskgroup

His remit in the University of Bath is to introduce concepts from biology into engineering and design, thus making the adaptive design of organisms available to advanced engineering design and control. In pursuit of this he is expanding a Russian system for inventive problem solving (TRIZ) to make biological design available to engineers, and wants to extend this general approach to all human endevours. He is also moving into biorobotics with projects based on mud-burrowing worms (to design a new type of colonic endoscope) and jumping insects (a jumping robot for surveillance duties).

IaaC Conference Hall, April 18th 2008

Nader Tehrani received a Bachelor of Fine Arts and a Bachelor in Architecture from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1985 and 1986 respectively. He continued his studies at the Harvard Graduate School of Design where he received a Masters of Architecture in Urban Design in 1991. Tehrani attended a post-graduate program in History and Theory at the Architectural Association in London. A tenured Associate Professor of Architecture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tehrani has also taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Rhode Island School of Design, and Georgia Institute of Technology, where he served as the Thomas W. Ventulett III Distinguished Chair in Architectural Design.

IaaC Conference Hall, 17th April 2008

Peter Trummer is an architect and researcher. Since 2004 he is studio professor of the second year research program "Associative Design" at the Berlage Institute. He is a Ph.D. candidate at the Berlage Institute on the topic of "population thinking in architecture". He was born in Graz, Austria and obtained his university diploma at the Technical University of Graz in 1994. He moved to Amsterdam in 1995, were he finished his postgraduate study at the Berlage Institute in 1997.He was project architect at UN-Studio and was co-founder of Offshore Architects in 2001. Since 2004, he has own practice. He is invited to lecture, teach, publish and as a critic internationally, including at the Berlage Institute and the Academy of Architecture in Rotterdam, the University of Applied art in Vienna, the AA in London, the Rice University in Houston, Ucla and Sci Arc in Los Angeles.

The lecture will argue for an associative design practice within our contemporary culture of planning. Such practice is based on the design of difference and Methodological it is based on thinking in populations rather then in types. The application of such practice will be presented on two design research projects, one for a new neighborhood in Madrid, the other for a city in the jiangnan river Delta outside Shanghai's.

IaaC Conference Hall, 29th February 2008

Bostjan Vuga graduated at the Faculty of Architecture in Ljubljana (1992) and contiunued post graduate studies at the AA School of Architecture in London (1993-1995). In 2003 he was a studio tutor at Berlage Institute in Rotterdam. He was a visiting critic at AA School of Architecture, at Bauhaus Kolleg in Dessau, at the IAAC in Barcelona, at the ETH in Zürich and at the Academy of Applied Arts and Academy of Visual Arts in Vienna.
Sadar Vuga Arhitekti (SVA) was founded by Jurij Sadar and Boštjan Vuga in Ljubljana in 1996. Over the past ten years it has focused on open, innovative and integral architectural design and urban planning. The office has been driven by a quest for quality, with a strong belief that forward-leaping architectural production contributes to our well-being, and generates a sensitive and responsive development of the physical context we live in, broadening our imagination and stimulating our senses.

IaaC Conference Hall, November 11th 2007

Michael Weinstock is an Architect. Born in Germany, lived as a child in the Far East and then West Africa, and attended an English public school but ran away to sea at age 17 after reading Conrad. Years at sea in traditional wooden sailing ships, with shipyard and shipbuilding experience. Studied Architecture at the Architectural Association 1982/88 and has taught at the AA School of Architecture since 1989. Founding Member of the Emergence and Design Group, formed in 2002 as a multi-disciplinary research practice. Personal research interests lie in exploring the convergence of Emergence, Natural Systems, Evolution, Computation and Material Sciences, and has taught and published on these topics in Europe and the US since 1998. At the Architectural Association School of Architecture, Michael Weinstock serves the Academic Head since 2006. He is also director of the Emergent Technologies and Design Master’s program since 200 and master of Technical Studies since 1997.

IaaC Conference Hall, March 26th 2007

Prof. Neil Gershenfeld, Director of MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms, and founder of Fab Lab Network, joined IaaC facilities for the launching of Fab Lab Bcn.

Fab lab is an ambitious interdisciplinary initiative that is looking beyond the end of the Digital Revolution to ask how a functional description of a system can be embodied in, and abstracted from, a physical form.

Fab Lab” program brings prototyping capabilities to under-served communities that have been beyond the reach of conventional technology development and deployment. By making accessible engineering in space (down to microns, through precision machining) and time (down to microseconds, through RISC microcontrollers), these facilities have been uncovering what can be thought of as instrumentation and fabrication divides, and suggesting that they can be addressed by bringing IT development rather than just IT to the masses.

IaaC Confrence Hall, March 16th 2007

The lecture will give an overview of a number of projects of Axel Kilian’s PhD addressing the challenge of design exploration using computational design approaches. The projects include fabrication studies of a free form chair of all curved plywood parts, concept car design studies with the media lab and the use of programming for form finding in architectural design. In addition some full scale prototype explore the use of digital fabrication driven by parametric models.
Axel Kilian recently completed a PhD and subsequent Post Doctoral position in the Computation Group in the Department of Architecture at MIT. He came to MIT on a Fulbright scholarship after completing his professional architecture degree at the University of the Arts in Berlin, Germany. During his stay he also completed his Master of Science in Architectural Studies at MIT.
His PhD research centered on design exploration in the context of architecture and design processes using computational processes, namely programming and parametric design in combination with fabrication. Recent projects range from architectural form finding applications, collaboration on concept car designs with the media lab, to a number of full scale installations. Axel Kilian has been teaching courses and workshops in computation in academia and in collaboration with the smart geometry group in the UK since 2003. He has lectured in the US, Central America, and Europe among others at GSD, UPENN, Columbia, GATech, MIT, AA, UFM Guatemala City, TU Prague, IST Lisbon, TU Stuttgart.

IaaC Conference Hall, February 15th

Michel Rojkind was born in Mexico City where he studied architecture and urban planning at the Universidad Iberoamericana. After working on his own for several years, he teamed up with Isaac Broid and Miquel Adria to establish Adria+Broid+Rojkind (1998-2002).

With the idea of exploring new challenges that address contemporary society, to design compelling experiences that go beyond mere functionality, and to connect at a deeper level with the intricacies of each project, he established an independent firm rojkind arquitectos (2002) recognized by Architectural Record in 2005 as one of the best ten “Design Vanguard” firms.

http://www.rojkindarquitectos.com/

IaaC Conference Hall, January 25th

Native of Lituania, Massimiliano Fuksas was born in Rome in 1944, where he graduated in Architecture at “La Sapienza University” in 1969. In 1967, 1989 and 1993 he established practices in Rome, Paris and Vienna respectively and since 2002 he opened a new studio in Frankfurt. From 1998 to 2000 he was Director of the VII Biennale Internazionale di Architettura di Venezia “Less Aesthetics, More Ethics”. Since January 2000 writes the architecture column of the weekly magazine “L’Espresso”.
He was Visiting Professor at several universities, such as the École Speciale d’Architecture in Paris, the Akademie der Bildenden Kunste in Vienna and the Columbia University in New York. For many years he has been devoting special attention to the study of the urban problems in large metropolitan areas.
Presently lives and works in Rome, Paris and Frankfurt.
He works with Doriana O. Mandrelli since 1985.

IaaC Conference Hall, January 11th

Alfonso Vegara (Alicante, Spain 1955) is an Urban Architect with Doctorate in City and Regional Planning. He has been a professor of urbanism in architecture schools in Madrid and Navarra as well as a visiting professor in diverse European and American Universities. He is the author of many books covering territorial and regional themes including “Intelligent Territories” which is a summary of years of investigation over the development of cities. He is currentlythe President of the Fundacion Metropoli (www.fundacion-metropoli.org), a non-profit institution dedicated to the investigation of the future of the cities.