TH2 (Theory of Architecture 2), Introduction to ways of making

This course will assess the present state of computer-based design by situating today's digital turn within the long duration of the history of cultural technologies.  It will include 2 public lectures (see below), plus some closed sessions and tutorials limited to enrolled students.

 

SECOND PUBLIC LECTURE UPDATE : the lecture will start at 18:30.   Content unchanged, as per syllabus ("Designers Redesign Robotics": see synopsis below).  zoom invite as follows:

Mario Carpo is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: Mario Carpo's Zoom Meeting

Time: Apr 27, 2020 06:30 PM Vienna

Join Zoom Meeting

https://zoom.us/j/7080696158

Meeting ID: 708 069 6158

 

 

 

First public lecture : The Second Digital Turn. Discretism, Artificial Intelligence, and Design

synopsis : 

Computers are machines, so we tend to think they work like all the other machines we know. They don't. Computers are a new kind of machine, quite unlike any other machine we have ever seen. Computers make things the way a good artisan workshop could, not the way any modern factory would. And computers think following the learning logic of little child, not the scientific methods of any modern engineer. And yet, in spite of their artisanal way of making, and of their childish way of thinking, computers are extraordinarily effective. Which is why it is important for us to try and understand how computers make things and how they think; because their logic is so different from the logic of all modern technologies, and of modern science.

 

Second Public Lecture : Designers Redesign Robotics. From Robotic Assembly to Computational Automation

synopsis :

While the history of CAD has been driven primarily by the technical logic of the computers we use to notate and calculate architectural forms, the machinery adopted over time for numerically controlled fabrication has often been as influential and even inspirational for designers as the software at the core of the computer systems themselves. For some time now the interest of experimental computational designers has shifted from subtractive and additive processes to the technical logic of automated assembly.  Starting with Gramazio and Kohler's ground-breaking experiments almost 15 years ago, the creative adaptation of industrial robots to the non-standard environment of architectural design and construction has already produced significant architectural and technical results.  

 

General bibliography for the course :

1 - Textbooks:

Mario Carpo, The Second Digital Turn. Design beyond intelligence (Cambridge : MIT Press, 2017)

---, The Alphabet and the Algorithm (Cambridge : MIT Press, 2011)

---, The Digital Turn in Architecture, 1992-2012. An AD Reader (Chicester : Wiley, 2012)

2 - Additional readings:

---, "Particlised. Computational Discretism, or the Rise of the Digital Discrete." AD 258, (2019): 86-93 [89,2, Discrete: Reappraising the Digital in Architecture, guest-edited by Gilles Retsin]

---, "Republics of Makers," in Imminent Commons: Urban Questions for the Near Future, Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism 2017, edited by Alejandro Zaera-Polo and Hyungmin Pai, 302-09. Barcelona: Actar, 2017. Also on line at http://www.e-flux.com/architecture/positions/175265/republics-of-makers/

---, "The Alternative Science of Computation," E-Flux, New York (electronic publication, June 2017: http://www.e-flux.com/architecture/artificial-labor/142274/the-alternative-science-of-computation/)

---, "Breaking the Curve. Big Data and Digital Design." Artforum 52,6 (2014): 168-173.

 

Enrolled students will submit a research paper of around 2,500 words on a topic freely chosen by the students and agreed with the instructor. Papers will be individual or by groups of up to 3 students (the number of words for each paper will increase more or less proportionally). A limited number of students may opt for an oral presentation that will replace the written paper. Contents and format for each oral presentation will be agreed during tutorials. Each oral presentation will have a duration of around 15' (for groups of up to 3 students the duration of the presentation will increase more or less proportionally).

Attendance to the public lectures 1 and 2 is open to everybody and does not require registration.

Enrollment for the closed sessions and examination is limited to 20 participants and priority will be given to students of architecture in their 3rd and 2nd year. Ranking is made by order of registration and semester-level. Students from other institutes are welcome as long as there are places.

In addition to the sessions scheduled here below, a final wrap-up session on Fri 19 June will be confimed in due time

*** 03 APR., UPDATE DUE TO REMOTE TEACHING, as requested :  all classes, meetings, and tutorials, will be held on line at the times originally scheduled.  I do not anticipate any change to syllabi or content,  but minor adjustments in format may be necessary and these will be adressed and discussed in due time, if needed.