Last week the V&A in London opened a new show titled Decode – Digital Design Sensations. The exhibition, co-curated by onedotzero, showcases the latest developments in digital and interactive design, from small screen based graphics to large-scale installations.
Exhibition poster: Prototypes from the Flowers series, 2009 Daniel Brown
I was lucky enough to get my hands on a ticket to the opening and whilst not everything in the show was my kettle of fish, a few works really stood out. I’ll focus on those.
Daniel Rozin’s Weave Mirror installation was one of the highlights for me. Ok- I’ve seen about a million pictures of it (check out Troika’s Digital by Design book, for instance) but I’d never seen it in person. Beautifully done- the work had a really organic feeling to it despite the somewhat complex network of electronics carefully integrated into the back. If there was one ‘I put my hand up, you show me putting my hand up’ installation I’d want in my house, it’d be this one.
Equally worthy of mention was Troika’s Digital Zoetrope, originally commissioned for onedotzero’s 2008/09 festival. From Troika’s website:
“The idea for the zoetrope comes directly from the festivals ‘adventures in motion’ payoff and this year’s theme ‘Citystates’.”
“We wanted to create a container that both celebrated the heritage of motion arts as well as its digital present while affording us a very literal medium for the content – the idea of altered states through motion.”
At the slightly more aggressive end of the scale, Ryoji Ikeda’s piece in the show was probably my favourite. Ok. Equal favourite. I saw him Live at the Paradiso in Amsterdam a couple of years ago and whilst I must say that I can generally handle experimental music, this really tested me. The set was about half an hour long and after 20 minutes I was unsure if I was going to make it to the end. I loved every second of it, but it was so intense.
He describes his work at the V&A, data.scan, as an attempt to materialise the vast quantities of data surrounding us in our everyday lives. It is part of Ikeda’s ongoing datamatics series, a collection of works that investigate the minutiae and infinite qualities of data.
For the sound element of the work, Ryoji opts for high frequencies which cut through even the chaos of the opening night, in a room which was probably already a little over-crowded with works before it was filled with people.
Decode is on now at the V&A and runs through to April 11, 2010. I’ll definately be back to check it out one more time. I’m curious what Jason Bruges created in the garden. On the night of the opening they closed if off before I made it out there.
As part of the Bartlett School of Architecture International Lecture Series there will be a FREE Digital Architecture Event this coming Wednesday in London.
image credit: Shampoo, AA Design Research Laboratory
Date:Wednesday 9th December , 2009 from 6.30PM
Open to public, arrive early to avoid disappointment.
Location:Darwin Lecture Theatre
University College London
Access through Malet Place. Map
For a special student focused event I have brought together some of London’s most prolific recent graduates in a group presentation of innovative and inspiring projects examining the scope of ‘digitally enabled’ architecture. Presenters include this years’ President’s Silver Medal Winner, Nicholas Szczepaniak, the Bartlett’s Christian Kerrigan and Ric Lipson, AA’s Adam Nathaniel Furman, AA DRL’s ‘Shampoo‘ Group and RCA’s Jordan Hodgson.
To place this in context: from the first generative algorithms of John Frazer, to Cedric Price and Gordon Pask’s proposed interactive buildings, to the technologically inspired hinterlands of Archigram’s walking, reconfigurable, and instant cities, London has long been a provocateur of digitally enabled architecture.
This spirit of speculation and provocation continues in a young generation of designers who slip with ease between computational algorithms and hand drawings, paper models and robotic manufacturing. In November 2009 myself and Sara Shafiei co-authored and published ‘Digital Architecture: Passages Through Hinterlands’ which went further than the exhibition, revealing the processes behind leading graduate work alongside interviews with young practices including Amanda Levete Architects, Plasma Studio, JDS Architects, sixteen* (makers), and marcosandmarjan – discussing how the these innovative explorations have begun to make their mark on the built environment. Following the lecture, there will be a book launch of ‘Digital Architecture: Passages Through Hinterlands’ at the Bartlett. It can also be previewed online at
Nicholas Szczepaniak will recieve the RIBA Silver Medal next month for his extraordinary graduate project “A Defensive Architecture”. I am delighted to be the first person to be publishing his work in my recently release book “Digital Architecture: Passages Through Hinterlands“. Nick’s work really is out on the hinterlands, a landscape plighted by climate change and rising water levels, social order breaks down, resources become rationed and public space becomes further militarised to maintain social order. Set in the Blackwater Estuary, Essex, his allegorical and provocative defensive architectures envisage the construction of a set of austere coastal defence towers that perform multiple functions within this dystopian future.
The militarised towers are alive — breathing, creaking, groaning, sweating and crying when stressed. Airbags on the face of the towers expand and contract, while hundreds of tensile trunks are sporadically activated, casting water onto the heated facades producing steam. An empty watchtower at the top of each tower gives the impression that the fragile landscape below is being constantly surveyed.
Across the estuary, a bed of salt marshes provides a natural form of flood defence and habitats for wildlife. Due to rising water levels and adverse weather conditions, the salt marshes are quickly deteriorating. The proposal suggests that mega structures can be integrated into, and encourage, the growth of natural defence mechanisms.
Over time, sand is collected at the base of each tower to form a spit across the mouth of the estuary, absorbing energy from the waves. Internally, the towers serve as a vast repository for mankind’s most valuable asset — knowledge. The architecture is an ark, protecting books from cumulative and catastrophic deterioration.
Early experiments with sugar and caramel were used to develop a prototypical object that responds to its surrounding climate. When heat is applied to sugar, its molecular arrangement is changed to form caramel. A series of experiments with domestic objects demonstrated how molten caramel can be extruded in a state of tension, then left to set to act in compression. Thin sheets, up to one metre in height, were also formed and then hung as a curtain. Responding to environmental conditions, these objects would crack, split, absorb moisture and dilapidate. They became indicators of climate change and became beacons of abnormal environmental conditions.
Szczepaniak’s project identified repetition, control, anticipated tension and surveying from an elevated position as properties crucial to his architecture. These evolved through an intensive process of speculative drawing, model making and a series of analogue and digital collage techniques. Studies were made of defensive typologies, in particular watchtowers and the Maze prison, built at the height of the Northern Irish Conflict… More information on this project is features in Digital Architecture: Passages Through Hinterlands
Digital Architecture: Passages Through Hinterlands is a collection of provocative projects from a young generation of digitally enabled designers. This publication oscillates between the analog and the digital, from concept to realisation, mapping processes as it explores the diverse digital paths that lead innovative spaces, poetic narratives and social interactions.
sixteen* (makers), 55/02 Shelter, Kielder Forest, UK
The book covers a spectrum of London’s leading graduates and young practices, featuring projects from the Architectural Association, Bartlett School of Architecture (UCL), University of Westminster and Royal College of Art, and case studies and interviews with architects including Amanda Levete Architects, Plasma Studio, JDS Architects, sixteen* (makers), Horhizon, marcosandmarjan, Mette Ramsgard Thomsen, Philip Beesley, David Greene, Samantha Hardingham, Usman Haque and Neil Spiller.
Tarek Shamma, “Circus Lumens”
I’m pleased to announce that “Digital Architecture: Passages Through Hinterlands” is now available. Co-Authored by myself (Ruairi Glynn) and Sara Shafiei it has been a real pleasure to put together a book that is intended to expand the envelope of what we might conside “Digital” Architecture to be.
Christian Kerrigan, “The 200 Year Continuum”
I would like to thank all of the architects and artists who have contributed their inspiring work and thank our exceptional graphic designer Emily Chicken bringing it all together with such elegance.
David Greene of Archigram and Samantha Hardingham’s recent L.A.W.U.N.* Project
I am also pleased to announce that one of the young graduates featuring in the book Nick Szczepaniak, has just been awarded the RIBA Silver Medal (The highest award in the UK for student design work) and we are thrilled to be the first publication to be presenting his work. More posts will follow presenting some of the other work featuring in the book and a preview of its contents can be seen here.
Living Light by David Benjamin and Soo-in Yang (aka “The Living“) is a permanent outdoor pavilion in the heart of Seoul with a dynamic skin that glows and blinks in response to both data about air quality and public interest in the environment. The skin of the pavilion is a giant map of Seoul with the 27 neighborhood (gu) boundaries redrawn based on existing air quality sensors of the Korean Ministry of Environment—each shape in this new map encloses the air closest to one of the sensors. Then the map illuminates to become an interactive, environmental building facade. Citizens can enter the pavilion or view it from nearby streets and buildings, and they can text message the building and it will text them back.
This structure in a public park not only provides a canopy and a tactile enclosure, it also suggests that a building facade itself can become a new kind of public space. It can offer important real-time information about our shared resources and our collective concerns. The Living are also showing their work at the current Toward the Sentient City exhibition in New York. See previous post for more details.
An exhibition critically exploring the evolving relationship between ubiquitous computing, architecture, and urban space. Curated by Mark Shepard and organized by the Architectural League of New York
As computing leaves the desktop and spills out onto the sidewalks, streets, and public spaces of the world around us, we increasingly find information processing capacity embedded within and distributed throughout the material fabric of everday urban space. Artifacts and systems we interact with on a daily basis collect, store, and process information about us, or are activated by our movements and transactions. Ubiquitous computing evangelists herald a coming age of urban infrastructure capable of sensing and responding to the events and activities transpiring around them. Imbued with the capacity to remember, correlate and anticipate, this near-future “sentient” city is envisioned as being capable of reflexively monitoring its environment and our behavior within it, becoming an active agent in the organization of everyday life in urban public space.
Toward the Sentient City explores alternate trajectories for the design and inhabitation of this near-future urban environment. Organized around five newly commissioned projects distributed throughout the city, the exhibition features: Natural Fuse by Usman Haque, creative director, Nitipak ‘Dot’ Samsen, designer, Ai Hasegawa, designer, Cesar Harada, designer. Barbara Jasinowicz, producer
Too Smart City by JooYoun Paek, David Jimison | Engineers: Daniel Bauen, Aaron Gilbert, Bill Washabaugh Amphibious Architecture by The Living Architecture Lab at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (Directors David Benjamin and Soo-in Yang) and xdesign Environmental Health Clinic at New York University (Director Natalie Jeremijenko) Trash Track by SENSEable City Laboratory, MIT | Carlo Ratti: Director, Assaf Biderman: Associate Director, Rex Britter: Advisor, Stephen Miles: Advisor, Kristian Kloeckl Project Leader, Musstanser Tinauli, E Roon Kang, Alan Anderson, Avid Boustani, Natalia Duque Ciceri, Lorenzo Davolli, Samantha Earl, Lewis Girod, Sarabjit Kaur, Armin Linke, Eugenio Morello, Sarah Neilson, Giovanni de Niederhausern, Jill Passano, Renato Rinaldi, Francisca Rojas, Louis Sirota, Malima Wolf Breakout! by Anthony Townsend (Institute for the Future), Georgia Borden, Amanda Kross, Jung Hoon Kim, Antonina Simeti (DEGW), Dana Spiegel (NYCwireless), Laura Forlano (Parsons The New School for Design), Tony Bacigalupo (New Work City), Sean Savage (PariSoMa), Elysse Preposi (Sarah Lawrence College)
Also see the “Open Archive“, a collection of video documentation of existing projects related to the themes of the exhibition. The Archive is designed to grow over the course of the exhibition based on suggestions and contributions received through an open submission process.
Interactive Architecture covers emerging architectural and artistic practices where digital technologies & virtual spaces merge with tangible and physical spatial experiences. An active architecture, sensing, observing, feeling, listening, thinking, reacting, proposing, adapting, learning, even sometimes interacting. It is an architecture in constant flux best suited to prototyping and semi-perminant installations.
image credit: Shampoo, AA Design Research Laboratory
