Archinect - News

ACADIA's 'Wooden Structures' workshop takes a hack at automated fabrication of multi-species structures

2016-11-02T13:26:00-04:00

There is a misleading myth that “architecture is just architecture”, that assumes that architecture is a form of knowledge that neither research definitions, nor processes applied in other disciplines, can be applied to architecture research. It is a myth that has been used enduringly as an excuse to avoid further forms of research, claiming that other disciplines do not have the capacity to comprehend the nature of the field and the kind of work it entails. While part of these claims might be true, these claims have led to the severance between architecture and other disciplines, thus marginalizing architecture. Furthermore, it has made architecture seek authority from other disciplines such as art and science.

In the last decade there has been a tremendous change in the way architecture is perceived, which came along with the growing awareness of the importance of research in architecture, initiating interdisciplinary research, and removing all the intellectual paradigm boundaries ...

ACADIA Conference 2014: Architectural Auto Show

2014-10-29T14:32:00-04:00

Acadia 2014 was presented this year at the USC School of Architecture in Los Angles from October 23-25. The term "Design Agency" was the cornerstone term of discourse through out the conference. It would be considered from different angles, including but not limited to: materiality, fabrication, and programming. The conference also considered the impact of external influencers, such as games and art, that have shaped our industry through their usage and invention of tools – the same tools that made ACADIA possible. Keynote speakers such as Will Wright (Creator of The Sims, SimCity and Spore), Casey Reas (Co-Creator of Processing and Artist) and Zaha Hadid (Zaha Hadid Architects) provided touchstones throughout the conference's weekend.

[Zaha Hadid's keynote]

The cross-pollination of Architecture with other disciplines has allowed for ACADIA to broaden its scope since its inception in the early 1980s, making the conference more inclusive. The ability to call upon a wide array of spea...

Vying for Attention: Reporting from ACADIA Conference, Day 3

2014-10-28T20:42:00-04:00

Day one at Acadia 2014 found us in the 2D world. Day Two in reality. Day Three was to be somewhere in-between those. It found us dealing with Temporal and Data Agency. Temporal dealing with time and Data with evaluation. A mixing of the two worlds was at play. We weren’t here nor there. Somewhere in a digital version of Alice and Wonderland. Interaction, movement and perception were mixing seamlessly. Our understanding of reality has been expanded through the digital. Our viewing of the world and our society has been exploited. Subsequently, our social understanding of its impact and influence is coming to fruition, and an area of focus emerges.

Tools such as Google Earth, robotic arms, smart phones and countless others have forced us into a purgatory of realms all vying for our attention. We live in a three-dimensional world, we build three-dimensional objects, we think in three-dimensions, yet all our tools until recently have dealt in the 2D. How many times have we sat in front of...

Architecture in Flux: Reporting from ACADIA Conference, Day 1

2014-10-24T18:54:00-04:00

Proof of concept, experiments, process, a shot in the dark. The Acadia Conference of 2014 started off sounding more like a science conference than a forum for cutting edge architectural exploration. Topics such as walls, threshold, corner, access, and sketching were far from the main topics of exploration; instead something else had taken hold.

Reality, our movements, our ideas, they were formulated and described with symbols, numbers and variables more at home in a calculus class. It presents a new lens to see architecture through, a way to view it from a place where the designer did not feel the burden of immediate complete authorship; but inviting them into a system that already had its own qualities, ones to question and react to, a modern day mathematical rorschach. Architecture has been in flux, moving with extreme haste in multiple directions, from formal discovery, mathematical testing, materials exploration and so forth.

Acadia 2014 is our chance to engage into one of the bra...