Parametric Approaches II: Computation and Material
An international symposium on the development of digital architecture for students and professionals. Organised by Centre for Information Technology and Architecture, Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture.

Speakers:

Prof. Mark Burry - Director of SIAL, RMIT
Prof. Neil Leach - Professor of Architecture at University of Brighton
Mark Foster Gage - Head of Gage Clemenceau, Ass. Prof. at Yale University School of Architecture
Achim Menges - Partner Ocean North, Studio Master at the AA, London and Professor at HfG Offenbach
Prof. Mark Goulthorpe - Associate Professor MIT, Head of dECOI

Digital practice can no longer be seen as separate from architecture. The means by which we design, produce and communicate the built environment is firmly set within digital media, from the software in which we design and detail, to the new Building Information Models that communicate and organise our building processes. 

In recent years the fabrication tools by which the built is realised is becoming increasingly digitised. Traditional industries such as manufacturers of wood frames, steel profiles and concrete elements are digitising their production tools allowing for new levels of detailing and the production of non standard series. As such, Computer Numerically Controlled (CNC) tools, such as laser cutters, milling machines and 3D printers are entering architectural practice no longer only as a modelling or prototyping environment, but as means to realise and build architecture.

The symposium Computation and Material discusses how new digital tools challenge the practices of designing and fabricating architecture. What happens to architectural design practice as craft becomes digital? How does the possibility of the bespoke change the thinking of repetition and series? How do digital tooling enable new relationships between the drawn and the built? And how do these practices instigate a challenge to the aesthetics of architecture?

Within the symposium Computation and Material the Center for IT and Architecture invites international speakers to discuss the emergence of new digital production techniques and their practices. Show casing recent projects and discussing their historic framing in the crafts of building and drawing, practitioners as well as theoreticians will discuss the new international discourse, design paradigms and formal languages that are arising with these technologies.

Program:

12:30 Coffee

13:00 Mark Burry
14:00 Mark Foster Gage
14:45 Discussion (chaired by Neil Leech)

15:00 Coffee

15:20 Neil Leach
16:00 Achim Menges
16:45 Debate  (chaired by Neil Leech)

Mark Goulthorpe unfortunately had to cancel his participation.

Date: Friday November 23rd, 2007
Time: 12:30 registration and coffee, 13:00 Introduction and keynote
Venue: The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture, Philip de Langes Alleé 10, Copenhagen, Auditorium 2

Invitation card for download (3mB)

The symposium is supported by Villem Kann Rasmussen Fonden