:::R[e]thinking Academic Series goes to CEDIM in Monterrey:::

Following an invitation by Vange Tamez (Architecture and Interior Design Coordinator) from CEDIM University in Monterrey I will be leading a summer workshop focused on "Geometric Exploration". This will be held on early June 2009.

For more information related to the workshop please visit the following link:

http://www.cedim.com.mx/summerStars.html

:::R[e]thinking Academic Series goes to Manama in Bahrain:::

The Department of Civil Engineering & Architecture, College of Engineering from the University of Bahrain organizes the 4th ASCAAD Conference to be held on May 11-12 in Manama, Bahrain.

This year ASCAAD (Arab Society for Computer Aided Architectural Design) congress is focusing in Digitizing Architecture: Formalization & Content. 

CAAD is constantly provoking and raising many potentials, challenges and arguments in academia and practice, and even in the theory of architecture itself. This process starts with the pedagogy of designing and the ongoing questions such as how much of CAAD should be incorporated in teaching, and ends with digital design technologies and the new emerging questions such as how biologically inspired computational processes alter the form of our architecture and the typical design process.

Architecture originates from people's needs and beliefs. The new forms of digital architecture generate debates in terms of various important issues, ranging from emotional and social factors to sustainability and warming climate. 

The focus area of the conference can be shaped, as follows: considering all these potentials, challenges, and arguments, which we have to benefit from and cope with, are there truly legitimate concerns about the future of our architecture and its content in particular from human and environmental dimensions? Can we develop our own ways of benefiting from the technology that cater to our environment and culture? Can we still see the form of architecture in the traditional way or should we change our perspectives? In other words the conference concentrates on bridging between the new digital form and the traditional human content.

I will present material for oral presentation and proceedings from a case study held last year at the Escuela de Arquitectura in Universidad Anahuac. I really look forward to it.

:::The 3rd Beijing Architecture Bienniale:::

Latin-America section curator Matias del Campo head and co-founder with Sandra Manninger of SPAN (Office based in Vienna Austria) invited R[e]thinking Architecture : R[e]thinking Academic Series as part of his selection for a total of six offices in Latin-America. This section included XerifoArch, PATTERNS, SUBdV, Pablo C. Herrera and SPAN. I am including some photographs from the opening ceremony, cover and index from the publication and some pictures from our entry.

(Im)material Processes: New Digital Techniques for Architecture: "Code, it would seem, is everywhere. We are beginning to understand that much of our natural environment is based on rule-based behaviors, from the emergent swarm intelligence of flocks of birds and schools of fish, to the complex patterns of snow flakes, ferns, sea shells and zebra skins. And nothing escapes. Not even the human body. The human genome is being mapped out and sequenced by scientist to provide a genetic blueprint of human life itself."[1].

R[e]thinking Architecture : R[e]thinking Academic Series work lies at the intersection of continuos information between computer science, through structural geometry and parametric design, to complex modelling, digital fabrication, material intelligence, evolutionary computation, physical computing and real-time interactivity. 

I want to extend my gratitude to Matias del Campo, Neil Leach and Xu Weiguo for the invitation and their enormous effort for making it happen!

http://abbeijing-emarch.com/

1. Leach, N., (Im)material Processes : New Digital Techniques for Architecture, China Architecture & Building Press, China 2008, 274 (a short extract from the introduction, p-7), ISBN 978-7-112-10395-9.

:::S[e]arching the COSMOS:::