Study Days

with Roberto Bottazzi (UCL Bartlett), Vera Buehlmann (TU Wien), Mollie Claypool-Glass (UCL Bartlett), Ludger Hovestadt (ETH Zürich), Jelle Feringa, Manuel Jiménez García (UCL Bartlett), Anna Longo (Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne), Yves Papegay (INRIA Sophia Antipolis), Gilles Retsin (UCL Bartlett), RYBN, Theodore Spyropoulos (Architectural Association), Inigo Wilkins (Glass Bead)

Full Programme here

It is now clear that architecture, whether it is considered as an intellectual discipline or as a practical activity, will no longer remain the only human property it has been so far. As numerous developments in Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Interface Design show on a daily basis, computational machines – abstract or material – do not simply replace humans in low-skilled jobs and activities, but profoundly disrupt the role that humans play in all domains. From industrial production chains to cancer treatment, and from the management of public transport to the translation of natural languages (considered for a long time as a bastion of semantic complexity), nothing seems to escape calculation. In this context, which seems to jeopardize human authority, considering architecture as a computational discipline is no longer a marginal issue. We understand today that computation does not only modify the way we design and make architecture (by the use of software always including more know hows and allowing to automate a number more and more consequent of operations), but also transforms the nature of architectural practice and its possible ends.