prague CZECH REPUBLIC

Experimental Architecture Biennial in Prague is an international platform for mapping the actual tendencies and architectural planning methods in reaction to a changing world of new philosophy and technology. It aims at re-emerging of interest in architectural thinking, transcending the closed borders of local critics´ standpoints. Volume # 1 EAB starts with 10 academic studios in Vienna, Insbruck, Bratislava and Prague, presenting new rising stars.

Experimental Architecture Biennial
exhibition: 04/26–05/26
symposium: 05/22 (at Cinema Svetozor)
Jaroslav Fragnera Gallery
Betlemske namesti 5a
Prague 1, Czech Republic

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los angeles CALIFORNIA

Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc)
advisor: Hernan DIAZ ALONSO

suckerPUNCH: Describe your project.

Jason ORBE-SMITH: This thesis examines elements of vernacular architecture as a means to influence and generate contemporary form.

As society moves towards a state of interconnectivity, heterogeneity and the globalization of politics, culture and economy, this thesis reinvestigates the discussion concerning the native, indigenous and local with notions of the cosmopolitan, global and foreign.

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los angeles CALIFORNIA

Called “America’s Most Wired Composer” by the L.A. Times, Tod Machover is the Muriel R. Cooper Professor of Music and Media at the MIT Media Lab, where he also directs the Opera of the Future Group. He is known for his boundary-breaking compositions and for designing transformative technologies for music. His hyperinstruments—smart performance systems to enhance artistic expression—have been created for virtuosi from Yo-Yo Ma to Prince, been used to introduce musical creativity to amateurs of all ages. . . .

Tod MACHOVER, “Mediated Music: Robotic Operas, Guitar Hero, Collaborative Symphonies and Beyond”
intro. by Hernan Diaz ALONSO
Wednesday, 03/20
7.00 pm / W.M. Keck Lecture Hall
SCI-Arc
960 East 3rd Street
Los Angeles, California 90013

los angeles CALIFORNIA

SCI-Arc
critic: Hernan DIAZ ALONSO

suckerPUNCH: Describe your project.

Stefano PASSERI: Dust Breeding deals with the legibility of amorphous forms in an almost familiar landscape. The forms and the landscape are independent of each other and are governed by independent rules. At the same time, what is initially mere coexistence, gradually determines unexpected moments of empathy resulting in new sets of relationships.

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vienna AUSTRIA

University of Applied Arts Vienna
Postgraduate Master Thesis, Excessive III
critics: Hernan DIAZ ALONSO, Jose CARLOS, Tyler BORNSTEIN

suckerPUNCH: Describe your project.

FEIYU Qi: This project represents my thesis for the “Excessive” postgraduate program at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, 2012. The aim was to design a new train station for Vienna by reinterpreting the existing Westbahnhof station.

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los angeles CALIFORNIA

Hernan DIAZ ALONSO speaks on depth versus density, architecture’s engagement with contemporary culture, maintaining originality in a sea of copycatting, tackling the mathematical perfection brought about by the computer, and much more.

[CLICK FOR HERNAN DIAZ ALONSO INTERVIEW]

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los angeles CALIFORNIA

Since the mid-’90s, architecture has accelerated its move away from the discourse of the architectural object towards the discourse of the architectural field. The vicissitudes of the architectural object has lost its uncanny appeal, and recent work is more often than not circumscribed by the mental image of an underlying network of relations that is deep, dynamic, and more real than the architectural object itself. Like Janus, the transition from object to field has had many faces but has shared a single body moving towards the virtual. This lecture offers reasons for pause in this move toward relationism. . . .

David RUY, “Returning to (Strange) Objects”
intro. by Hernan Diaz ALONSO
Wednesday, 01/30
7.00 pm / W.M. Keck Lecture Hall
SCI-Arc
960 East 3rd Street
Los Angeles, California 90013

vienna AUSTRIA

EXCESSIVE focuses on strategies of architectural design. Many of the ambitions revolve around the topic of excess as a redefinition of beautiful lust and—misfit aesthetics of exuberance and sophisticated conditions of arousal. If design is typically derived from an expertise related to form and proportion, a theory of mutation is possibly an advanced critical stance toward formal traditions. A theory of excessive form is not a rejection of the formal traditions but an extension of them. Further, navigation through the topologies of excessive form can be understood as an intensification of more traditional formal strategies.

EXCESSIVE diplomas & semester finals w/ jurors Hernan Diaz ALONSO, Tom KOVAC, Kivi SOTAMAA, & Reiner ZETTL
Wednesday, 01/16
2.00 pm / 
Urban Strategies Studio
University of Applied Arts Vienna
Vordere Zollamtsstraße 3
1030 Vienna

vienna AUSTRIA

University of Applied Arts Vienna,
Urban Strategies postgraduate program, Excessive III
critics: Hernan DIAZ ALONSO, Jose Carlos LOPEZ CERVANTES (asistant professor), Tyler BORNSTEIN (teaching assistant). With special thanks to the studio’s previous assistant professor, Steven MA

suckerPUNCH: Describe your project.

Tan AKINCI: The existing Vienna Westbahnhof train station lays in the end point of the Mariahilferstreet which is the shopping axis of Vienna. The “gürtel” which is a green band cuts the street and creates a undefined corridor.The neighbor on two sides; the Bahnhof City contains a lot of closed space with shopping, offices and a hotel.

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los angeles CALIFORNIA

The AAG symposium presents theoretical works and practices linked to new geometrical development applicable to architecture. The event aims to gather the diverse components of the contemporary architectural tendencies which push the building envelope towards free form and respond to the multiple current design challenges with a renewed mathematical rigor.

Centre Pompidou Exhibition Symposium: Advances in Architectural Geometry at Centre Pompidou, Paris
Featuring: Herwig Baumgartner, Hernan Diaz Alonso, Elena Manferdini, Florencia Pita, Peter Testa, and Andrew Atwood.
Friday, 11/30
7.00 pm / W.M. Keck Lecture Hall
SCI-Arc
960 East 3rd Street
Los Angeles, California 90013