INTENSIVE FIELDS – NEW PARAMETRIC TECHNIQUES IN URBANISM
Conference | USC | Los Angeles | 12 December 2009
Anne Balsamo is Professor of Interactive Media in the School of Cinematic Arts, and of Communications in the Annenberg School of Communications at USC. Previously she was a member of RED (Research on Experimental Documents), a collaborative research group at Xerox PARC that created experimental reading devices and new media genres. Her first book, Technologies of the Gendered Body: Reading Cyborg Women (Duke UP, 1996) investigated the social and cultural implications of emergent bio-technologies.
Benjamin Bratton teaches in the Department of Visual Arts, and as primary researcher at CALIT2, at UCSD. He has also taught at SCI-Arc. He is a principal of The Culture Industry, a multidisciplinary design research consultancy that helps large organizations plan for the overlaps of physical and computational spaces. His research, writing and practical interests include contemporary social theory, the perils and potentials of pervasive computing, architectural theory and provocation, inverse brand theory, software studies, systems design and development, and the spatial rhetorics of exceptional violence.
Manuel DeLanda is the author of five philosophy books: War in the Age of Intelligent Machines (Zone Books, 1991); A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History (Zone Books, 1997); Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy (Continuum, 2002); A New Philosophy of Society (Continuum, 2006); and Philosophy, Emergence and Simulation (2009). He teaches two seminars at the UPenn: ‘Philosophy of History: Theories of Self-Organization and Urban Dynamics’ and ‘Philosophy of Science: Thinking about Structures and Materials’.
Hernan Diaz Alonso is the principal of Xefirotarch, Graduate Thesis Coordinator at SCI-Arc, Adjunct Professor at Columbia GSAPP and Visiting Professor at the University of Applied Arts Vienna.
Eui-Sung Yi is Director of the Master of Architecture Programs at USC. He heads yistudios, a practice engaged in building small and medium residential and commercial projects in California and planning large workers’ housing projects overseas. Previously he was with Morphosis for ten years, co-running the Korean office and involved in several award winning projects. He was premiated in the Shinkenchiku urban acupuncture competition and is a recipient of the Kume work scholarship in Japan.
Scott Fisher is Professor and Chair of Interactive Media at USC. He is a media artist and interaction designer whose work focuses primarily on interactive environments and technologies of presence. Well known for his pioneering work in the field of virtual reality at NASA, Fisher’s media industry experience also includes Atari, Paramount and his own companies Telepresence Research and Telepresence Media. A graduate of MIT’s Architecture Machine Group (now Media Lab), he has taught at MIT, UCLA, UCSD, and is a project professor at Keio University in Japan.
Marc Fornes currently teaches design studios with Francois Roche at USC and Columbia GSAPP. He is
the founder and principal of THEVERYMANY – www.theverymany.net – a design studio and collaborative research forum engaging the field of architecture via what he qualifies as “explicit and encoded protocols”. A graduate of the DRL at the AA Marc’s professional work experience in La Reunion, France, UK and the US includes SOM, Ross Lovegrove and Zaha Hadid Architects.
David Gerber is Assistant Professor of Architecture at USC. He concurrently works as a consultant at Gehry Technologies. He has worked as an architect in the US, Europe and Asia, for the Steinberg Group, Moshe Safdie, Gehry Technologies, and as a project architect for Zaha Hadid Architects. He has previously held appointments at MIT’s Media Lab and Harvard GSD.
Tom Kovac is a Visiting Professor at SCI-Arc and Adjunct Professor of Architecture at RMIT. He has taught, lectured and exhibited throughout Europe, Japan and the United States. In 1992 he established Tom Kovac Architecture, a research, architecture and design practice, producing projects that combine the use of digital tools and manufacturing technologies for the conception and realization of projects at varying scales.
Qingyun Ma is Dean of the USC School of Architecture and holder of the Della and Harry MacDonald Dean’s Chair in Architecture. After practicing architecture with KPF in New York, he founded the Shanghai architectural firm MADA s.p.a.m. (for strategy, planning, architecture and media) in 1996, creating award-winning projects such as the Longyang Residential complex in Shanghai and the Silk Tower in Xian. Ma also coordinated Rem Koolhaas’s first Harvard Project on Cities, which yielded the 1993 book The Great Leap Forward. The two also collaborated on the CCTV headquarters in Beijing and the Stock Exchange Building in Shenzhen.
Elena Manferdini teaches at SCI-Arc. She is the principal of Atelier Manferdini, a design office that specializes in the cutting edge of computer-aided design of exotic forms. Her practice applies construction and manufacturing technologies from the engineering field to architecture, object design and fashion. Atelier Manferdini is designing for numerous industries and is currently collaborating with Fiat, Nike, Alessi, Guzzini, Ottaviani, Leucos, Valentino and FolliFollie.
Lev Manovich is a Professor at the Visual Arts Department, UCSD, where he teaches practical courses in digital art as well as history and theory of digital culture. He is the author of Software Takes Command (released under CC license, 2008), Black Box – White Cube (Merve Verlag Berlin, 2005), Soft Cinema (MIT Press, 2005), The Language of New Media (MIT Press, 2001), Metamediji (Belgrade, 2001), Tekstura: Russian Essays on Visual Culture (Chicago UP, 1993)
Stefano de Martino is a Visiting Professor at USC and Professor at the University of Innsbruck. He has also taught at a number of other institutions including the AA, Columbia GSAPP, UPenn, the Royal Danish Art Academy and Berlage Institute. He was an associate of OMA (1979-83), and worked in partnership with Alex Wall (“Cities of Childhood”, “4 Topographies”), before starting his own studio in London in 1989, gaining recognition through projects and competitions.
Neil Leach is a Visiting Professor at USC. He has also taught at the AA, Columbia GSAPP, Cornell University, DIA and SCI-Arc. He is the author, editor and translator of 18 books, including Rethinking Architecture (Routledge 1997), The Anaesthetics of Architecture (MIT Press, 1999), Designing for a Digital World (Wiley, 2002), Digital Tectonics (Wiley, 2004), Camouflage (MIT Press, 2006) and Digital Cities (Wiley, 2009). He has also curated a number of exhibitions on digital design at the Beijing Biennial.
Greg Lynn is the principal of Greg Lynn FORM. He has taught throughout the United States and Europe at institutions including ETH Zurich, Columbia GSAPP, University of Applied Arts Vienna, UCLA and Yale. His architectural designs have received numerous awards and have been exhibited in both architecture and art museums. In 2001 Time Magazine named him one of 100 Innovators for the Next Century, and at the 2008 Venice Architecture Biennale he was awarded a Golden Lion prize for his Recycled Toy Furniture.
Marcos Novak is a Professor at UCSB, where he is Director of the transLAB. A self proclaimed ‘transarchitect’, he is a cyber-theorist and designer of digital environments. His design work has been exhibited internationally and he wrote the influential chapter “Liquid Architectures in Cyberspace” for Michael Benedikt’s Cyberspace: First Steps.
Greg Otto is Adjunct Professor at the USC. He founded Buro Happold’s Los Angeles office in 2006 and functioned as office director until 2008. In 2009, he became a director, turning his focus to digital modeling and collaboration technologies, and their application within the practice. Educated as both architect and engineer, Greg’s focus has been on multi-disciplinary, collaborative working between the two disciplines, and the potential for innovation that this brings.
Nick Pisca is currently Senior Automation Consultant and Senior Project Consultant at Gehry Technologies. He also teaching scripting for architectural design at USC, and has taught previously at UCSB and SCI-Arc. He is the author of YSYT – Maya MEL Basics for Designers, Los Angeles: 0001d Publishing, 2009.
Casey Reas is Associate Professor and Chair of the department of Design | Media Arts at UCLA. His art work has been exhibited internationally. With Ben Fry, Reas initiated Processing.org, an open source programming language and environment for creating images, animation, and interaction. In 2007 they published Processing: A Programming Handbook for Visual Designers and Artists, (MIT Press).
R&Sie(n) is a Paris-based architectural office set up in 1989 and led by François Roche and Stéphanie Lavaux. Roche has held professorships at the Bartlett School ofArchitecture, UPenn, Columbia GSAPP and the University of Applied Arts, Vienna. The firm’s projects have been exhibited at Columbia University, UCLA, the ICA, Mori Art Museum, Centre Pompidou, SF Moma, MAM, MIT’s Media Lab, Tate Modern and Orléans/ArchiLab International. R&Sie(n) was among those architects selected by France for the 1990, 1996, 2000 and 2002 Venice Architectural Biennale, and was also featured in the international selections for 2000, 2004 and 2008.
Patrik Schumacher is a partner at and senior designer for Zaha Hadid Architects, working on projects including MAXXI: National Centre of Contemporary Art and Architecture in Rome, the BMW Central Building in Leipzig, and the Dubai Opera House. He studied architecture at Southbank University and Stuttgart University, and in 1999 received his DPhil from the Institute for Cultural Sciences at the University of Klagenfurt. He is co-director of the Design Research Laboratory at the AA, and has also taught studios with Zaha Hadid at the University of Illinois, Columbia GSAP, and Harvard GSD.
Roland Snooks teaches at a number of institutions including the UPenn, Columbia GSAPP and USC. His current teaching and research interests focus on emergent design processes involving genetic and agent based techniques. He is a director of Kokkugia, and has previously worked for Reiser + Umemoto, Kovac Architecture, Minifie Nixon, and Ashton Raggatt McDougall. His work with Kokkugia has been published and exhibited internationally, including at the Beijing Biennial and Chernikhov Prize in Moscow.
Warren Techentin is Adjunct Professor at USC. Previously he taught at the University of British Columbia. He is the principal owner of the firm Techentin Projects in Pasadena and Vancouver, British Columbia. Prior to that he worked for Morphosis and Seldorf Architects.
Mette Thomsen is Associate Professor at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture, Copenhagen, Denmark, where she heads the Centre for Information Technology and Architecture [CITA]. She is an architect working with interactive technologies. Her research centers on the design of spaces that are defined by physical as well as digital dimensions.
Roland Wahlroos-Ritter is Adjunct Professor at USC. Previously he has taught at SCI-Arc, the Bartlett, Cornell and TU Vienna. He and Ingalill Wahlroos-Ritter established their joint practice, WROAD, in London, and are now based in Los Angeles. They have won a number of competitions including the infinity design award for the City of the Future competition 2006; the first prize for the Rabin Square design competition, Tel Aviv 2001; and first prize for the Mobile Museum, Vienna, 2001; and were shortlisted in the competition for the Korean embassy in Tokyo. Ingalill is Associate Professor and Chair of the School of Architecture at Woodbury University. She has also taught at a number of other institutions, including SCI-Arc, the Bartlett, Oxford Brookes, Cornell and Yale.
Xu Wei-Guo is Chair of Architecture at Tsinghua University, Beijing, and principal of XWG Arch-Studio. He is the recipient of many awards, and his work has been published in several journals. He has been co-curator of a series of exhibitions at the Architecture Biennial Beijing, and is the author and editor of a series of books including Emerging Talents, Emerging Technologies (CABP, 2006), and (Im)material Processes: New Digital Techniques for Architecture (CABP, 2008).
Peter Zellner is co-ordinator of the SCIFI graduate program at SCI-Arc, and principal of ZellnerPlus, an award winning architectural practice based in Los Angeles. His projects include the REDCAT lounge and bar at Disney Concert Hall, the Sweeney art gallery for UC Riverside as well as projects for Napster, the Project, LA>
