IAAC Lecture Series 2013 - Alisa Andrasek

Open Synthesis: Increased Resolution Fabric of Architecture

Because of architecture's nascent tendency to synthesize myriad of agencies involved in the formation of design, it has the potential to play an important role within accelerated convergence of matter and information. While data visualization techniques widespread in other fields are productive for the communication and legibility of large data, they are not yet explicitly involved in production. Data materialization however, involves the direct activation of an abundance of data in the formation of other systems, via a connective hinge positioned within the domain of design. What could be called data materialization is opening up the potential for architecture to finally resonate with the complexity of ecology. While data visualisation exposes the hidden beauty, intelligence, and complexity of observed systems, data materialization can produce such beauty and complexity within new synthetic fields. Through recently expanded computational simulations within design, it is becoming possible to access behavioral tendencies of matter at a finer grain. Scientific discoveries and harvested data can now be incorporated into massive resolution material speculations via newly revealed algorithmic profiles of matter, increasing designability of matter and opening doors for enriched synthesis. Unlike the principles of total holism that characterized early ecological thinking, this kind of synthetic landscape offers resilience and redundancy of Increased Resolution Architectural Fabrics, with an enlarged capacity for interweaving contingent agencies.





Alisa Andrasek is an architect and curator. She is a founding principal of Biothing (biothing.org) operating at the intersection of design, material and computer science and a partner of Bloom Games (bloom thegame.com). Andrasek is a director of MArch Graduate Architectural Design at the UCL Bartlett and has taught at the DRL Architectural Association in London, Columbia University GSAPP, Pratt, UPenn, RMIT Melbourne, RPI and UTSSydney. She received Europe 40 under 40 Award, Metropolis Next Generation Award and FEIDAD Award. Biothingʼs work is part of a permanent collection at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, FRAC Collection in Orleans, TB-A21 in Vienna amongst others.

Recent exhibitions include Aestetics/Anesthetics at the Storefront NY, Transitory Objects TB-A21 in Vienna, Elles at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, A_maze at FRAC Orleans, Synathroisis in Athens; Scripted by Purpose in Philadelphia, Seroussi pavilion and Ars Mathematica in Paris, the 2003 Prague Biennale, the 2004 Sydney Biennial,Architectural Biennial Beijing 2004, 2006, 2008 and 2010, and the New Museum, NY.

She curated the US East Coast section for the "Emergent Talent Emergent Technologies" exhibition for the Beijing Biennial 2006 and for the "(Im)material Processes: New Digital Techniques for Architecture" for the Beijing Biennial 2008 and the UK section for "Machinic Processes" for the Beijing Biennial 2010. Andrasek is a co-curator of PROTO/E/CO/LOCICS Symposium series in Rovinj Croatia. She lectured and published her writings worldwide. Andrasek was born in Croatia and presently lives and works in London.

www.bloom-thegame.com

www.biothing.org