ISP2: Digital Futures

Monday, 15.02., 09:00 – 10:00 CET
Prof. Mette Ramsgaard Thomsen
Royal Danish Academy, CITA, Copenhagen

Digital craft in a bio based material paradigm

Mette Ramsgaard Thomsen examines the intersections between architecture and new computational design processes. During the last 15 years her focus has been on the profound changes that digital technologies instigate in the way architecture is thought, designed and built. In 2005 she founded the Centre for IT and Architecture research group (CITA) at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture, Design and Conservation where she has piloted a special research focus on the new digital-material relations that digital technologies bring forth. Investigating advanced computer modelling, digital fabrication and material specification CITA has been central in the forming of an international research field examining the changes to material practice in architecture. This has been led by a series of research investigations developing concepts and technologies as well as strategic projects such as the international Marie Curie ITN network Innochain that fosters interdisciplinary sharing and dissemination of expertise and supports new collaborations in the fields of architecture, engineering and fabrication and the Sapere Aude Advanced Grant Complex Modelling examining new modelling paradigms in computational design.

Tuesday, 16.02., 09:00 – 10:00 CET
Prof. Mark Burry, AO
Founding Director of Swinburne University of Technology’s Smart Cities Research Institute
former Prof. of Urban Futures, University of Melbourne 

Urban futures and designing the digitalised city: from parametric design to parametric urbanism

Professor Mark Burry offers a brief overview of his experiences pioneering parametric design for architectural scale projects to precinct and city scale projects.  He argues that parametric design is more than BIM, and that parametric urbanism is more than PIM and CIM (Precinct and City Information Modelling). His address presents his 37 year-long contribution to the design team completing Gaudí’s Sagrada Família Basilica in Barcelona and how it relates to the recent establishment of ‘iHUb’ across four major cities in Australia – a national urban research platform to bring the people to the digitalisation on the built environment, and vice versa. He considers the questions around how much closer are we to designing cities with people rather than simply for them. What new agency does digitalisation and the Internet of Things offer to citizens today?

Wednesday, 17.02., 09:00 – 10:00 CET
Vicki Thake, PhD, Assis. Prof.
Institute of Architecture and Design, Royal Danish Academy, Copenhagen

Fibre Reinforced Polymer Composites in an Architectural Context

Vicki Thake Studied at Royal Danish Academy and has an industrial PhD, which introduces an architecture form-led by an advanced composite, with a focus on the relationship between space, material and light. Through an experimental study conducted in different scales, the thesis examines the integration of FRPs (Fibre Reinforced Polymers) within an architectural context as a special material-geometry with a focus on the internal composition between the composite’s two elements: fibre thread (Reinforcement) and matrix (Mass). The aim is to seek new ways of composing the tectonic principles of fibre geometry with textile, fluid and form-led properties, in the creation of a translucent material logic for architectural space, element and assembly.

Wednesday, 17.02., 10:15 – 11:15 CET
Anton Kuzyk, Assoc. Prof.
Aalto University, Department of Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering

DNA-based nanoscale architectures

Anton Kuzyk (born 1981, Lviv, Ukraine) received his Doctor of Philosophy degree in 2009 from University of Jyväskylä. After graduation, he was postdoctoral researcher at Technical University of Munich (2010-2012), Aalto University (2012-2013) and Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems (2013-2016).  

Anton‘s research focuses on DNA-based self-assembled systems with functionalities tailored for biosensing, nanophotonics and biomimetics. He is well known for his contribution to the field of self-assembled plasmonics and his research has been published in, e.g., Nature, Nature Materials, Nature Communications and Science Advances.

Thursday, 18.02., 09:00 – 10:00 CET
Helle Rootzen
CEO Andhero
former Prof. in Learning Technology and Digitalization, LearnT DTU – Center for Digital Learning Technology, DTU Copenhagen

Big or small data for big and small problems?

How do we compute sustainability? And how do we put a number on good architecture? We are often overwhelmed by an enormous number of parameters that we can take into account when modelling our data. But how is the philosophy behind treating big data and what about testing hypotheses – is that old fashioned?

Helle Rootzen have been a professor at DTU working with data science, digitalization, learning technology , and leadership, and in 2020, founded their own company.

Friday, 19.02., 09:00 – 10:00 CET
Lars Botin
Assoc. Prof., Department of Planning; The Technical Faculty of IT and Design; Techno-Anthropology and Participation
Aalborg University, Denmark 

Do Digits Have Morality?

Lars Botin is Associate Professor at Aalborg University and has during the past 20 years made research within the interdisciplinary programs of Architecture and Design, Art & Technology and Techno-Anthropology. His focus is philosophy of science and technology with an outset in Continental Philosophy, i.e. phenomenology and postphenomenology. He has published and edited a multitude of books and scientific papers with a technological focus on architecture, health informatics and social media.

The lecture interrogates the intrinsic relationship between humans-technologies-world, and questions whether humans are exclusive carriers of moral and political values.