Sat Apr 18th, 5:30pm @ CASE/SOM:

“IT’S ALIVE!”_

Date: Saturday, April 18th, 2015
Time: 5:30 p.m.
Location: Skidmore, Owings & Merrill & Center for Architecture, Science and Ecology
14 Wall St # 25, New York, NY 10005

RSVP for current RPI-SoA students and alumni required to

On Saturday, April 18th, 2015, the Rensselaer Positions Series will host “It’s Alive!,” with guest speakers David Benjamin and Carla Leitao . The presentation will be followed by a round-table discussion.

“It’s Alive!” poses the following:

Today, synthetic biological as well as technological processes emanating from laboratories and schools of architecture suggest radical transformations to how civilization might live. What potentialities are emerging from said deployments within architecture and urbanism, notions of contaminated/infectious architectures which propagate in order to productively influence neighboring systems, and mediated atmospheres? Within an increasing techno-scientific context, in what ways might these developments and methods at once inform sociocultural constructs and environmental performance aspirations? What implications exist for the discipline of architecture per these novel engagements?

About the Participants

David Benjamin is Principal of Brooklyn-based, The Living and Assistant Professor at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. The Living explores the architecture of the future through building it today. “We bring new technologies to life in the built environment, and we have a passion for integrating design innovation, sustainability, and the public realm. We believe cities and buildings are living, breathing organisms. And in the context of rapid change and new urban challenges, we propose that design should be a living, breathing ecosystem. Within this design ecosystem, we work on multiple scales simultaneously. We anticipate and welcome rapid change. We embrace design with uncertainty, design with rules rather than fixed forms, and design with shifting and unknowable forces.” Clients include the City of New York, Airbus, 3M, Quantified Self, and Miami Science Museum. Recent projects include the Princeton Architecture Laboratory (a new building for research on robotics and next-generation design and construction technologies), Hy-Fi (a branching tower in the courtyard of MoMA PS1 created with almost no waste, no energy, and no carbon emissions), Pier 35 EcoPark (a 200-foot floating pier in the East River that changes color according to water quality), and Architecture Bio-synthesis (a new process of bio-computation and bio-manufacturing to produce high-performance, sustainable materials through synthetic biology).

Carla Leitao is an architect and writer that based in New York City as well as Lisbon, Portugal. She is the co-founder, with Ed Keller, of AUM Studio in New York City-based and Umasideia in Lisbon. She has taught architecture studios and seminars at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pratt Institute, Cornell University and City College, NY; also co-taught at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation at Columbia University. Practice and academic endeavors focus on convergences of Urban Phenomena, Ubiquitous Cultures, Digital Communication and generation of political and cultural innovation. Publications include “4 Lines” (Akademie Schloss Solitude) and “City Fragments” (CBA). Projects include built and ongoing residential and institutional projects. Exhibitions and installations include “Suture” (SCI Arc and Tellic Gallery, LA) and “True Romance” (Sttuttgart, Germany) and Young Blood in Lisbon, Portugal.

All Positions Series events are free and open to the public.