Lecture Series

UTZON(x) SOM from Utzon(x) on Vimeo.

The ability to capture the designer’s imagination and to catapult the project to reality through innovations and design enhancements are defining qualities of any distinguished engineer.Such are qualities achieved by complementing engineering expertise with a profound appreciation of architectural design.

This lecture will introduce a selection of works engineered by Ryota Kidokoro, a structural designer from Arup’s Tokyo office, to illustrate the creative collaboration of an engineer from conception to completion. A brief overview of Arup, a global firm of designers, engineers, and consultants, will also be included in this lecture.

The thrust of digital advancement in design and manufacture has changed architecture. A Digital Materiality is emerging, where the interplay between data and material can be seen as a constructive structuring of architecture.

This extensive collaboration can be analytically developed and implemented on an architectural scale, leading to new forms of architectural expression and material sensuality. Against this background, the lecture will consider the hegemony of digital fabrication and the avatars of robotic manufacture in architecture. It will address the digital border crossing between the digital and the material and consider various projects and contexts.

Danmarks fysiske indretning er ved at køre af sporet, og vores fremtidige levebrød bliver sværere og sværere at definere. Vækst, ja, men hvordan? Vores kulturelle identitet, vores landskaber og byer består jo af store potentialer, så hvorfor har vi ikke længere hverken indsigten eller redskaberne til at forløse dem?Lad os, inden vi har savet grenen over vi sidder på, insistere på Danmarks og hverdagens kvaliteter, og vise en vej for en ny fysisk agenda, hvor vi sammen udnytter det fælles arvegods, bruger den kreative vidensektor, som alle snakker om, og former den sammenhængskraft, som alle drømmer om.

Siv Helene Stangeland from Utzon(x) on Vimeo.

Helen & Hard has from the very beginning been occupied with the more manifold and complex relations in which architecture evolves. Exploring a more co-dependent arising of spatial, material and human organization has become a core agenda. 

In H&Hs book “relational design” from 2012 Reinhard Kropf, Siv Helene Stangeland start with asking “what is the best way to approach architecture with an ecological awareness”? Through a range of very different projects H&H show how the core elements of architecture are being organized according to complex relations with the environment and people through working on different design levels, synergistic models and breaking with traditional stages of project development. 

Design is then not merely a solution but a vehicle for an interdisciplinary process that could lead to a more sustainable development, and which necessarily includes a learning process for the parties involved.

We are very happy to present Bill and Sue Dunster, founders of BedZed in London, which pioneered sustainable architecture through both its integrative environmental systems and design thinking. The work is an important point in the development of a new way to look at the relation between the built environment and the natural environment that we occupy. 

Also, it is very important to attend these lectures, as university activities that lie beyond the core curricula, to expand, progress and take part in the on-going conversation that is architecture and design. The Utzon(x) lecture series is intended to stimulate and foster new paths for how we can advance the field. It is central in creating an academic culture that is vibrant and open. 

Sigrid Brell-Cokcan and Johannes Braumann founded the Association for Robots in Architecture (www.robotsinarchitecture.org) 2010 with the goal of making industrial robots accessible to the creative industry. Towards that goal, the Association is developing innovative software tools such as KUKA|prc (parametric robot control) and initialized the Rob|Arch conference series on robotic fabrication in architecture, art, and design which – following Vienna in 2012 and Ann Arbor in 2014 – will be held again 2016 in Sydney. Robots in Architecture is a KUKA System Partner and has been validated as a research institution by national and international research agencies such as the European Union’s FP7 program. In 2015, Sigrid set up the new chair of Individualized Building Production (www.ip.rwth-aachen.de) at RWTH Aachen University. Johannes is visiting professor at the University for Arts and Design Linz and heading the development of KUKA|prc. Their work has been widely published in peer reviewed scientific journals, international proceedings, and books, as well as being featured in formats such as Wired, Gizmodo, and RBR.

UTZON(x) Stig L. Andersson from Utzon(x) on Vimeo.

Having studied nuclear physics, Japanese culture and chemistry before becoming an architect, Andersson graduated from The Royal Danish School of Architecture in 1986. From 1986-1989 Andersson moved to Japan with Japanese ministerial research funds. Andersson was particularly interested in Japanese culture’s relationship with substance, space and changeability – fields he has integrated and developed in his own practice since 1994. Stig L. Andersson is a professor in aesthetic design at the University of Copenhagen. Renowned for his sensuous and poetic work, Andersson combines unique amenity values based on the aesthetics of nature with cutting-edge urban design.

UTZON(x) Frank Jensen from Utzon(x) on Vimeo.

Frank Jensen, CEO and third generation leader of the innovative design engineering office, Søren Jensen Consulting Engineers as the next Utzon(x) lecturer. Frank Jensen did his undergraduate studies at The Engineering College of Aarhus and Bath University School of Architecture and Civil Engineering, UK. Hereafter he undertook research on deployable structures at the University of Cambridge, UK, from where he graduated with his Ph.D. in 2005. He was a research fellow at the Technical University of Delft, NL, during 2003. Frank Jensen is a creative engineer and has worked in the areas of structural, building services, aerospace and logistic engineering. As project manager of small to mega scale projects, he has led design breakthroughs that has questioned and radically changed design standards. Currently, he is reshaping Søren Jensen into a design led firm for boutique engineering and has founded the tech startup New Nordic Engineering.

Architecture can get people talking together. Architecture can calm children in the classroom. Architecture can make passive people more active. Architecture can shape corporate culture. Architecture can encourage people to find new paths, discover new aspects of their city – and of themselves.

As physical space is digitized, the architect is an increasingly endangered species. In order to participate in an era of acceleration, immateriality, ephemerality and globality the architect must mutate. Yet, it is precisely through the anachronistic culture of this species– its processes, protocols and artifacts–that an opportunity to better understand the physics of the dark matter of digital space presents itself. A new series
of experiments at the Guggenheim is testing how architecture can enter this space in order to expose its energy.

What I am talking about when I talk about competition. Architects are expected to answer the question, but we are there to reformulate it. Solving the problem is not the only target, but the starting point of the discovery of hidden necessities of users, program and place. I compete, therefore I exist.

Matthias Rippmann is a PhD student in the BLOCK Research Group at ETH Zurich and co-founder of the architecture and consultancy firm ROK.He will lecture about architectural geometry, computational form finding and digital fabrication in practice and academia. His work focuses on the development and integration of digital tools in the early design process. These tools allow for a new, informed design approach by incorporating structural requirements and fabrication constraints in order to efficiently create and realize expressive, non-standard structures. In particular, his research interest lies in the design and fabrication of discrete funicular structures.

Michiel Riedijk and Willem Jan Neutelings are the founders of Neutelings Riedijk Architects, Rotterdam. Since the founding in 1992 Neutelings Riedijk has realized multiple iconic private and public buildings like the City History Museum MAS in Antwerp, the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision in Hilversum, the Shipping and Transport College in Rotterdam and recently the Rozet Culturehouse in Arnhem and the Eemhuis in Amersfoort. Projects by Neutelings Riedijk have been published in numerous architectural magazines worldwide. Books about the office include ‘At Work’ 2006 and monographs by El Croquis from 1999 & 2012. The office has been awarded with several international awards including the Oeuvre Award of Excellence of the Dutch Architectural League. Michiel Riedijk lectures and teaches regularly at universities, academy’s and cultural institutions worldwide. Since September 2007 he is Chair of Public Building & Architectural Compositions of the Architectural Faculty of Delft University of Technology.

Nanne de Ru is the director of The Berlage at TU Delft. He is also co-owner and partner of PowerHouse Company, an architecture and design firm founded in 2005 with fellow Berlage graduate Charles Bessard.De Ru has taught and lectured at schools across Europe, a.o. Royal Art Academy in Copenhagen, the Design Academy Eindhoven, the Oslo School of Architecture and the TU Delft.

Juhani Pallasmaa is former professor of architecture at the Helsinki University of Technology and a former director of the Museum of Finnish Architecture.Since 2009 Pallasmaa is the member of the Pritzker Price Jury.

Among Pallasmaa's many books on architectural theory is "The Eyes of the Skin - Architecture and the Senses", a book that has become a classic of architectural theory and is required reading on courses in schools of architecture around the world. The lecture presents Pallasmaa's recent work. It is sponsored by Realdania's research centre "Strategisk Byforskmomg".

Jenny Osuldsen is partner at the architectural office Snøhetta, Norway.She has been at Snøhetta since 1995, as a managing director of the Snøhetta New York office in 2006-7.Jenny Osuldsen is educated as a landscape architect from Norwegian University of Life Sciences and from CalPoly Pomona, Los Angeles, USA.

UTZON(x) - Daniel Bosia from Utzon(x) on Vimeo.

Daniel Bosia is by June 1st apointed Adjunct Professor at Department for Architecture and Media Technology at AAU.

Bosia is Director at UK based AKT II and head of the specialist team p.art ®. He holds a MSc in Structural and Bridge Engineering and a Master Degree in Architecture. He has worked at Arup for more than twelve years, collaborating with architects such as Daniel Libeskind, Toyo Ito and Enric Miralles and with artists such as Anish Kapoor, Antony Gormley and Matthew Ritchie. He has lectured in Universities in Europe and the US and he is a Fellow of the NSLO research center at UPenn. Bosia has designed and delivered several projects in the last few years, which have become icons of contemporary art and architecture. He has cofounded and hence lead the AGU at ARUP for more than 5 years from a cutting edge research unit to a profitable practice with a recognised brand, rich portfolio and exclusive client base.

The design philosophy of DING3000 cannot be described by a dogma or an ‘ism’. The designs come about through a situation, product and customer-oriented design process which takes place somewhere in-between method and magic.

The way to the product lies in the search for a new, better, different, unjustly forgotten, humorous idea. The resulting formal and functional perfection is largely due to this idea. The work of DING3000 is evidence of the pleasure they take in challenging materials, products and not least people’s behavior. Often they question available solutions and popular assumptions and proceed in a way that is contradictory to them. As a result, DING3000 continually discovers creative “virgin soil” off the beaten track.

The concepts ‘standard’ and ‘ideal’ are inextricably associated in housing design. In the last 100 years, efforts to create standardized and optimized affordable dwellings produced an endlessly varied series of designs for the ideal home, some built, some not.

The recent economic and demographic changes have given renewed relevance to the call to reformalute housing ideals. Starting form a historic perspective and showing recent examples from his own work, Dick van Gameren will discuss new ideas and solutions for housing in urban contexts.

Dick van Gameren is professor of Architecture and Dwelling since 2006. Currently, he is also chair of the Architecture Department at TU Delft and part of the group integrating Berlage at TU Delf.

Japanese architects Atelier Bow-Wow are known as much for the books they produce as for the houses they design. The two outputs are inextricably linked — the former researching the urban conditions of Tokyo, where the duo lives, and the latter a fairly direct product of such research on hybrid conditions, small buildings and so forth.

Utzon(x) - Gernot Bohme from Utzon(x) on Vimeo.

Utzon(x) - Shajay Bhooshan from Utzon(x) on Vimeo.

Utzon(x) - Claus Beisbart from Utzon(x) on Vimeo.

Utzon(x) - Erik Frandsen from Utzon(x) on Vimeo.

Utzon(x) - Paul Nicholas from Utzon(x) on Vimeo.

Utzon(x) - Philippe Block from Utzon(x) on Vimeo.

Utzon(x) - Isak Foged from Utzon(x) on Vimeo.

Utzon(x) - Rafael Moneo from Utzon(x) on Vimeo.