50 EAAE no 35 Teaching and Experimenting with Architectural Design: Advances in Technology and Changes in Pedagogy
Students can still dream, and they don't yet know what is impossible.
(Aaron Betsky, Archiprix catalogue)
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Laboratory for Architecture and Media.
the prototype of a next generation design studio.
The Media Laboratory is about people, computation, and quality of life in a digital age and
focus on the study, invention, and creative use of “enabling technologies for learning and
expression by people and machines.” (MIT)
New Values for Experimenting with Architectural Design
We use media as architectural instruments (“invisible architecture”). The challenge is
to provide complex technological environments with a certain simplicity and intuition,
which one the user requires and expects for a good reason. "We live in an increasingly
complex technological world where nothing works like it is supposed to, and at the end
of the day makes all of us hunger for simplicity to some degree." The research project
follows therefore the question whether an architecture / a space of media can support
the user in everyday actions or whether there are actions, which change or simplify
by handling media or even actions which will be possible only because of the use of
media.
New Methods for Experimenting with Architectural Design
Integrated into different courses - like “inter.media” and “v|ideo s|ense” - there is an
ongoing workflow between instructors, tutors and students. We highly believe that that
these peer-2-peer concepts, which we practise in workshops, discussions and extended
seminars are the best way to generate contemporary strategies for architectural educa-
tion.
Innovation is the Difference
Through the use of techniques and environments which are normally used in other dis-
ciplines (e.g. Motion-Tracking Systems) we demonstrate a spirit of avantgarde. Thereby
we reach two goals:
- Architects are confrontated with new technologies, which helps them to augment
their fields of profession – “learning by doing” - Architects have to realize that design means always invention – “learning by doing
something new”
The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who
cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. Alvin Toffler (American writer and futurist)
Digital media technology creates the potential for the development of new spaces and
new forms of work and exchange. Architecture can become a resource for the develop-
ment of technology and culture by supplying what is most urgently needed: ideas and
insights, which are based on an understanding of technology as an integral component