KEYNOTE LECTURE ONE

The New Structuralism: Design, Engineering and Architectural Technologies by Rivka Oxman

Abstract: Today the convergence of design, engineering and architectural technologies are breeding a new material practice in architecture. In a pioneering theoretical approach, this important shift is fully defined as a highly dynamic synthesis of emerging principles of spatial, structural and material ordering integrated through the application of materialization and fabrication technologies.

Providing the foundations for a new theory of structuring in architecture, The New Structuralism has broad implications for the way we both conceive and undertake architectural design. The new structuralism presents a body of novel representational and process models in which form, structure and material are integrated as one entity in a single model of design. These series of emerging design processes may return architecture to its material sources.

The purpose of the lecture is to present the conceptual framework of these emerging relationships between architectural design, design engineering, and fabrication technologies.

Proposing these inter-relations and their interdependencies as an important novel paradigm of design, The New Structuralism will provide a conceptual introduction to the theory and its implications for design discourse and digital practice.

Speaker Bio: Prof. Rivka Oxman holds the BSc, MSc, and DSc degrees from the Technion Israel Institute of Technology. Among her recent academic appointments, she has been the Vice Dean for Academic Affairs, and the Vice Dean for Teaching of the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, Technion.

Rivka Oxman has been a Visiting Professor at Stanford University, USA and Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands; she has held research appointments at MIT, USA, Berkeley, USA, and Salford University, UK. Among other international academic appointments, she has been involved in research and teaching activities at the University of Sydney, Australia; and Kaiserslautern University in Germany.

Her recent research interests are related to digital design theory and methodology exploring their contribution to the emergence of new paradigms of architectural design and practice. Together with Robert Oxman she has recently edited a special issue of Architectural Design (AD) entitled, The New Structuralism: Design, Engineering and Architectural Technologies which provides a conceptual framework for a new material practice in architecture.

Rivka Oxman is an Associate Editor of the journal Design Studies - the International Journal for Design Research in Engineering, Architecture, Products and Systems, and has been appointed a Fellow of the Design Research Society (FDRS). In 2003, she received the Design Research Society and Elsevier Science Award for the best paper for her article entitled “The Thinking Eye: Visual Re-cognition in Design Emergence”.

She is a member of the editorial boards of leading international scientific journals and conferences in the fields of design theories, design research, and design computation. She has published extensively in leading international journals as well as in books and invited chapters in books.

KEYNOTE LECTURE TWO

by Chris Bosse

Speaker Bio: Chris Bosse is director of LAVA Asia Pacific, Sydney, Australia and is Adjunct Professor at the University of Technology, Sydney.

His work with PTW Architects on the Watercube Swimming Centre in Beijing received the prestigious Venice Biennale award in 2004 and Chris was recognized as an emerging architect by RIBA London.

With his UTS Masterclass he created the award winning digital origami cave, which was published internationally and recently revived in an installation in Milano.

Chris research in lightweight structures reaches back to his studies under Frei Otto at Stuttgart University and translates ideas of minimal surfaces, branching and pneumatic structures from the 1970’s into the digital age.

Download Chris’s CV, click here

KEYNOTE LECTURE THREE

The Space of CIBER and Reflections on Growth and Change in Research Domains by Michael Ostwald

Abstract: The CIBER research centre at Newcastle has recently completed in the order of $4 million AUS, in research projects and has been awarded, in the last 18 months alone, an additional $4 million in competitive research grants. As an introduction to this centre, an overview is provided of several of the projects including (1) the formal analysis of domestic architecture, (2) re-testing past computational analytical theories, (3) computational fractal analysis, (4) pedestrian simulation using machine learning (5) pedestrian robotics and (6) design ethics. Finally, the presentation will reflect on some observations about the nature of scholarship in research communities.

Speaker Bio: Dean, Professor of Architecture ARC Future Fellow Research Director, CIBERs School of Architecture and Built Environment The University of Newcastle, Australia. Email: michael.ostwald@newcastle.edu.au

Dr. Michael J. Ostwald, an ARC Future Fellow (2010-2014), is Professor of Architecture at the University of Newcastle, Australia. In 2004 he was appointed a Research Visitor at SIAL and a Visiting Professor at RMIT University. Between 2005 and 2010 he was a Professorial Research Fellow at Victoria University Wellington and in 2007 and 2008 he was a CHASS distinguished Research Visitor at the ANU. He is currently Director of the University of Newcastle research centre CIBER (Centre for Interdisciplinary Built Environment Research).

Michael Ostwald has been awarded in excess of $5,000,000 in competitive research funding from the ARC in Australia and from the Graham and Getty foundations in the USA. His almost 300 research publications include 25 edited and authored books. He has a PhD in architectural history and theory, completed a post-doctorial dissertation on baroque geometry at Harvard and the CCA in Montreal and was awarded a higher doctorate (Doctor of Science) in design mathematics in 2008. A past editor of Architectural Design Research he is currently on the editorial boards of Architectural Theory Review and Nexus: Architecture and Mathematics. On several notable occasions Michael has been commissioned by the ALTC to undertake major sociological studies focused on professional and academic groups.