Deadline: 12th April 2010
Over the past decade architecture has witnessed a revolution in design and fabrication tools available to the discipline that has changed the way we imagine space forever. Digital design methods for form finding and implementing have produced an influential body of work, preoccupied with the development of novel, complex and heterogeneous spatial form.
This form, simply referred to as ‘geometry’, is often evaluated through performance driven issues emphasising the environmental and structural parameters that shape it. Yet, throughout history, the emergence of new spatial forms and with them new architectural styles, bear significance beyond advances in technology but in relation to what they offer to the human condition in terms of aesthetic and social processes – issues currently under-represented by the discourse.
‘Concrete Geometries’ is a work-in-progress term derived from the notion of ‘concrete’ as ‘existing in reality or in actual experience’ or ‘capable of being perceived by the senses’ and the abbreviation ‘geometries’ for the constructed environment. ‘Concrete Geometries’ like Concrete Science, Concrete Music or Concrete Art is interested in the particular and immediate, concerned with actual use or practice.
‘Concrete Geometries’ is an attempt to expand this current debate. Set up as a cross-disciplinary Research Cluster at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London, ‘Concrete Geometries’ investigates the intimate relationship between spatial form and human processes - be they social or aesthetic - and the variety of new material entities this relationship might provoke. By bringing together art, architecture, sciences and humanities, we hope to connect fields of knowledge that are currently fragmented through disciplinary boundaries.
- Verfasser/in:
- AA Architectural Association School of Architecture