Volume #4 — 2019
Digital
Tactics
14 June – 1 September 2019 — Jaroslav Fragner Gallery
Exhibition
After the digital turn
Digital Tactics presents the use of new technologies and techniques in architecture and design. The exhibition opened on 13 June 2019 along with live music by The Atavists and DJ Eddie Mur.
The 4th edition of EAB is focused on the world of architecture and design after the time when the initial enthusiasm of digital technology has faded away and has become an inherent and unconscious part of human life. Digital enthusiasts have been humanised in designers, architects, or fashion designers. Robotic production has crossed the walls of industrial plants to populate the tables of creative and young designers. Digital designing has become a natural part of the creative process and digital technology an integrated strategy of creative formations.
— Martin Gsandtner
Symposium chair — Gilles Retsin
A reaction against the digital turn
“The financial crisis of 2008 served as a pivotal moment for the field of experimental architecture. The previous two decades, referred to as ‘The Digital Turn’ by architectural historian Mario Carpo, were characterised by a deep and optimistic engagement in research of digital applications in architecture. But the crisis triggered a backlash against such digital design theory, which was suddenly associated with speculation and other unsavoury financial market practices, as well as the irresponsible neo-liberal policies which had enabled this conduct.
Consequently, schools put the brakes on their digital programs, curators found other fields, and biennales turned their attentions elsewhere. A new generation of students, freshly graduated from digitally-oriented master programmes, were confronted with a radically different post-crisis world.
Today, a decade on, a number of new trends and approaches have crystallised, reflecting the past two decades of digital research in the field of architecture. Such trends range from what architect Alejandro Zaera-Polo calls ‘austerity-chic’, to the Italian ‘Tendenza 2.0’ as pioneered by Pier-Vittorio Aureli, to Dogma and Office. At the same time, the denominator ‘post-digital’ indicates an attitude in which digital is no longer a novelty, but rather part of the everyday. Another group of young practitioners operating under the ‘Discrete’ flag is asserting that society has, in fact, never been ‘digital’ — meaning that today’s supposed ‘post-digital’ world is a fallacy.
The past decade has sparked a range of architectural approaches, whose roots are essentially a reaction against ‘The Digital Turn’. Such approaches range from criticism, to rejection, to celebration, to continuation. However, are these new methodologies truly aesthetic in nature or mere critiques? The biennial traces some of these approaches, uncovering complexity, politics, and a drive to upend existing assumptions.”
Symposium — 14 June 2019, Faculty of Architecture, Thákurova 9, Praha 6
Programme
| 09:00 – 09:15 | Martin Gsandtner — symposium opening and introduction |
| 09:15 – 09:45 | Gilles Retsin — introduction and symposium chair |
| 09:45 – 10:30 | Jürgen Heinzel — UNStudio |
| 10:30 – 11:00 | Ramon Elias Weber — MIT Media Lab |
| 11:00 – 11:30 | Mollie Claypool — Bartlett School of Architecture |
| 11:30 – 12:00 | M. Casey Rehm — SCI-Arc |
| 12:00 – 12:30 | Roundtable |
| 12:30 – 14:00 | Lunch break |
| 14:00 – 14:30 | Rasa Navasaityte, Daniel Köhler — Innsbruck University, Lab-eds |
| 14:30 – 15:00 | Jose Sanchez — Plethora Project |
| 15:00 – 15:30 | Manuel Jimenez García — Bartlett School of Architecture; madMdesign |
| 15:30 – 15:45 | Roundtable |
| 15:45 – 16:00 | Coffee break |
| 16:00 – 16:30 | Jakub Klaška — Bartlett School of Architecture, Zaha Hadid Architects |
| 16:30 – 17:00 | Soomeen Hahm, Igor Pantić — Bartlett School of Architecture |
| 17:00 – 17:30 | Paul Clemens Bart, Marvin Bratke — Bart//Bratke |
| 17:30 – 18:00 | Roundtable |
Tickets — regular 300 CZK / €12, students free. Sold at the symposium venue on 14 June 2019.
Workshop
3D-printed chandelier / robotic workshop
Large-scale 3D-printing methods offer a greater formal versatility than conventional manufacturing methods. Furthermore, they allow for the shrinkage of the production chain, without moulds and complicated assemblies. This empowers designers to move beyond the continuous instantiation of their products to fit into industrial models of production.
The workshop explored the possibilities of large-scale robotic 3D printing, focusing on the creation of objects previously inconceivable with traditional manufacturing techniques. Participants learned to design digitally for 3D printing and received basic training in robotic 3D printing, using a Universal Robot equipped with a Wasp plastic extruder. Some of the objects designed during the workshop were physically produced and assembled into a larger object, which became part of the Biennial.
Tutors — Manuel Jimenez García (Bartlett; madMdesign), Starsky Lara (IAAC; Noumena)