978-94-90322-27-4

Danielle van Steenbergen i.c.w. Xin Xia

124

12 x 21 cm

Paperback

English

Date of release: April 2011 

The theme of iA#4 is Quantum Architecture.

The fourth issue of the iA bookazine presents quantum theory as a new stimulus for architecture debate. Quantum theory, as the most precise explanation of our physical world, has not only triggered a tremendous technical improvement, but has also introduced a revolutionary quantum world view that considers the material world as a non-deterministic construct, deciphered with probability and interactivity. From this point of view, true interaction can be envisioned between users and their constructed environments, and between designers and their computational tools.

Papers collected in iA#4 come from both the theoretical perspective that adopts quantum paradigm as the conceptual model to examine the new condition of cultural, social and spatial organization, and the computational perspective that presents a novel computational concept and strategy, based on the quantum world view and its related reflections. Quantum physicists, architects, sociologists, researchers and students come together in this issue of the iA bookzine to challenge the new territory of Quantum architecture. 

Contributors

Ayssar Arida (Lebanon, UK)
Ayssar Arida is a practicing urbatect, theorist, and entrepreneur. He is the author of Quantum City (2002) and director of Q-DAR development | architecture | research, operating from London, Paris, and Beirut. He can be reached at ayssar@quantumcity.com or through the quantumcity.com or q-dar.com websites. Q-DAR's work ranges from digital interface design to large-scale urban planning. They have developed public relations campaigns, corporate identity and environmental branding, web applications, multimedia and film, and the award-winning community urban design and architecture. Arida's research examines transdisciplinary relational languages, based on new sciences, namely: quantum theory, game theory, emergence and self-regulation, and complexity and fuzzy logic, with the purpose to analyze and design urban realm.

Ran Berman (Israel)
Ran Berman is a master student at the Faculty of Architecture at the Delft University of Technology. He has worked as a student assistant at Hyperbody since 2007. Berman is specializing in digital fabrication at Hyperbody, taking part in education, workshops and research projects. Apart from his work for Hyperbody, Berman is currently involved in several projects that use advance prototyping and manufacturing in the field of architecture.

Han Feng (China)
Han Feng is an architect from China. After he graduated from the Architecture Department at the Harbin Institute of Technology in 2002, he worked with L.A. International Ltd in Beijing. He obtained his Master of Science degree in architecture at the Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands (2003-2005). In 2006 he worked with several design companies in the Netherlands, including ONL [Oosterhuis_Lénárd], De werff architectuur, ANT Architects and Studio 015. Currently, he is working on research at Hyperbody, aiming at enriching architectural design with ideas and methods found in Quantum mechanics.

Georg Flachbart (Germany)
Dr. Georg Flachbart is action philosopher, and creative director of mind(21)factory for Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Design Stuttgart. From 1968 -1973, he studied Philosophy, Psychology and Formal logic at the Charles University in Prague – PhD in 1974. Later on he worked as a scientific assistant in the Department of Philosophy of Science at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava. He has lived in Germany since 1980, mainly working as a writer, director and producer in the fields of audio-visual media, theory of architecture, and the performing arts. Flachbart's research interest focuses on the role of mixed-reality environments within the architectural and social context. His major collaborative, transdisciplinary projects relating to this are: Disappearing Architecture: From Real to Virtual to Quantum (2004-05, with ZKM centre for Art and Media Karlsruhe), IT Works or IT Networks: Development of Real and Virtual Space in the Age of the Global Net (2003, with Faculty of Architecture STU Bratislava), mind(21)house (2002-03, with Faculty of Architecture STU Bratislava), mind(21)factory (2005-07, with Institute for Housing, Faculty of Architecture TU Graz), and City Upgrade: the High-spirited Networked City (2004-09), with Ortlos Space Engineering Graz.

Christian Friedrich (Germany)
Christian Friedrich was born in Germany. After he had finished his studies in Physics and Philosophy in Berlin and gained an architectural engineering degree at the Hanzehogeschool Groningen, he graduated in architecture (MSc) at the Delft University of Technology. He is co-founder of the media artist collective Ezthetics and has been associated with Hyperbody for four years as a student assistant, master student and researcher. His work with the HRG includes teaching Virtools courses, conference lectures and developing the protoSPACE group design environment. During the past four years, he has been involved in several projects of ONL [Oosterhuis_Lénárd]. Presently, he is developing his PhD research project in which he intends to describe and actualize the architectural singularity: a point at which the architectural process loop is executed in real-time and shifts from a phased process into a behavioural network, in effect reshaping architectural praxis.

Chris Kievid (the Netherlands)
Chris Kievid is a researcher at Hyperbody. He graduated cum laude in architecture at the Delft University of Technology in 2006. His thesis received a nomination for the Dutch Archiprix 2007. As freelance architect and interaction designer he has worked for ONL [Oosterhuis_Lénárd] on a variety of innovative projects. As researcher and project manager at Hyperbody he has been responsible for the development of the design environment for immediate design and engineering: protoSPACE, the project iLite for the travelling road show Philips Transitions II and the InteractiveWall installation for the Hannover Messe. As coordinator and tutor he has been involved in the Hyperbody educational MSc 2 and minor program.

Megan Ng (Hong Kong SAR)
Megan Ng is an architect, originally from Hong Kong, but based in Amsterdam. She studied architecture and received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Architectural Studies (RIBA Part 1) at the University of Hong Kong in 2004. Subsequently, she was employed at the Jerde Partnership in Los Angeles to work on a number of mix-use projects in the US, and also in both Middle East and Asia Pacific regions. Megan joined Hyperbody design studio in 2007 to continue the pursuit of her interest in digital form-finding and parametric design in architecture. In the following year she completed her thesis – Biotic Coded City – with the main focus on such topics. Since then, as an architect, she has collaborated with various offices in the Netherlands and Italy, including UNStudio, Massimiliano Fuksas Architetto and NOX | Lars Spuybroek, and worked on a broad scope of building typologies from single-family house to mix-use development to airport. Currently, Ng is an architect at UXUS Design, concentrating on shop design and restaurant design, and at the same time continuing her investigation on exploring geometrical possibilities in computation algorithms.

Kas Oosterhuis (the Netherlands)
Kas Oosterhuis was born in 1951 in Amersfoort and studied architecture at the Delft University of Technology. In 1987-1988 he taught at the AA in London as unit master, and worked/lived one year in the former studio of Theo van Doesburg in Paris together with visual artist Ilona Lénárd. In 2004 their design studio was renamed ONL [Oosterhuis_Lénárd]. As from 2007 Oosterhuis has been a registered architect in Hungary, acting as General Designer in the CET project and since 2000 Oosterhuis has been an appointed professor of digital design methods at the Delft University of Technology. Currently, he is leading a staff of twenty researchers at Hyperbody, the knowledge centre for Non-Standard and Interactive Architecture. He is member of the Dutch Building Information Council and was a Member of the Board of Witte de With Centre of Contemporary Art in Rotterdam and of the VCA (Computerusers Architectural Offices) until 1989. He was co-founder of the Attila Foundation, responsible for the groundbreaking Sculpture City event in 1994 and the ParaSite web-lounge in 1996. As from 1990 he has lectured at numerous universities, academies and international conferences worldwide. Oosterhuis has initiated two GameSetandMatch (GSM) conferences at the Delft University of Technology on the subjects' multiplayer game design, file to factory design and built methods and open source communication in the evolutionary development of the 3D reference model.

Ivan Redi (Austria)
Ivan Redi, an Austrian citizen, was born in 1971 in Nis, Serbia. He gained working experience at Morphosis, Santa Monica, USA, and is also a licensed architect in the Netherlands. Redi graduated from the Technical University in Graz, where Günther Domenig was his mentor. He also took lessons from Thom Mayne and Daniel Libeskind, and is currently working on his PhD thesis: New design strategies in architecture. He teaches architectural design at TU Graz and together with Andrea Redi he is the principal of ORTLOS architects [www.ortlos.com], an association for innovative architecture and interface design. They have worked for years on A.N.D.I.A New Digital Instrument for creative networked collaboration in the interdisciplinary domain. Redi is co-author of the book: ORTLOS :: Architecture of the networks (Hatje Canz, 2005). ORTLOS architects lectured and published their work worldwide and they took part in many exhibitions, such as La Biennale di Venezia in 2000.

Dieter Vandoren (Belgium)
Dieter Vandoren was born in 1981 and is a media artist, developer and performer. His work balances on the edge of creative arts and scientific research and development; it combines audiovisual elements with electronic and software engineering in architectural settings, often real-time generative and interactive. Apart from his independent artwork, Vandoren is, among other things, involved with the office ONL[Oosterhuis_Lénárd] and the Delft University of Technology.  He is a guest tutor and researcher at the Hyperbody and StudioLab groups (Faculty of Architecture and Industrial Design, respectively). Vandoren is a recording artist and performing musician at the Directs Art Centre De Fabriek in Rotterdam (NL).[http://dietervandoren.net]

Pieter E. Vermaas (the Netherlands)
Pieter Vermaas is senior researcher in the Department of Philosophy of the Delft University of Technology. After having been trained as a theoretical physicist at the University of Amsterdam, he did his dissertation, published with Cambridge University Press on the philosophical foundations of quantum mechanics at the Utrecht University, the Netherlands. In 1998 Vermaas joined the Philosophy Department at Delft where he is now doing research on the foundations of technology and the methods of engineering design. He participated in the creation, the funding, and the realization of a large research project, called 'the dual nature of technical artefacts', and which is based on the philosophical thesis that technical products have both a physical and intentional nature. In 2005 he won a personal NWO (the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research) VIDI fellowship for research on functional decomposition in engineering and philosophy. Vermaas' research on philosophy of engineering is partly organized around the analysis of the engineering concept of function. In 2010 he and Wybo Houkes together published a monograph Technical Functions (Springer)on current philosophical accounts of functions, introducing the ICE theory analysis of technical functions.