Event
November 7, 2023
6:00 PM – 7:30 PM
16 W. 61st St., 11th Floor Auditorium
Online
A debate on the state of Design and Automation at the End of Modernity. Conversation with the Author, Pablo Lorenzo Eiroa, Sandra Manninger, and Lev Manovich
Mass production was the core technical logic of industrial modernity: for the last hundred years, architects and designers have tried to industrialize construction and standardize building materials and processes in the pursuit of economies of scale. But this epochal march of modernity is now over. Today's technologies already allow us to use irregular, or variable building materials, as found, or as made, and assemble them in as many nonstandard, intelligent, adaptive ways as needed: the microfactories of our imminent future will be automated artisan shops.
The computational project, long under the sway of powerful antimodern ideologies, is now being recast by the urgency of the climate crisis, which has vindicated its technical logic; by the global pandemic, which has tragically proven its viability; by today's social crisis, which questions its ideological premises; and by newly empowered, and apparently incontrollable applications of Artificial Intelligence. The design professions--and society at large--urgently need a honest debate on the past, present, and future of computation in architecture.
Learn more about the Future of Design lecture series.
Introduction and Moderation
Sandra Manninger
Associate Professor, New York Tech School of Architecture and Design
Speaker
Mario Carpo
Reyner Banham Professor of Architectural History and Theory, the Bartlett, University College London
Mario Carpo is the inaugural Reyner Banham Professor of Architectural History and Theory at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, London. He was the Vincent Scully Visiting Professor of Architectural History at the Yale University's School of Architecture from 2010 to 2014 and he is a tenured associate professor in the French Schools of Architecture. His research and publications focus on the relationships between architectural theory, cultural history, and the history of media and information technology. His award-winning Architecture in the Age of Printing has been translated into several languages, His other publications include The Alphabet and the Algorithm, a history of digital design theory The Digital Turn in Architecture, 1992-2012: An AD Reader, and The Second Digital Turn in Architecture.
Speaker
Lev Manovich
Distinguished Professor, The Graduate Center, CUNY
Lev Manovich is an artist, writer, and one of the most influential theorists of digital culture worldwide. After studying the arts, architecture, and filmmaking, Manovich began using computers to create digital art in 1984. His projects have been exhibited in 12 solo and 120 international group exhibitions at many prestigious institutions, such as the Institute of Contemporary Art (London), the Centre Pompidou, The Shanghai Biennale, and The ZKM | Center for Art and Media. Manovich is currently a Presidential Professor of Computer Science at the City University of New York's Graduate Center and the Director of the Cultural Analytics Lab.
Since 1991, he has published 190 articles that have been translated into 35 different languages and reprinted over 850 times. He authored and edited 15 books, including Artificial Aesthetics, Cultural Analytics, Instagram and Contemporary Image, Software Takes Command, and The Language of New Media, which has been called "the most provocative and comprehensive media history since Marshall McLuhan." Manovich was included in the "25 People Shaping the Future of Design" (Complex, 2013) and "50 Most Interesting People Building the Future" (Verge, 2014) lists.