:: the making of environments for living in the age of physical, mental and digital mobilities : is the title of the lecture I gave Monday November 14, 2005 at the Bartlett, London, UK, to students enrolled in the Master of Science Adaptive Architecture and Computation program, and for the BENVACO2 Digital Space and Society module. I had been invited by Ava Fatah gen. Schieck, a Senior Research Fellow at the Bartlett, who I first met in Tokyo at the Metapolis and Urban Life Workshop. She had read Parasites?, the article published in the proceedings of the workshop.

As stated in the course description, "The MSc Adaptive Architecture and Computation replaces the MSc Virtual Environments as the Bartlett's taught MSc in the field of digital design. It draws on the unique multidisciplinary milieu at the Bartlett School of Graduate Studies to bring together designers and programmers in the pursuit of enhanced architectural product and process. The course begins where many leave off, with the realisation that computation is a means, not an end, to bringing about a revolution in how we approach architecture. As such, the course is underpinned by a social theory of architecture, space syntax, which examines the links between the configuration of space, people and society. [...]"

My thoughts on automats (as described in Parasites?) had reminded Ava of the coincidental research on ecomorphic design (and introduced to me by Alasdair Turner, Lecturer in Architectural Computing).

Sheila Kennedy ("Sheila Kennedy is a founding Principal of Kennedy & Violich Architecture, (KVA) an inter-disciplinary practice that explores new relationships between architecture, technology and urbanism in contemporary culture.") is currently teaching the following studio: Shadow Cities: Nomads + Nanomaterials at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design! (this tells me that I clearly need to finish my thesis!)

Course description excerpts:
"Technology Remix: El Terminal / SHADOW CITIES will reconsider the traditional relationship between building infrastructure and architectural form through the design of a new public bus terminal and market structure in the Centro district of the Mexican city of Zacatecas."
"Nomads / SHADOW CITIES will study and address the needs of the nomadic Huichol people of Mexico, The Huichol (Wirrarica) are one of the few indigenous groups in Mexico to have maintained a large corpus of Mesoamerican textile weaving, thatch and wood braiding traditions. The Huichol are a nomadic culture, traveling (often on foot) 400 miles on annual journeys to the Pacific and the Sierra Oriental."

Leading to the other interesting link (I let you explore :) at the University of Michigan: Nomads + Nanomaterial, Sustainable Textile Building Technologies in Architecture

It happened on Tuesday November 8 starting at noon... Robin Chase had invited me to participate to SHARE and "discuss with professional designers and innovators interested in sharing ideas and experience on mobile design. Thanks to efforts in miniaturization, we are entering an era of "everything, everywhere, all the time". From iPods to ultralight laptops, we are taking our professional and social lifes mobile."
This happened at the consulate of Switzerland: SHARE, 420 Broadwaystreet, Cambridge, MA!
To be continued...