MS_ACT

Master of science in architecture,

computational technologies

MS_ACT LECTURE SERIES S2022

Informed actualizations: From AI to physical computation

The MS ACT Lecture Series aims at discussing research framed by invited guest speakers. The MS ACT Program focuses on architecture expanding relationships between science, technology and culture through innovation in algorithms, simulations, ai, robotics, robotic fabrication and materials. The spring 2022 lecture series discusses alternative means to understand the dialectics between the ideal digital and the physical digital. Within an architecture of information, ai, robotics and materials are thought as actualization interfaces. This process understands information flows and their
actualizations as architecture.

March 14th 2022 2 p.m. – 3 p.m. EDT via zoom

ENTANGLED ECOLOGIES of the PUBLIC REALM

Introduction and Moderation:Pablo Lorenzo-Eiroa, Director, MS ACT, New York Institute of Technology-SoAD

Presentation:

Marcella del Signore,

Associate Professor; Director, MS. in
Architecture, Urban Design; Principal, X-Topia

The exploration of the public domain is an important parameter to define how we live as collective and how we can rethink the fundamentals of living. The public realm is an expanded field where the deployment of collective ecologies is inherently connected to the socio-cultural production of space and forms of cohabitation of living systems. The talk addresses the intersection of technologies with the public/social/cultural realm through prototyping, material and fabricated systems, data-driven protocols, and mediated environments. Starting from Aério, an installation recently exhibited at the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale, a series of projects will be the vehicle to speculate on the current and future states of socio-technical apparatuses, interlaced ecosystems, and planetary entanglements.

Marcella Del Signore is an architect, urbanist, educator, scholar, and the principal of X-Topia, a design-research practice that explores the intersection of architecture and urbanism with technology and the public, social and cultural realm. She is an Associate Professor and Director of the MS. in Architecture, Urban Design at New York Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Design. Her research focuses on interscalar design approaches that engage the notion of socio-technical systems through computation, prototyping, material and fabricated assemblies, data-driven protocols, and adaptive environments. Her work investigates architecture, environments, and cities not as isolated entities but as part of an extended field mediated through the discursive application of technology. She is the author of “Urban Machines: Public Space in a Digital Culture” and the editor of “Data, Matter, Design.” book. In her design practice, she has built a wide array of urban interventions and small-scale prototypes recognized through awards, grants, and publications. In 2018, she co-curated the ‘Data & Matter’ exhibition at the ECC during the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale, and in 2021 she exhibited “Aério” at the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale.