9th ArchiLab: Naturalizing Architecture
14 September 2013–2 February 2014
Inaugural event: The Turbulences – Frac Centre
88 rue du Colombier
45000 Orléans
France
T +33 (0)2 38 62 52 00
www.frac-centre.fr
Facebook / Twitter
In 1999, the first ArchiLab edition—an international laboratory of architecture—explored the revolution brought about by the emergence of digital technologies and focused on redefining the arena of architecture.
Going well beyond the boundaries of their discipline, architects are now developing a praxis at the crossroads of computer sciences, engineering, and biology.
Today, digital simulation tools, borrowed from the sciences, are opening up unprecedented areas of investigation, allowing for the exploration of evolutionary principles peculiar to the living world.
Thanks to advanced mathematical mastery, architecture is now being enacted at the level of matter and tends towards a comprehensive re-creation of the organic, made possible by science.
Over and above a so-called “sustainable” approach, it is the change in the very concept of nature that is being questioned here, inseparable as it now is from technical and technological production.
It is these challenges, somewhere between architecture and science, that this new ArchiLab exhibition is keen to illustrate by way of an international show presenting the projects of some 40 architects, designers and artists, from a new generation of creative people at the forefront in terms of biotechnology, robotics, nanotechnology, and simulation.
Curators: Marie-Ange Brayer, Frédéric Migayrou
Assistant curator: Emmanuelle Chiappone-Piriou
Teams exhibited:
Architects
[Ay]A Studio, B+U, Biothing, Niccolo Casas, ecoLogicStudio, Eragatory, EZCT (Architecture & Design Research), Faulders Studio, Gage / Clemenceau Architects, Gramazio & Kohler / Raffaello d’Andrea, Michael Hansmeyer / Benjamin Dillenburger, akihisa hirata architecture office, junya.ishigami+associates, Kokkugia, MAD Architects, MARC FORNES & THEVERYMANY™, marcosandmarjan, MaterialEcology, Matsys, Achim Menges, Minimaforms, Plasma Studio + Grounlab, Ruy Klein, Jenny Sabin, servo, soma, SJET, SPAN, Supermanoeuvre, Wendy Teo, Daniel Widrig Studio, X_TU Architects, Xuberance
Designers and stylist
Cmmnwlth., Iris van Herpen, Joris Laarman Lab
Artists
Federico Díaz, Perry Hall, Casey Reas, Marius Watz
Symposiums:
International
“Architecture and Sciences: A New Naturalness”
Thursday 24 October
9.30–19h
Scène Nationale, Orléans
In partnership with Réseau des maisons de l’architecture and Maison de l’Architecture du Centre.
The problematics of ArchiLab 2013 will be broached at an international symposium which will bring together ten exhibited architects. Thanks to the new digital technologies, the same processes of “naturalization” are at work in architecture and design, as well as in the scientific disciplines.
Free entrance; registration required.
Interdisciplinary
“The Nature(s) of the Artefact”
Friday 25 October
9:30–17h
Domaine national de Chambord (Chambord Castle)
Under the scientific supervision of Frédéric Migayrou.
This interdisciplinary conference will encompass human sciences and fundamental sciences. Art and architectural historians and scientists (biologists, specialists in living world simulation systems) will question the sources of the Renaissance and Mannerism by linking them with the present-day field of digital technologies, marked by the simulation of living world growth phenomena.
Contacts
Communication: Amélie Evrard
T + 33 (0) 2 38 21 79 53 / amelie.evrard [at] frac-centre.fr
National and International Press: Heymann, Renoult Associées
T + 33 (0) 1 44 61 76 76
Sarah Heymann, Raphaële Gruet, Eleonora Alzetta
r.gruet [at] heymann-renoult.com / e.alzetta [at] heymann-renoult.com
