Laboratory-talks - Missions in Architecture

The Aedes Architecture Forum and the Royal Embassy of the Netherlands in Berlin will present a series of laboratory-talks called ‘Missions in Architecture’. In these laboratory-talks given by renowned architects and actors from the Netherlands and Germany, the speakers will generate revolutionary future scenarios as to the multidimensionality of architecture – in order to highlight the missions in architecture.

SMART STRUCTURES – What Is Intelligent Architecture Like?

Venue: Aedes am Pfefferberg, Christinenstraße 18-19, 10119 Berlin
Date: Thursday, 9th of July, 2009, 7 pm

Laboratory-Talk curated by Ed van Hinte, Lightness Studios, Den Haag, with:

Prof.Ir. Adriaan Beukers, TU Delft/Faculty of Aerospace Engineering, Delft

Christiane Sauer, ForMade, Berlin

Jürgen Mayer H., Architect, Berlin

Ed van Hinte, Lightness Studios, Den Haag

Moderation: Prof. Jan R. Krause, AMM Architecture Media Management, Bochum
Welcome: Kristin Feireiss, Aedes Berlin and Dr. Bart Hofstede, Counsellor for Press and Culture, The Embassy of the Netherlands in Berlin

“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” (Albert Einstein)

"Building intelligently" is one of today´s leading questions worldwide, as design, architecture, and urban planning have to urgently find answers to changing global circumstances. The laboratory-talk "Smart Structures - What Is Intelligent Architecture Like?" will investigate new approaches and ideas such as drastic weight reduction, functional integration, and the development of sustainable combinations of materials to support minimization of environmental damage - towards an intelligent and flexible architecture. How can architecture free itself from established styles?

There is no such thing as a final state of a romantically perfect eco-balance. In a continuous flow of evolving cycles, design, architecture, and urban planning have to deal with facilitation of intelligent adaptation to changing circumstances. Knowledge and experience are increasing, but stereotyping, rhetoric and misunderstanding between professionals with different backgrounds and affinities hamper development of a new design dynamic. More than in other trades in building and construction improvements depend on integration of design disciplines and cooperation between industrial sectors that are not accustomed to combined thinking. The first challenge is to make disciplines and industries understand each other.

This is even more important, since progress depends on seemingly contradictory propositions. Dogmatic belief in various levels of recycling ignores the industrial energy consumption it may require, plus its implications for the greenhouse effect.

The consequential principle of design for disassembly is certainly valid, but as a by-product it feeds prejudice against any kind of chemical bonding, thereby raising suspicion about any innovation and improvement of gluing and of composite structures, whereas this has the potential to develop into the realm of sophisticated renewability. Composite structures are generally mistaken for a limited range of high range materials, typically Carbon Fibre Reinforced Polymers, whereas composite thinking offers opportunities to increase added value by combining minimum amounts of all kinds of different materials in smart product elements based upon optimum use of their properties.

Architects choose materials by what they express rather than how they can be processed and what they can do. They tend to think that weight reduction, which most of them favour, is a matter of choice of materials, whereas it can have much more impact if it involves rethinking both structure and style. It appears difficult for architects to critically reconsider their rather traditional views on architectural identity on all levels from detail, via building to ever changing urban networks.

Opportunities for developmental strategies of cooperation will be discussed by curator Ed van Hinte together with his Dutch and German controversial partners to boost mutual learning and inspiration as well as information exchange for fruitful cooperation in the future. “Building intelligently” is one of the today’s leading questions worldwide and will generate revolutionary approaches for the audience as well as for experts and producers of building materials. Pioneers in this field are invited to reinvestigate the issues of sustainability and responsibility of architects as to evoke radical changes in architecture and design.

Please register for this talk under: vy@aedes-arc.de

The series of laboratory-talks is a cooperation with the Royal Embassy of the Netherlands in Berlin and is supported by the Stimuleringsfonds voor Architectuur and minimum einrichten as well as by the Aedes cooperation partners Zumtobel, ArcelorMittal, Busch-Jäger, carpetconcept and AXOR hansgrohe.

Informations about the speakers of the laboratory-talk “SMART STRUCTURES”:

Ed van Hinte, Lightness Studios, Den Haag
Ed van Hinte (1951), M Sc (Industrial Design) works as a free-lance publicist and editor, mainly for 010 publishers in Rotterdam, and he teaches, organizes and curates exhibitions. From 1981 until 1988 he was partner in a small design studio. From 1980 until 2000 he was a freelance journalist for a variety of magazines and newspapers in the area of industrial design and in 1996 he won the Jan Bart Klaster Award for art criticism. From 1997 onwards he published more than 20 books as a writer and editor, among them, with Adriaan Beukers, ‘Lightness; the inevitable renaissance of minimum energy structures’ and ‘Flying Lightness’. With Michel van Tooren he just finished ‘First Red This’ a book on Systems Engineering, but he also writes scripts for children cartoon movies. In 2006 he founded Lightness Studios to stimulate development and application of lightweight structures.

Prof.Ir. Adriaan Beukers, TU Delft/Faculty of Aerospace Engineering, Delft
Adriaan Beukers is a full-time professor on Composite Materials and Structures at the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering at the Delft University of Technology, a part-time professor for Engineering with Composites at the Materials Department of the Catholic Leuven University. He is also former director of research and development strategies at the Centre for Lightweight Structures. This centre was collaboration between the university and the national institute for applied research (TNO) and since 2005 privatized. Since 1976 he has worked on the design, analysis and ‘materialization’ of novel composite structures for the university and industry with clients including Airbus, Bombardier, Boeing and Extra.

In 2003 he received and accepted the invitation to become Visiting Fellow of the Composites Centre of the Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan. The Fellowship comes with an invitation to do research on topics concerning sustainable composites as a durable means for lightweight structures. For the great number of patented innovations (> 50) and utilizations (> 25 spin off companies) in the field of novel composite materials, lightweight structures and manufacturing processes of his group, he was awarded in 2006 by the national board of universities (VSNU/Science Alliance) to be ‘The most Entrepreneurial Scientist of the Netherlands’.

Adriaan’s approach to materials and structures development highlights the importance of using minimum material and energy to achieve the optimum physical and mechanical properties possible of a structure, without neglect of functional requirements. An active application of both function integration and segregation as a design philosophy was leading to unusual and successful composite designs ranging from ultra lightweight rescue bags, beer kegs and pressure vessels to aircraft fuselages.

As a co-author of the book ‘Lightness’ (1998) and ‘Flying Lightness’ (2005), he advocates the study of nature’s organic structures as an inspiration for development of man-made polymeric materials, which can be shaped, reinforced and pre-tensioned. These result in mechanically stable structures, which can incorporate a number of high performance characteristics, such as maximum strength per unit weight and thermal and acoustic damping properties.

Christiane Sauer, ForMade, Berlin
Dipl.-Ing. Architect

1988 – 1996 Studies of architecture and sculpting in Vienna and Berlin
1996 – 2001 Freie Mitarbeit als Architektin unter anderem bei O.M.A./Rotterdam, Face Design/New York, David Chipperfield Architects/Berlin

2001 Gründung von ForMade, Büro für Architektur und Material in Berlin
2001 – 2008 Lehr- und Forschungstätigkeit an der Universität der Künste in Berlin, Vorträge und Gastkritiken an Universitäten in Schweden, Irland, Österreich und Deutschland.

Zahlreiche Veröffentlichungen zum Thema Architektur und Material in internationalen Fachzeitschriften und Katalogen, Autorin der Serie „Neue Materialien“ in md design magazine sowie Material-Ausstellungen in Wien und Berlin.

Jürgen Mayer H., Architect, Berlin
J. MAYER H. Architects founded in 1996 in Berlin, Germany, J. MAYER H Architects’ studio, focuses on works at the intersection of architecture, communication and new technology. Recent projects include the Town Hall in Ostfildern, Germany, a student center at Karlsruhe University and the redevelopment of the Plaza de la Encarnacion in Sevilla, Spain. From urban planning schemes and buildings to installation work and objects with new materials, the relationship between the human body, technology and nature form the background for a new production of space. Jürgen Mayer H. is the founder and principal of this crossdisciplinairy studio. He studied at Stuttgart University, The Cooper Union and Princeton Universtiy. His work has been published and exhibited worldwide and is part of numerous collections including MoMA New York and SF MoMA. National and international awards include the Mies-van-der-Rohe-Award-Emerging-Architect-Special-Mention-2003 and Winner Holcim Award Bronze 2005. Jürgen Mayer H. has taught at Princeton University, University of the Arts Berlin, Harvard University, Kunsthochschule Berlin, the Architectural Association in London, the Columbia University, New York and at the University of Toronto, Canada.

PROJECTS
- Sonnenhof, Carl-Zeiss-Wohnungsbaugenossenschaft, 2008-11, Jena, Germany
- Attraktion Nachhaltigkeit, Autostadt, Volkswagen, 2007-08, Wolfsburg, Germany
- Reggiani, Design Lighting, 2007-08
- Cicha.Street, Office Building, 2007-09, Warsaw, Poland
- Positive.Negative, Kicken Gallery, 2007, Berlin, Germany
- Home.Haus, Home for Children, 2007-08, Hamburg, Germany
- S11, Office Building, 2007-09, Hamburg, Germany
- Danfoss Universe, Food Factory and Curiosity Center, 2005-07, Nordborg, Denmark
- Dupli.Casa, 2005-07, Villa near Ludwigsburg, Germany
- AdA1, Office Building, 2005–07, Hamburg, Germany
- Hasselt Court of Justice, in collaboration with a2o-architecten and Lensºass architecten, 2005–11, Hasselt, Belgium
- Mensa Moltke, Student Canteen, Universities of Karlsruhe, 2005–07, Karlsruhe, Germany
- SOF, Office Building, 2005–08, Krakow, Poland
- Metropol Parasol, Redevelopment of the Plaza de la Encarnacion, 2004–09, Seville, Spain
- Body.Guards, 2004
- Menardie, Concept for Restaurant-Club-Lounge, 2004, Berlin, Germany
- Marin BLVD, Housing Complex, 2003, Jersey City, New Jersey, USA
- „Arium": International Designer Congress in Hanover, Lounge for Nya Nordiska and Stylepark, September 2003, Hanover, Germany
- Guben.Gubin, Theatre Island, in collaboration with Coqui-Malakowska-Coqui, 2003, Guben-Gubin, Poland
- Potsdam Docklands, Masterplan, 2002, Potsdam, Germany
- Grey.Grid, Concept for an Apartment Building, 2002, Berlin, Germany
- UIA Stylepark Lounge, UIA Congress, July 2002, Berlin, Germany
- CTRL.Space, Exhibition Design, Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie Karlsruhe, October 2001–February 2002, Karlsruhe, Germany
- Corridor, Rooftop Apartment, June 2001–February 2008, Berlin, Germany
- O-RAI GmbH, Office Space, May–October 2000, Berlin, Germany
- Open Spaces, 1999–2001, Vaihingen an der Enz, Germany
- Mondriaan Stichting / SKOR, Art Installation, 1999, Hilversum, Netherlands
- Lightblub: Myth of Everyday Life, Exhibition Design, 1999–2000, Berlin, Germany
- Hotel Scharnhauser Park, 1999, Ostfildern, Germany
- Stadthaus Scharnhauser Park, Mixed-used Civic Center, 1998–2001, Ostfildern, Germany
- S-Bahn Berlin, Anti-Graffiti Design, 1998, Berlin, Germany
- Hermes, in collaboration with Frisch, Summer Collection, 1998
- Cover Address, Single-family House, 1997–2001, near Stuttgart, Germany
- HOM-Y Collection, Installation at Gramercy International Art Fair, 1997, New York, USA
- Misskommunikation, Installation at Eigen+Art, 1996, Berlin, Germany
- 3 Secrets, Pavillons at the F.-Möller-Foundation, 1995, near Berlin, Germany
- Future Temps Passe, Concept for a House, 1994–96, near Poitiers, France

AWARDS

- Deutschland—Land der Ideen, 2008, Laureate, Mensa Moltke, Karlsruhe, Germany
- ADAM Award 2008, Garment Garden for Nya Nordiska at The Design Annual, 2006, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
- The Great Indoors 2007, Nomination, Mensa Moltke, Karlsruhe, Germany
- Marcus Prize Nominee, 2007, ?Project
- Deutscher Holzbaupreis 2007, Special Mention, Mensa Moltke, Karlsruhe, Germany
- Holz 21 Prize 2006, Commendation, Mensa Moltke, Karlsruhe, Germany
- Holcim Award, 2005, Winner Europe Bronze for Sustainable Construction, Metropol Parasol, Seville, Spain
- Marcus Prize Nominee, 2005, ?Project
- Contractworld Award, 2004, Pixy.Pieces
- Mies van der Rohe Award, 2003, Emerging Architect Special Mention, Stadthaus Scharnhauser Park, Ostfildern, Germany
- Contractworld Award 2003, UIA Stylepark Lounge, Berlin, Germany
- “Auszeichnung Guter Bauten 2002,“ Stadthaus Scharnhauser Park, Ostfildern, Germany
- Nomination for the Hugo-Häring-Prize, ?year, BDA Baden-Württemberg, Stadthaus Scharnhauser Park, Ostfildern, Germany
- AR+D Award, 2002, UIA Stylepark Lounge, Berlin, Germany
- Deutscher Fassadenpreis, 2002, Honorable Mention, Stadthaus Scharnhauser Park, Ostfildern, Germany
- Glass House 3000, 2001, Nominated for the Graz Biannual for Arch. und Media, A,
- Hans-Schäfer-Preis, 1998, BDA Berlin, Young Architects Award, ?Project(s)
- Suzanne Kolarik Underwood Prize, 1994, Princeton University Thesis Prize
- DAAD Scholarship 1992–94, for study at Princeton University
- Princeton University Fellowship Offer 1992–94
- Gunton Prize 1993, Princeton University
- Fulbright Scholarship 1990–91, for study at The Cooper Union

Jan R. Krause, AMM Architecture Media Management, Bochum
Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Jan R. Krause (1969), is a Professor for Architecture Media Management AMM at the Academy of Bochum. In this degree programm, he is also involved in trend-scouting, marketing and research of products as well as in teaching methods and strategies of public relations for architects. After he graduated in architecture from the TU Braunschweig, ETH Zurich as well as from the TU Vienna, he specialisied in professional communication of architecture as an editor of the magazines „Intelligent Architecture“ and „AIT“. He is publisher and author of various reference books and curator of international architecture exhibitions as well as a member of the jury of various architecture awards. Krause is director of the Eternit Academy and the Department of Corporate Communications of the Eternit AG. Since six years, he is a member of the “Deutsche Werkbund”, three years as its chairman. 2007 he was appointed to the convent of the “Bundesstiftung für Baukultur”.