The London Garden of Heterotopias

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In Technology and the Lifeworld: from garden to earth Don Ihde discusses how life in a mythical Garden of Eden would not be human life without technology. Things and artifacts make life and form an integral part of the ontological trinity of human-technology-world.

We are faced with unprecedented challenges in an entangled ecological emergency and must radically and immediately take action to preserve the planet’s very existence. Technology and the arts play an integral part and hold potential to engender change. The Bartlett School of Architecture, along with its partners, centers its contribution to Ars Electronica around arts and technologies of care in a Garden of Heterotopias to create an environment of inclusion and inspection.

Open Mozilla Hub

The London Garden of Heterotopias

Towards worlds and technologies of care

2020 has seen turbulences across the world at a magnitude and in varieties that humankind has seldom encountered. We are faced with unprecedented challenges in an entangled ecological emergency. To address climate, health, injustice and inequality, we must radically and immediately take action to preserve the planet’s very existence. Technology and the arts play an integral part and hold potential to engender change towards manifold heterotopias. This year, the Bartlett School of Architecture, along with its partners, centers its contribution to Ars Electronica around arts and technologies of care and grace in a Garden of Heterotopias. Our garden is a possibility space for radical thinking and practice, aiming to create an environment of inclusion and inspection.

The Bartlett BPRo Show 2019
Credit: Ash Knotek

Design for Performance and Interaction. The Bartlett Fifteen Show 2019
Credit: Richard Stonehouse

The Bartlett Summer Show 2019
Credit: Richard Stonehouse

Timetable

Program

Design for Performance and Interaction / Interactive Architecture Lab HUB

The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London (UK)

IAL Hub Space showcases student projects. The space takes a critical stance on developments across art, science, and technology to spearhead thinking in the 21st century. The projects presented are films and virtual prototypes. We have come to realize that now, more than ever, boundaries which define the arts and sciences no longer hold. To address the changing political, ecological, and technological landscapes, we engage in dialogues that are unfamiliar or uncomfortable.

Automated Architecture Labs HUB

The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London (UK)

AUAR Labs is the research laboratory co-directed by Mollie Claypool, Manuel Jimenez Garcia and Gilles Retsin at The Bartlett School of Architecture, previously known as Design Computation Lab. As part of AUAR Labs co-directors run the studio Research Cluster 4 (RC4) in MArch Architectural Design at The Bartlett focused on automated housing. The work of RC4 believes in the agency of architecture for change. Automation is not only about robots – it is first and foremost a design project.

Luminous Crusting, Bio-ID

The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London (UK)

Luminous Crusting is a project that questions perceptual and environmental ‘flatness’ of synthetic materials in comparison to extremely thin, but highly expressive and performative biogenic ‘micro-crusts’. These living, grown micro-crusts are highly ordered three-dimensional structures on a microscopic level. As such, they act not only as visual enhancers through deep iridescent appearance that changes with light and viewers movement, but as a living mediator between building tissue and the environment.

BSc Unit 9 HUB

The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London (UK)

Unit 9 is a design studio within the undergraduate architecture programme at the Bartlett UCL. Led by Jessica In and Chee-Kit Lai, the Unit has developed a continued interest in the performative aspects of new technologies and their expressive potentials for the design and representation of architecture.

PG24

The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London (UK)

PG24 is a group of architectural storytellers employing design, film, animation, drawing, virtual and augmented reality and physical modelling to rethink architecture’s relationship with time. We find inspiration in the dialogue between film and architecture, study their intertwined histories and seek the magical possibilities arising from their fusion.

Urbanism Beyond Cognition

The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London (UK)

Developed by Research Cluster 14, the projects showcase how data allows designers to expand their remit by design at the scale of a country or how AI can give agency to non-human ecological and robotic actors.

Jason Bruges Studio (UK)

The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London (UK)

A curated selection of talks and 360 films that provide insight into the Studio’s process and practice. Normally inhabiting physical spaces, a number of the Studio’s installations are transformed and brought to a virtual audience for the first time.

ScanLAB Projects HUB

The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London (UK)

Alexander Whitley Dance Company

The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London (UK)

Initiated in response to the Covid-19 lockdown, Digital Body uses motion capture technology to digitise sequences of choreography and makes them freely available online. CHAOTIC BODY brings together three composers and digital artists to collaborate with AWDC company on the creation of three short films and AR projects taking inspiration from chaos theory and the associated geometric patterns in nature.

Heterotopias

The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London (UK)

Roundtable + Q&A – As we collectively detangle our own perceived ‘normal’, how might this shape speculative design and the worlds that come with it? Is Heterotopia an alternative to the utopia/dystopia narrative?

Evening in IAL hubs space

The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London (UK)

Live performance / DJ set – The monotony of daily Zoom calls and Skype meetings is disrupted by using the video streams of participants to create colourful, live coded visuals which will be mixed and synced with live DJ sets from a selection of current Bartlett students and staff bringing a London soundscape to festival visitors. Lean back (or dance) and join us with a drink or two!

Bartlett artists’ videos

The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London (UK)

A 1-hour collection of student project films from the Bartlett School of Architecture’s Interactive Architecture Lab, Automated Architecture Ltd/Automated Architecture Labs, BioID, Unit 24, Unit 9, Unit 14, RC14.

Lecture on Performance and Interaction

Ruairi Glynn

Dr Ruairi Glynn, Director of the Interactive Architecture Lab, will give a talk on notions of Antidisciplinarity in Design for Performance and Interaction and emerging new types of practice.

Bio-ID Hyperobject

The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London (UK)

The main concept of the film is the creation of a design platform in form of a Hyperobject – a collection of things that overlap and intersect. It creates a system to visualise the systemic complexity of Bio-ID design research in an aesthetic and visually appealing way. The film project speculates with the idea of how data can become a visual object, a visual representation shaped into a navigational object.

Project Credits / Acknowledgements

The Bartlett School of Architecture including the Interactive Architecture Lab, Automated Architecture Ltd/Automated Architecture Labs, BioID, Unit 24, Unit 9, RC14.
In partnership with Alexander Whitley Dance Company, Jason Bruges Studio, ScanLAB Projects, and guests.