Technotype: Typology and technology in contemporary buildings
| Date/Time: | Wednesday, 07 Sep 2011 from 5:30 pm to 6:30 pm |
|---|---|
| Location: | Kocimski Auditorium, 101 Design |
| Cost: | free |
| Contact: | Erin French |
| Phone: | 515-294-7153 |
| Channel: | College of Design |
| Categories: | Lectures |
| Actions: | Download iCal/vCal | Email Reminder |
Is it still useful to talk about typology for contemporary architecture? Technological evolution has increasingly influenced both design and construction in the past 20 years, allowing for a hybridization of conventional building types which involved both design techniques and production processes. Some architectural design tendencies now seem to signal a possible loss of the very idea of type, in the end questioning the notion of public space in contemporary society, more and more apparently determined only by its spectacular form.
From this perspective, most famous architects today seem to consider libraries, museums and other buildings only as possibilities for new experiments, in a continuous search for a new, stronger "Bilbao effect." The architecture selection presented in this lecture, with particular regard to buildings for music from 1990 onward, is an attempt to revaluate the typology-technology pairing as a fundamental design tool to properly classify contemporary architectural production and to evaluate the "performance" of architectural space in relation to its collective use.
Francesco Mancini
Francesco M. Mancini was on the faculty at the University of Roma Tre from 1998 to 2007 and now serves as a design consultant and research fellow with the university's Department of Design and Architecture. In 1998-99 he taught with internationally recognized architect and educator Peter Eisenman at The Cooper Union School of Architecture in New York, then spent two years with an architectural firm in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, before returning to Rome to found his own practice in 2001.
Mancini taught design at the University of Waterloo School of Architecture Rome Program in 2006 and at the Pratt Institute Rome Program in 2009. He has been a faculty lecturer for the Iowa State University College of Design Rome Program since 2009.
He has published several articles and the book Spacing (Rome 2005), an anthological selection of Peter Eisenman's essays. Two additional books, Density Applied to Residential Systems, and Buildings for Spectacle - Evolution of a Building Type with Mario Panizza, are forthcoming.
Mancini holds a PhD from the University of Florence.
This lecture is sponsored by the ISU College of Design Rome Program.