Kate Orff presents at Columbia GSAPP

oct 1–3 2008

SOLID STATES - Changing Time for Concrete

Lecture and panel discussion with Michael Bell, Angelo Bucci, Pascal Casanova, Jean-Louis Cohen, Preston Scott Cohen, Carlos Eduardo Comas, Neil Denari, Jacques Ferrier, Kenneth Frampton, Benjamin A. Graybeal, Laurie Hawkinson, Juan Herreros, Sanford Kwinter, Jacques Lukasik, Qingyung Ma, Reinhold Martin, Fernando Menis, Detlef Mertins, Christian Meyer, Paulo Monteiro, Toshiko Mori, Antoine Naaman, Guy Nordenson, Kate Orff, Antoine Picon, Stanley Saitowitz, Hans Schober, Matthias Schuler, Ysrael A. Seinuk, Pierluigi Serraino, Surendra Shah, Werner Sobek, Bernard Tschumi, Jesse Reiser + Nanako Umemoto, Mark Wigley, Mabel Wilson

Columbia University GSAPP

Avery Hall, Columbia University

Concrete is entering a renewed era of development with worldwide implications and under radically new economic circumstances. What are the futures of concrete in architecture and engineering in terms of technologies of reinforcement, materials science, emerging markets and capitalization, geographic production, installation, and environmental impact? Where will innovation happen and what will instigate potentials in design and engineering?

The goal of this conference is to open new understandings of this pervasive, yet ever-evolving material. Bringing together a wide range of leading architects, engineers, and scholars, the Columbia Conference on Architecture, Engineering, and Materials is a multi-year project to explore the dramatically changing limits of known and new materials in an era of rapid urbanization and within unprecedented forms of technical measurement, coordination, and production that increasingly blur the boundaries of professions and of materials. Do contemporary means of structural and material analysis suggest a way of modeling material attributes such that analysis itself might produce a new material? Will alternate techniques create a virtual strain or quasi-alloy, leading to a potential realm of coordinated material action?

The Columbia Conference on Architecture, Engineering, and Materials explores the boundaries between materials science, engineering, and design by mobilizing symposia, studios, exhibitions, books, and films in an intensely focused investigation. How is a new generation of professionals and manufacturers fusing engineering and architectural practices into radical platforms for decisive urban action?

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