Matias del Campo
Matias del Campo is a registered architect, designer and educator. Founded together with Sandra Manninger in Vienna 2003, SPAN is a globally acting practice best known for their application of contemporary technologies in architectural production. Their award-winning architectural designs are informed by advanced geometry, computational methodologies, and philosophical inquiry. This frame of considerations is described by SPAN as a design ecology.
Most recently Matias del Campo was awarded the Accelerate@CERN fellowship, the AIA Studio Prize and was elected into the boards of directors of ACADIA. SPAN’s work is in the permanent collection of the FRAC, the MAK in Vienna, the Pinakothek Munich, the Benetton Collection,and the Albertina. He is Associate Professor at Taubman College for Architecture and Urban Planning,University of Michigan. SPAN gained wide recognition for its winning competition entry for the Austrian Pavilion of the 2010 Shanghai WorldExpo, as well as the new Brancusi Museum in Paris, France.
The practice’s work was featured at the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale, at ArchiLab 2013 at the FRAC Centre,Orléans, France, the 2008 and 2010 Architecture Biennale in Beijing, and in the solo shows ‘Formations’ at the Museum of Applied Arts (MAK, 2011) in Vienna and ‘Sublime Bodies’ at the Arch Union Gallery in Shanghai (2018).
Currently their work is on show at the Vienna Biennale 2019, the Austrian Cultural Forum in NY (Resident Alien Exhibition) and the Buenos Aires Biennale 2019. Most recently Matias del Campo guest edited an edition of AD, Architectural Designpublished by Wiley in London.
Most recently Matias del Campo was awarded the Accelerate@CERN fellowship, the AIA Studio Prize and was elected into the boards of directors of ACADIA. SPAN’s work is in the permanent collection of the FRAC, the MAK in Vienna, the Pinakothek Munich, the Benetton Collection,and the Albertina. He is Associate Professor at Taubman College for Architecture and Urban Planning,University of Michigan. SPAN gained wide recognition for its winning competition entry for the Austrian Pavilion of the 2010 Shanghai WorldExpo, as well as the new Brancusi Museum in Paris, France.
The practice’s work was featured at the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale, at ArchiLab 2013 at the FRAC Centre,Orléans, France, the 2008 and 2010 Architecture Biennale in Beijing, and in the solo shows ‘Formations’ at the Museum of Applied Arts (MAK, 2011) in Vienna and ‘Sublime Bodies’ at the Arch Union Gallery in Shanghai (2018).
Currently their work is on show at the Vienna Biennale 2019, the Austrian Cultural Forum in NY (Resident Alien Exhibition) and the Buenos Aires Biennale 2019. Most recently Matias del Campo guest edited an edition of AD, Architectural Designpublished by Wiley in London.
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Videos by Matias del Campo
Can AI’s learn how to design?
This video contains excerpts of work by the artists: Mario Klingemann, Oscar Martinez and Obvious.
Images:
SPAN (Matias del Campo & Sandra Manninger), Alexandra Carlson, James Le, MIT Technology Review, Ersnt & Sohn Verlag, British Museum, Molly Wright Steenson, Facebook Intelligence Research Unit, Google Deepmind Alphago, Tesla, Xiachon Luo & Heng Li (Smart COnstruction Lab, Hong Kong Polytechnic University), Microsoft, PwC, RIB ITWO, John Deere, Hannah Daugherty, Mariana Moreira de Carvalho, Imman Suleiman, Karel Mestdagh, Leon A Gatys, Alexander S. Ecker, Matthias Betghe, Horoharu Kato, Yoshitaka Ushik
The motivation to explore Attention Generative Adversarial Networks (AttnGAN) as a design technique in architecture can be found in the desire to interrogate an alternative design methodology that does not rely on images as starting point for architecture design, but language. Traditionally architecture design relies on visual language to initiate as design process, wither this be a napkin sketch or a quick doodle in a 3D modeling environment. AttnGAN explores the information space present in programmatic needs, expressed in written form, and transforms them into a visual output. This visual output can be further processed into three dimensional models that transport lingual information into fully developed architectural entities. The key results of this research are shown in this paper with a proof-of-concept project: the competition entry for the 24 Highschool in Shenzhen, China. This award-winning project demonstrated the ability of AttnGAN
#artificialintelligence #architecture #design #agency #authorship #MachineLearning #neuralnetworks #posthuman #postdigital #lecture #ArtificialNeuralNetworks #theory #AttnGAN #caadria2021 #estrangement #defamiliarization #realism #ontology #aesthetics #prediction
Papers by Matias del Campo
Can AI’s learn how to design?
This video contains excerpts of work by the artists: Mario Klingemann, Oscar Martinez and Obvious.
Images:
SPAN (Matias del Campo & Sandra Manninger), Alexandra Carlson, James Le, MIT Technology Review, Ersnt & Sohn Verlag, British Museum, Molly Wright Steenson, Facebook Intelligence Research Unit, Google Deepmind Alphago, Tesla, Xiachon Luo & Heng Li (Smart COnstruction Lab, Hong Kong Polytechnic University), Microsoft, PwC, RIB ITWO, John Deere, Hannah Daugherty, Mariana Moreira de Carvalho, Imman Suleiman, Karel Mestdagh, Leon A Gatys, Alexander S. Ecker, Matthias Betghe, Horoharu Kato, Yoshitaka Ushik
The motivation to explore Attention Generative Adversarial Networks (AttnGAN) as a design technique in architecture can be found in the desire to interrogate an alternative design methodology that does not rely on images as starting point for architecture design, but language. Traditionally architecture design relies on visual language to initiate as design process, wither this be a napkin sketch or a quick doodle in a 3D modeling environment. AttnGAN explores the information space present in programmatic needs, expressed in written form, and transforms them into a visual output. This visual output can be further processed into three dimensional models that transport lingual information into fully developed architectural entities. The key results of this research are shown in this paper with a proof-of-concept project: the competition entry for the 24 Highschool in Shenzhen, China. This award-winning project demonstrated the ability of AttnGAN
#artificialintelligence #architecture #design #agency #authorship #MachineLearning #neuralnetworks #posthuman #postdigital #lecture #ArtificialNeuralNetworks #theory #AttnGAN #caadria2021 #estrangement #defamiliarization #realism #ontology #aesthetics #prediction
examination of the work of my practice SPAN. The text interrogates
how design research serves as a main tool for the development of novel
trajectories in the practice. This scene is set in this document by the
description of two main design approaches through a series of projects, the top down design technique of topological modelling and its application in a series of projects, and the subsequent transformation into a primarily bottom up technique, through the use of recursive algorithms and the exploration of emergent fabrication methods. The text examines how a design research went full circle - from an abstract machine (see p.180),-an object containing the opportunities to be interpreted as a series of projects through projects in an intermediate scale (Exhibition Designs, see p.143 - 178) to the scale of a building In what can be described as a plot-twist, the basic design technique of curvilinear, continuous spaces consisting of smooth single surfaces (see, Austrian Pavilion, p. 202-228) was abandoned in favour of a high resolution, intricate object condition with a clear tendency towards a granular component assembly that embraces the main architectural problems of joints, mullions, doors, arches, columns, fenestrations and corner problems (see for example, ORE, Shanghai Fashion Week Pavilions, p.229-234) .
This change allowed to discuss the projects considering the long trajectories of the architectural discipline. However, in contrast to the examples that exercise full control in a top down design process, Autonomous Tectonics speculates on the aspect of a non-anthropocentric design environment, where the architect as
the sole genius of a design is perceived as suspicious figure, and ideas
of full automation in design are embraced as an alternative creative
environment. This alternative method of design opens opportunities
to discuss aspects of a Postdigital world, of the impact of automation
to society, economy and culture, as well as providing alternative
morphologies, typologies and organizations of space.
A novel cultural entity that discusses moments of estrangement, the culture of the familiar vs the unfamiliar, the morphological language of big data, the sensibilities of AI’s and seeks a conversation on the aspects of architecture that possesses disciplinary autonomy, but is simultaneously embedded in the currents of a changing culture of production in which Autonomous Tectonics will be at play. This novel cultural entity is shared with a series of colleagues and peers who work on related conditions. People like Hernan Diaz Alonso, Francois Roche, Roland Snooks, Ezio Blassetti and Danielle Williams, Alisa Andrasek, Nicolo Cassas and more. This dissertation is an attempt to discuss the evolution of the work of SPAN through the lens of discoursive inquiry and cultural agency, resulting in the concept of Autonomous Tectonics.
In contrast to my partner, Sandra Manninger, who’s contribution to
discourse, deals with the aspects of geometry in SPAN’s body of work,
this dissertation is primarily concerned with aspects of materialization
and the affect produced through instances and artifacts of fabrication.
All of this is accompanied by the critical interrogation of the ontological
and epistemological framework emerging from the becoming of these
objects. Philosophy, in this frame of thinking (see p.240 - 266) serves as a source of inspiration and forms the base for the creation of a language to describe the projects inherent qualities. As Ludwig Wittgenstein famously said: What you cannot talk about, you have to remain silent about. For me this was never a proposition to remain silent, but a challenge to develop -and even invent- a language to describe and talk about my projects.