Panel Discussion
IPCity – Urban Mixed Reality [as PDF]
Technologies for new engagement with the city
PANEL DISCUSSION
March 25 2010 | 6pm Alte Mensa
University of Applied Arts Vienna
Oskar Kokoschka-Platz 2
A-1010 Vienna
Mixed Reality – Strategies of Representation and Communication Techniques
Statements: John McMorrough – This Will NOT Kill That | J. Meejin Yoon – Unscripted
Discussion + Rainer Pirker, Max Rieder
Moderation: Kari Kuutti
The international symposium will focus on the new type of technology that is called Mixed Reality especially in relation to architecture and urban space. Computer scientists, architects, urban planners and art historians will discuss the new kind of communities that have emerged with new technologies of information and representation.
Architecture traditionally organizes public space and sponsors interaction; the Greek agora, the gothic cathedral and the baroque theatre are examples that very specifically structure attention. With cinema and radio the range of awareness for the first time transcended the material boundaries of architecture and with virtual media these boundaries were eventually dissolved. The emergence of mobile phones and other wireless consumer networks has radically reshaped human communication and transformed the relationship between space and many interactions and activities. The emergence of mixed reality technology – geo-located layers of mapped information that are readily available with the new senses imbedded in our cell phones and all the new technical periphery that orbits around our bodies – is going to change that relationship again. New technologies will give designers, architects and urban planners, possibilities to influence not only the bodily movements of humans and the vistas available to them, but also the form and content of communication and interaction they can have in a particular spot. What are the new modes of designing and establishing space, what types of communities are being sponsored and what do the new cities and architectures look like?
PANELIST
John McMorrough is a principal architect in the firm studioAPT (Architecture Practice Theory), a researcher, and an associate professor at the Ohio State University (where he is also head of architecture section). He received a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Kansas, a Master of Architecture (with distinction) from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and a Ph.D. in Architecture from Harvard University, where his doctoral research work focused on the interplay between commodity and media in post-war architectural discourse. His current writings include treatments on pedestrian malls, electronic architectures, supergraphics, post-modernism and contemporary design. He has worked for design offices in Kansas City, New York, Boston and Rotterdam and has taught theory and design at the Yale School of Architecture, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Northeastern University.
Rainer Pirker architeXture
Rainer Pirker studied architecture at the Technical University, Innsbruck. Before living in Istanbul for two years, he was working in the studio of Hans Hollein´s from 1984-1989. In 1997 he founded rainer pirker architexture. He has been teaching at the Technical University of Vienna from 1991 until 2009, and was visiting professor at SCI ARC Los Angeles, at the Technical University Innsbruck, at South East University Nanjing/China, at the Academy Yazd/Iran and at ESA Paris/France. Since 2007 he teaches at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna. He is invited guest critic at numerous universities in Europe and USA, including Columbia University New York, the University of Applied Arts Vienna, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and Esarq Barcelona.
Rainer Pirker successfully participated in many national and international competitions and was awarded in the prize of the Austrian Federal Chancellery/Art Department for “experimental tendencies in architecture”, twice in the Otto Wagner Urban Design award and recently in China with the “golden bull” and the “Guangdong award for excellent innovation in Urban Design and Design. His work was exhibited in Europe, Asia and America, such as “Austrian Cultural Institute New York” travelling exhibition, “Contemporary Austrian Architecture, Art and Design” in the Shanghai Art Museum, “Making Waves” in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Nanjing, Beijing, “architeXtures” in AUT Innsbruck, and others.
Max Rieder maxRIEDER
Max Rieder is an architect, urbanist and mediator; in 1992 he founded atelier maxRIEDER, (full-licence in architecture, urban planning, environmental engineering) and has full-certification for mediation by Federal Ministry of Justice since 2002. He graduated from the master class Hans Hollein, University of Applied Artsin1986, and holds a diploma degree in civil- & environmental engineering from the University of Agriculture. He has been teaching urban design and urban planning at the University of Applied Arts Vienna from 1994-2002, and the departments of Architecture at the Technical University of Vienna in 2000 and 2003- 2004.He was visiting Professor for building typology, architecture and urbanism at the Technical University of Vienna 1998, at the University of Trondheim 2001 and the Lviv Polytechnic National University in 2004. Since 1995 he teaches architecture and environmental design at the University of Musics and Performing Arts Mozarteum Salzburg.
Max Rieder understands architecture as social art and the city as a piece of art, where acts of the free human with its possibilities of acquirements in space represent the motivation. Consequently creating space means to transform and to relate the cultural, climatic and social contexts to an economic process – but nevertheless as art. Max Rieder´s work constitutes identity and place beyond the special circumstances, emphatically engaging for an interdisciplinary teamwork, to mediate that private as well as public space is signifying for a meaningful human society, changeable between pragmatics and philosophy. His work embraces architectural projects, infrastructure/landscape-design and master planning – urban design, urban study and proceeding, and has been widely recognized by numerous awards, such as the “Austrian prize for housing, “Salzburg prize for architecture” and “Otto Wagner Städtebaupreis” for urban development. As mediator he co-authored the first “Austrian- Building-Report” – Baukulturreport for the Federal Government 2006, he supervised and moderated the “projectA-Graz”, and the Symposium „ die letzte Sitzung“ Regionale – EU-Kulturhauptstadt Linz 2009.
J. Meejin Yoon, MYSTUDIO / Höweler + Yoon Architecture
J. Meejin Yoon is an artist, designer, and educator, as well as the founder of MY Studio and Höweler + Yoon Architecture, a multidisciplinary design practice, operating in the space between art, landscape, and architecture. MYS/HYA believes in the embodied experience of space, seeing media as material and its effects as palpable elements of artistic speculation. Consequently, the studio is interested in the material realities and material effects of their work, testing interactions between their constructs and the larger public. MYS/HYA’s multi-disciplinary projects include interactive public art, installations, concept clothing, furniture, artists’ books, interiors, and electronic-embedded architecture. They embrace all scales as an opportunity to engage in design research to investigate the relationship between form and performance, interactivity and media, inhabitation and event.
Yoon was awarded the United States Artist Award in Architecture and Design in 2008 and Architectural Record’s Design Vanguard and the Architectural League of New York’s Emerging Voices in 2007. MYS/HYA’s recent interactive projects were featured in the 2006 National Design Triennial at the Cooper Hewitt in New York and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. Additionally, their work has been included in exhibitions at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. MYS has been published and reviewed in The Village Voice, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Financial Times, I.D. Magazine, Architectural Lighting, Interior Design Magazine, Domus, Architect Magazine, and Architectural Record. Their work has also been published in the following books: Material Process: Young Architects 4 (Princeton Architectural Press 2003) and Young Architects Americas (DAAB 2007). Forthcoming publications by MYS include Expanded Practice: Projects by Höweler + Yoon Architecture/MY Studio (Princeton Architectural Press 2009) and Public Works: Unsolicited Small Projects for the Big Dig (MAP Book Publishers 2009).
MODERATOR
Kari Kuutti, IPCity
Kari Kuutti is a professor in human-computer interaction (HCI) and computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) at the Department of Information Processing Science, University of Oulu, Finland. His research area is human interaction with information technology taken rather broadly, and he has been developing both; theoretical and conceptual tools to understand the relationship and its dynamics, and practical tools and methods for designing devices and services. He has published more than 100 publications in various international journals, books and proceedings, and he is best known for his work in applying cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) to understand IT use and development. During the last 15 years his research has been increasingly focusing in the design field, leading him to cooperate with industrial designers, architects and urban designers. Besides the project IPCity, he is currently working in two urban space-related projects; one developing web-based tools for citizen interaction in urban planning, another one that experiments with the combination of mobile phones and large public displays in urban space.
