Search results for ""Author Michelle Howard""

In 2008, the Department of Art and Architecture at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts developed a new basis for the architecture curriculum. They created five research platforms: Analogue and Digital Production (ADP), Ecology Sustainability Conservation (ESC), History Theory Criticism (HTC), Geography Landscape Cities (GLC) and Construction Material Technology (CMT). The CMT platform is lead by Michelle Howard; who used the platform to explore the Research Observe Make (ROM) teaching studies. The ROM publication documents this program of studies and also forms the basis for future development. It comprises, assembled in one volume, five complementary books, which can also be read individually. After an introduction and an exposé on theory, the "elemental", "spatial" and "material" projects are introduced. The last book documents workshops, lectures and experiments. An inspiring compendium with numerous expert contributions and creative student projects.

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For centuries, dealing with cold has been the dominant climatic factor for architectural design in Central Europe. The climate change apparent now assigns this role to heat. Architecture and urban design strives for efficient, resource-saving technical solutions to meet the changing climatic conditions and the energy standards they demand without really questioning customary notions of comfort, forms of living, and urban coexistence. Yet architects must increasingly search for experimental approaches and new ways in which we can live together well in a rapidly warming climate, in particular in cities and metropolitan regions. Despite a supposed powerlessness in the face of the impending climate catastrophe, the contributions collected in this volume offer a diverse range of narratives that tell of experiences, observations, and the needs of people that inhabit hotter worlds, both real and imagined. What role as climate producers can architecture and the city play in shaping our habitat if these important issues are understood not only in purely technological but also in cultural and social terms? Text in English and German.

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Is uselessness a tool? The acquisition of tools is the secret to humankind’s success and what distinguishes us from animals. However, we also use tools to tell stories and produce objects that are perplexingly useless. Uselessness rarely meets our expectations, but can also be fascinating and liberating, because it eludes the logic of the "use = value" equation. In the Modern Age usefulness became a priority: with reference to space, production or training. Yet futurologists today predict that one product of artificial intelligence will be a "useless" future. If the future makes us useless, it will be necessary to reconsider our attitude toward uselessness. The texts in this interdisciplinary reader illuminate the potential creativity the future can bring in light of this development.

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