SUPRARURAL ARCHITECTURE aims to develop an Atlas of Rural Protocols, as part of an alternative approach to existing models of relationship between the urban and the natural based on palliative, decorative, or hygienic ethics. Against the grain of these models and superseding their nostalgic frameworks, the notion of the ‘suprarural’ seeks to unveil, reframe, systematize, and empower the highly unexplored architectural forces latent in rural organizations, particularly focusing on those related to agricultural production and livestock farming. Rather than ‘naturalizing’ nature from the functional perspective of the urban, the intention is to develop techniques to straightforwardly ‘urbanize’ with and through the rural. For this purpose, the target of the investigation is the design and editing of an Atlas of Rural Protocols of two parallel regions: the Argentinean Pampas and the American Midwest, understanding both as coherent pieces of territorial-scale architecture, yet to be unleashed.

This project won an award by the Graham Foundation (see more here)

TEAM

Directors: Lluis Ortega (Sio2) and Ciro Najle.

INSTITUTIONS

UICSoa (Chicago) and UTDT (Buenos Aires)

DIGIZALITATION TAKES COMMAND is a research that explores the impact of digitalization on architecture from the moment when the first computers were introduced, up to the present. In recent work that deals with digital technology, the most common approaches have tended to take two opposite points of view, either technophobic or technophilic, although there are positions that swing between both extremes. On the one hand, there are those who defend the idea that the introduction of computers has brought about a revolution in the discipline and, as a result, they advocate for a fundamental and radical revision of the premises and tactics that have been used up to this point; they describe the phenomenon as a new chapter in the history of architecture. On the other hand, there are those who defend the opposite approach, claiming that the introduction of computers into the field of architecture is only an instrumental phenomenon that has not changed the discipline at all, with certain exceptions that have to do with documentary productivity. Due to their exclusivity and their reductionism, both standpoints seem lacking in interest. This research, however, develops an alternative and inclusive approach –based on the hypothesis that the impact of digitalization on architectural culture is similar to the effects of the linguistic turn in philosophy– and steers clear of exclusive dichotomous approaches, without the foundational reconsideration of the discipline or its ontological conservation.

TEAM

Director: Lluis Ortega (Sio2)

Researchers: Lluis Ortega (Sio2), UIC Students

OUTCOMES

Reader with Gustavo Gili Publishing House (see more here)

Phd Disertation. Director Iñaki Ábalos. Codirector: Jaume Coll

INSTITUTIONS

UICSoa (Chicago) and UPC (Barcelona)