Lecture date: 2011-01-18
EmTech Jury Keynote Lecture
Daring and radical new architectural visions of the future arose during the great social, intellectual and economic upheavals and revolutions of the first decades of the 20th century. And today? As the cultural and physical phase changes in the world around us continue to accelerate do we have anything to say? Are we here at the AA even relevant? It is difficult to consider the 21st century without recalling the importance that the idea of the future had in the twentieth century, and the construction of the idea of the future in literature and film well in advance of the material and formal innovations that are now thought to characterise it. The lecture will examine the utopian dreams and dystopian anxieties, the seminal ideas and architectures of of ‘recent futures’ and posit some symmetries and inversions that may be useful for the construction of new agendas for the future.
Michael Weinstock is an architect, currently Director of Research and Development, and Director of the Emergent Technologies and Design programme in the Graduate School at AA. Born in Germany, lived as a child in the Far East and then West Africa, and attended an English public school but ran away to sea at age 17 after reading Conrad. Years at sea in traditional wooden sailing ships, with shipyard and shipbuilding experience. Studied at the AA 1982/88 and has taught here since 1989 in a range of positions from workshop tutor, Intermediate and Diploma Unit Master, Master of Technical Studies through to the first Academic Head.
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