A.UD Lecture Series 2014-2015: Neil Spiller



UCLA A.UD Lecture: February 2, 2015

Neil Spiller
Hawksmoor Chair, Architecture and Landscape
Deputy Pro Vice-Chancellor, University of Greenwich, London

Neil Spiller is Hawksmoor Chair of Architecture and Landscape and Deputy Pro Vice-Chancellor of the University of Greenwich, London prior to this he was Dean of the School of Architecture, Design and Construction and Professor of Architecture and Digital Theory. Previously he was Vice-Dean and Graduate Director of Design at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London.

He guest edited his first AD, Architects in Cyberspace in 1995 followed in 1996 by Integrating Architecture, Architects in Cyberspace II (1998), Young Blood (2000), Reflexive Architecture (2002), Protocell Architecture with Rachel Armstrong (2010). Neil’s books include Cyberreader: Critical Writings of the Digital Era, Digital Dreams and Visionary Architecture – Blueprints of the Modern Imagination. He is on the AD editorial Board. His architectural design work has been published and exhibited on many occasions worldwide.

Neil is also known as the founding director of the AVATAR (Advanced Virtual and Technological Architectural Research) Group; now based at the University of Greenwich. This group has its own PhD and Masters programmes and conducts research into advanced technologies in architectural representation but more importantly into the impact of advanced technologies such as virtuality and biotechnology on 21st century design. Spiller and the AVATAR Group are recognised internationally for their paradigm shifting contribution to architectural discourse, research / experiment and teaching.

Neil Spiller has had much experience of encouraging students to develop their own architectural lexicon. He believes, wholeheartedly, that design tutors are creative midwives that deliver individual students’ work that is influenced by the past but not in thrall to it. Students make their own world by “building” within it. The first act of this “building” is the drawing, its many iterations and its perfections. A good scheme and drawing must have enigmas, a certain elbow room to allow further speculative re-reading.

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