Lecture date: 2017-02-08
Reflections on the utopian dreams of architects and the dystopian anxieties of society expressed in film and literature, situated in the context of the euphorias and catastrophes of the 20th Century. In this riff the seemingly intractable oppositions between calculation and imagination, between making space and living in places, between artifice and nature, are viewed as interrelated aspects of that singular ‘tensor’ – the future city.
Michael Weinstock studied Architecture at the Architectural Association 1983-1989 and has taught at the AA School of Architecture since 1989 in a range of positions from workshop tutor through to through Academic Head. Whilst his principal research and teaching has been conducted at the Architectural Association, he has published and lectured widely, and taught seminar courses, studios and workshops on Emergence, Evolutionary Computation, Design through Production and other associated topics at many other schools of Architecture, in Europe including Delft, Rome, Barcelona, Vienna and in Stuttgart; and in the US at Yale, Berkeley and Rice.
His research interests extend from his published research into the dynamics, forms and energy transactions of natural systems, and the abstraction and systematisation of knowledge of biological morphogenesis and evolution to contribute to innovative computational processes of architectural design and materialisation. His current work is focused is on developing new paradigms for sentient cities in extreme climates and ecological contexts.
