IoA Institute of Architecture

2009/10 (Kaleidoscopic) Networks

The 2009 Winter/ 2010 Spring Sliver Lecture series highlights architects and designers working within intricate networks and hyper connected systems. The work is tenuously settled at the interface of classical and emerging disciplines. Synonymous with fabrics or structures comprised of individual elements, networks are continuously evolving. They imply both infiniteness and rigor, while oscillating between controlled and uncontrolled elegance.

While the term network has a multitude of meanings, all networks can branch, connect, disconnect, expand, and contract, continually evolving and perpetually in a dynamic state. As architects, artists, and designers, we are continually fascinated by the prospect of maneuvering in a net-like system that gradates from fibrous tissue to rigid structures, from infinitely thin to unimaginably massive, all while associating with a deep underlying system. This common element of evolutionary thinking, establishes new forms of experimental design and novel processes.

The lecturers are all seeking a complex resolution of space, information and data, resulting in elaborate structures containing and participating in an intricate network of parts. The series lies at the intersection of architecture, art, design and the critics and thinkers that move between them.