MoA08 architecture seminar Special Effects deals with the creative use of cutting edge technology in order to produce new architectural effects. The participants come from Los Angeles, Southern California - the home of aeronautive, automotive and film industries, as well as the avant-garde of architecture in the United States. The speakers Hitoshi Abe, Neil Denari and Greg Lynn and the seminar moderator Kivi Sotamaa are all independent designers as well as professors at the UCLA School of Architecture and Urban Design.

Greg Lynn’s Titanium tea pot for Alessi is a distant high tech cousin of Tapio Wirkkala’s Chantarelle glass vase. It does not tell a story about its design- or manufacturing process, nor does it represent anything.  It simply is beautiful, loosely reminiscent of an exotic plant. Hitoshi Abe’s Aoba Dei restaurant interior in Sendai is clad in heavy computer perforated Cor-Ten steel plates, which delicately filter light and counter-intuitively create an ephemeral sensation of being under a tree on a sunny day, hiding any true nature of the material or the construction. Neil Denari’s curving forms bring to mind the world of sophisticated machines, gentle biomorphic robots, without ever allowing a ‘reading’ or interpretation of their history, function or meaning.


The seminar is kindly supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the American Embassy in Helsinki


Seminar Participants

Speakers

Hitoshi Abe
Hitoshi Abe’s works such as Miyagi stadium (2000) and the Reihoku community hall, are both spatially complex and structurally innovative, his restaurant Aoba Dei in Sendai is one of the best examples of ephemeral, atmospheric space in contemporary design. Abe is one of the few Japanese architects who are a part of the international architectural discourse, both through his visionary work and his writing. Abe is the director of UCLA School of Architecture and Urban Design and one of most influential and international architects in his generation in Japan.


Neil Denari
Neil Denari is dedicated to the exploration of contemporary life through the media of architecture, urban planning, and industrial design. He became internationally famous at a young age from speculative projects that portrayed a highly technological vision of architecture, sometimes coined as Machine Architecture. Just as our machines have evolved, so has his sensibility developed toward a more coherent, biomorphic sensibility. Neil Denari was one of the founders and directors of SciArc Southern California Institute for Architecture. Currently Denari leads a successful building practice NMDA in Los Angeles and holds a professorship at UCLA.

Greg Lynn
Greg Lynn is the most important theoretical voice of his generation and the leader of digital design revolution, ongoing since the 90’s. It is difficult to overstate his importance for the younger generation of progressive architects. He has quite simply transformed the field through his six books and projects that range from digital research to coffee pots for Alessi and building projects ongoing in Los Angeles. He was recently on Time Magazine’s list of 100 most important innovators of the century. In addition to running his practice Greg Lynn Form, he holds professorships at UCLA, Yale and the Universität für Angewandte Kunst in Vienna.


Moderator

Kivi Sotamaa is one of the most international and technologically progressive Finnish architect of his generation. He combines the Finnish tradition of ‘organic modernism’ spearheaded Alvar Aalto and Tapio Wirkkala with his unique contemporary digital design sensibility.  Sotamaa is currently a Visiting Professor at UCLA, prior to which he was Assistant Professor at the Ohio State University and visiting professor at the Universität für Angewandte Kunst in Vienna. Sotamaa leads his practice Sotamaa Design in collaboration with Tuuli Sotamaa.


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Other MoA08 Seminars

16.5. On the Edge of Change
20.5. Passion
21.5. The Art of Life and Design