The art of building (art), imagination and fun [welcome to the pleasuredome]
From thought space to outer space and back to the city. Five overarching lectures exploring contemporary complexities and challenges in architecture oscillating between academic rigour and rapid intuition. Lecture series "The Accelerating Expanding Universe of Architecture" by Hannes Mayer, Roland Rainer Chair 2014|2015 in fall 2014.
The Accelerating Expanding Universe of Architecture stands for a dynamic worldview derived from the observation that the universe is accelerating in expansion, a discovery which turned the astrophysicists Saul Perlmutter, Brian Schmidt and Adam Riess into Nobel laureates in 2011. The lecture series and its associated seminar Syzygy explore current worldviews - our Zeitgeist - and negotiate tendencies in architecture with those in related fields. Borrowing advice from Roland Rainer who claimed that "the origin of all artistic production must lie in the requirements and skills, the means and characteristics of our time" the five lectures will investigate what is significant and catalytic in regard to the contemporary condition of architecture.
Instead of re-establishing the fundamentals of the discipline in response to growing uncertainty the lecture series builds upon a conscious act of disregarding boundaries - be they between disciplines or geopolitical territories, between high or low culture, between academia and practice - and is committed to explore the depth of an architectural universe, which expands pulled by the human capability of imagination.
The lectures depart from an ex-cathedra approach and move towards a studio-set-up forming a hybrid between the seriousness of an academic lecture and the entertainment offered by a television programme. Extended by means of sound, video and live guests the lecture series reflects the accelerating expanding universe of a complex cosmos of knowledge.
Schedule Lecture Series
Lecture one | 20.10.14 | fragile stills of dynamics and the holistic balance of seduction [teenagers of modern parents]
Lecture two |10.11.14 | the anthropocene: man / architecture / nature
Lecture three | 01.12.14 | accommodation + habitation
Lecture four | 15.12.14 | from elements to architecture: compositions / methods / ideologies
Lecture five | 23.01.15 | the art of building (art), imagination and fun [welcome to the pleasuredome]
Hannes Mayer (*1981 Stuttgart) is an architect, writer, teacher, curator, lichenologist and musician. Before joining the Academy of Fine Arts as the Roland Rainer Chair 2014/15 he was the director and editor-in-chief of archithese. Parallel to his work as an editor, he was a studio master of MArch unit20 and a thesis supervisor of the MArch GAD at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London. Prior to that he was a visiting lecturer and unit master at the University of Westminster. Hannes Mayer is a frequent lecturer and visiting critic at European architecture schools and an experienced moderator of public events. His more than fifty articles on architecture and related fields have appeared in archithese, Architectural Design, a+u, trans as well as in various edited books.
Hannes Mayer studied architecture at BTU Cottbus, TU Eindhoven and the Bartlett School of Architecture, where he completed both his Diploma and MArch. He worked as a builder on Renzo Piano's Paul Klee Zentrum and as an architect in Zurich and London. Subsequently, he established his own office M-A-O/architecture and optimism in London (2007). With works ranging from a documentary film and exhibition on homelessness in Graz (Gregors Stadt/ Sei Vogel wenn du fliegst, 2008 with Martin Zettel) to post-digital architectural design using image-based vector fields (Lichonic Architecture, 2007 - ), his projects have been shown at Kunsthaus Graz, Schauspielhaus Graz, HDA Graz, Babylon Cinema Berlin, Unknown Building Görlitz, Architekturforum Zurich, Austrian Pavilion - Venice Biennale, Fundación Arquitectura COAM Madrid, Spitalfields Church London and as part of the Festival Steirischer Herbst (Changing the Perspective - Walking Conference 2008). More recently, he organised a series of conferences on the state of Swiss architecture (Zurich 2012, Karlsruhe 2013, Basel 2014), was shortlisted for the Swiss Art Award and explored public formats which intensify architectural debate through means of sound and media (Theater Neumarkt, Zurich 2014). In 2014 he established unitedcircus as a platform to develop these various formats further.