Contemporary Techniques, New Strategies

2008 International Architecture Symposium
9-11 April 2008

Everything we see and witness around us is affected by technological progress and the force of social issues, especially the economic factors of our times. We have experienced fundamental, irreversible changes in a myriad of contexts: globalization, the technological and digital revolution, and new production systems, with delocalization to other continents, and their subsequent increase in purchasing power. These changes even affect the delicate balance of our ecosystem.

At a time when words like postmodernism, deconstructivism and minimalism have lost their contemporary ring and no new dominant styles have been glimpsed on the horizon to serve as benchmarks, an unprecedented transformation is, however, taking place in the core of architectural practice. And the causes include the impact of technology, information systems and production processes. New architectural proposals appear to follow empirical methodologies rather than any previously structured rationalist system. Theoretical manifestos seem to have only a relative influence, if any at all, on new architectural trends, which appear to be guided mainly by the effects of the economic and social systems, along with constantly evolving production demands. The new markets that are emerging all over the world and the transformation of the social context combined with these new techniques have enabled us to include new design possibilities in our approach to architectural practice. These techniques allow us to develop proposals based on methodologies such as “thinking while experimenting”, which bring us back to the Deleuzian concept of “thinking as doing”.

In this constantly evolving market, latest-generation materials such as composites are now used in engineering and other areas, and open up new possibilities in terms of usage and performance.

Furthermore, the introduction of information technology in architecture has marked the beginning of a new era. IT opens the door to a specific logic that enables us not only to obtain optimum results, but also to approach new logics and create complete, efficient systems. It enables us to talk of self-organizing and emergent systems.

The new tools and new needs created in the 21st century will consequently lead us to take a fresh look at the design strategies used to date, as well as the processes and trains of thought behind them. Formalization systems and control mark the start of a new phase that needs to be redefined. We realize this is a long epistemological process that is in constant transformation and implementation, so all we are proposing here is a convenient framework to discuss it in depth.

We would like to invite people to submit papers that contribute towards putting the status of contemporary architecture in context from all the disciplines that can shed light on this topic: architecture, engineering, art, design, history, philosophy. 2008 Contemporary Techniques, New Strategies aspires to provide an outlet for papers that are exploratory in nature, whether because they focus on design processes involving a high level of research and experimentation, or because they are theoretical exercises that delve into highly topical issues relating to architecture.