Gilles Retsin: What is New in Architecture?

Institute of Architecture

This talk will explore the complicated relation between novelty, technology and architecture. Under pressure of a rapidly changing world, architecture needs to innovate to adapt. But what does that mean? What is conservative and what is progressive use of technologies? What is new and what has already been done? Does architecture need to become “intelligent”? Or should it do the opposite  - become a bit dumber?  Ultimately, the talk will focus on the notion of the Discrete and propose that approaching digital design and research under the umbrella term of “automation” could open up a productive framework for architecture today. While architects relentlessly attempt to outsmart architecture with robots, AI’s and new materials, the Discrete is perhaps just the project to calibrate automation with the blunt and primitive, granular nature of architecture.

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Gilles Retsin 
Originally from Belgium, Gilles Retsin is an architect and designer living in London. He studied architecture in Belgium, Chile and the UK, where he graduated from the Architectural Association. His design work and critical discourse has been internationally recognised through awards, lectures and exhibitions at major cultural institutions such as the Museum of Art and Design in New York, the Royal Academy in London and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. He recently edited an issue of Architectural Design (AD) on the Discrete and has co-edited Robotic Building: Architecture in the Age of Automation, with Detail Verlag. Gilles Retsin is Programme Director of the M.Arch Architectural Design at UCL, the Bartlett School of Architecture. He is co-founder of UCL AUAR Labs, which does high profile research into new design and fabrication technologies and its spin-out company AUAR ltd, a start-up working towards an automated platform for affordable housing
 
 
Readings : 
in the folder 2021S-S03528
Carpo 2014, Breaking the Curve (Artforum)
Carpo 2019, Particlised, The Rise of the Digital Discrete (AD)
Retsin 2020, Fresh from the Forest: Raw Discrete and Fully Automated (Tallin Biennale, 2019)  
Gastvortrag