2019 - Architecture for the Immersive Internet

Architecture across Realities

Architecture for the Immersive Internet 

Full 8 hour live recording

Organised by AA Inter.One tutors Lara Lesmes and Fredrik Hellberg together with James Taylor-Foster, Curator of Contemporary Architecture and Design at ArkDes, this symposium at the Architectural Association in London brought together technologists, storytellers, designers, and architects to create the first draft treatise on the Architecture of the Immersive Internet.

Afternoon Panel

Luke Jones & Eva Franch i Gilabert

Recent developments in virtual technologies increasingly point to the possibility of a three-dimensional future for the Internet, persistently mapped over the entire planet. The inhabitable internet might eventually become a collective place for all humans to live, work, and play. Based on this assumption, what will the spatial internet look and feel like? How should we value it? How do we make it fair, safe, and equal for all? Who—if anyone—will own and govern it?

In the context of the immersive, inhabitable Internet, the role of the architect is ambiguous and their responsibilities remain unclear. One does not need an architect to construct physical spaces, nor to construct the two-dimensional graphic worlds we now inhabit. Will we need architects to conceptualise and construct three-dimensional virtual spaces? In short, should the essential role of the architect evolve faster, and sooner, than it has ever been required to before?

We see an urgency to formulate possibilities and principles for how our future digital lives—blending our intellects, emotions, and bodies— communities, and values, will be shaped.

SCHEDULE:

10:30 - 11:00      INTRODUCTION

11:00 – 13:00     MORNING PANEL

Lunch

14:00 – 16:00     AFTERNOON PANEL

16:00 – 17:30     TREATY DEBATE

17:30 – 18:00     TREATY SIGNING

18:30 – 19:30     TREATY DECLARATION

Morning panel

Morning panel 

Andreea Cojocaru

Sebastoian Tiew, Kent Bye, Nicholas Zembashi , Lara Lesmes 

Nathan Su & Nicholas Zembashi ,

Nicholas Zembashi & Lara Lesmes

Kent Bye 

Paula Strunden

Kent Bye

Since May 2014, Kent Bye has conducted over 1000 Voices of VR podcast interviews featuring the pioneering artists, storytellers, and technologists driving the resurgence of virtual & augmented reality. He's a philosopher, oral historian, & experiential journalist helping to define the patterns of immersive storytelling, experiential design, & the ultimate potential of XR. 

Andreea  Cojocaru

​​Andreea Ion Cojocaru is an architect and programmer whose creative process explores the dynamic boundary between the virtual and the real. She is co-founder and technical and creative lead at NUMENA GmbH, an award-winning German company that combines design and architecture with computer programming to develop spatial experiences. Andreea has practiced across the US and Europe and is fluent in a wide range of mediums covering coding, 3D modeling, computer vision, gaming and graphics. She has a deep interest in the philosophical implications of XR technologies and lectures frequently on the impact of virtual reality and its relationship to traditional architecture. 

Eva  Franch i Gilabert 

Franch is an architect, curator, educator and lecturer of experimental forms of art and

architectural practice. Director of the AA since July 2018, former director of Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York City. She has curated numerous exhibitions and taught around the world.    

Fredrik Hellberg

Lara Lesmes (Spain) and Fredrik Hellberg (Sweden), both graduates from the Architectural Association in London, founded Space Popular in Bangkok in 2013. Based in London since 2016, the practice works at multiple scales: from furniture and interior design to architecture, urbanism, and the design of virtual worlds. The duo have extensive teaching experience at INDA (Bangkok) and the Architectural Association and have lectured and participated as visiting critics internationally. Beyond their academic experience, Space Popular has ongoing and realised built projects and exhibitions in Europe and Asia.

Jeff Yu-Fu Huang

Jeff Yu-Fu Huang is a second year student at the Architectural Association currently investigating issues of trust in virtual worlds and the immersive internet.

Dalia Matsuura Frontini

Dalia Matsuura Frontini is currently working at the HS2 (High Speed Two) train station project in Wilkinson Eyre Architects, London. She received in 2018 her AA Diploma with Honours, distinction in Technical Thesis and the RIBA Silver Medal Nomination. In her spare time, she has been a juror and speaker at the Architectural Association, Royal College of Arts and Oxford Brookes University. 

Luke Jones

Luke is an architect, lecturer and writer. He is the author, with Anna Mill, of Square Eyes, a graphic novel about robotic cities, augmented reality and digital memory. He leads the Foundation Architecture studio at the Cass School of Architecture, London. He is the co-host of a podcast About Buildings + Cities, exploring architectural history, theory, process and ideas from the distant past to the present day.

Lara Lesmes

Lara Lesmes (Spain) and Fredrik Hellberg (Sweden), both graduates from the Architectural Association in London, founded Space Popular in Bangkok in 2013. Based in London since 2016, the practice works at multiple scales: from furniture and interior design to architecture, urbanism, and the design of virtual worlds. The duo have extensive teaching experience at INDA (Bangkok) and the Architectural Association and have lectured and participated as visiting critics internationally. Beyond their academic experience, Space Popular has ongoing and realised built projects and exhibitions in Europe and Asia.

Anna Mill

Anna Mill is the artist and co-writer (with Luke Jones) of the graphic novel Square Eyes, set in a near-future city in which the chaotic, saturated spaces of the AR spectacle are drawn over the crumbling remnants of a forgotten material world. Working mostly in traditional media, Anna often explores the potential of the future through the techniques of the past. She is a partner in the design office Mill + Jones and teaches Architecture at University of Nottingham and London Met.

Nathan Su

Nathan Su is a speculative designer who works with film and animation. He is a co-founder of storytelling and media practice ‘Inferstudio’ and works with research agency Forensic Architecture. He teaches at the Architectural Association (AA) as a tutor in the Intermediate School, and runs a media studies course in compositing. He has also taught workshops at the Bartlett (UCL) and Strelka (Moscow). His projects have received multiple awards, including the D3 Unbuilt Visions Grand Prize in 2015 and ‘Best Short Film’ at the Sci-Fi London Film Festival in 2017. He studied architecture at the University of Melbourne and the AA, receiving the RIBA Wren Insurance Association Scholarship and AA Diploma Honours.

James Taylor Foster

james is a writer, editor, designer and broadcaster working in the fields of architecture, design, e-culture and technology. He is the curator of contemporary architecture and design at ArkDes, Sweden’s national centre for architecture and design.

Sebastian  Tiew

Sebastian Tiew is an Artist and Designer currently working in London. A recent graduate from the Architectural Association, his work has investigated how future scenarios ofvideo games, virtual worlds and computer generated environments would transform our everyday lives. He has taught at the AA and continues to be involved on a variety of research projects and collaborations.  He is currently producing and developing a variety of interactive virtual environments and experiences for a wide range projects in the UK and abroad. 

Yasemin Yesilipek

Yasemin Yesilipek is a second year student at the Architectural Association currently investigating potential new forms of togetherness in virtual worlds and the immersive questioning the growing concerns of echo chambers, walled gardens and digital isolation with the hearth as vehicle. 

Nicholas Zembashi

Nicholas Zembashi graduated from the Architectural Association in 2018. His past work lies between architecture, media theory and politics and uses speculation and allegory to form essays in space. His most recent project, ‘Terra Media’, investigates how identity is bound by landscapes of communication. By setting out to imagine a world without defined edges, a study in machine learning classifiers reveals discriminatory biases inherent in human social exchanges. His 2017 essay ‘The Telescape’ was awarded the AA Dennis Sharp writing prize. He has worked in architecture practises in Cyprus and the UK and is currently employed at Forensic Architecture.

Paula Strunden

Paula Strunden studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and Paris before graduating from the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. With experience working for Archithese, Raumlabor and Herzog & de Meuron, Paula continuously explores the imaginary spatial potential within VR/AR and MR environments. Her recent location-based experience ‘Micro-Utopia‘ has been displayed at the Open City Docs in London, as well as OBJECT Rotterdam and Frame Lab Amsterdam. As a member of Store and co-founder of Soft Bodies, Paula has led a series of VR and AR workshops and teaches Media Studies at the AA.