Lecture SAC
Theodore Spyropoulos: Behaviours
Thursday, 27. April 2017, 19.00, Aula 

If science fiction has become fact, architecture today has to move beyond representation and the fixed and finite tendencies that declare what architecture should be and work towards what it could be. Within these evolving territories, by necessity new models must conceptualize our ever-evolving present and the uncertain and latent world within which we operate. The once comfortable and understood orthodoxies in architectural thinking have proven limited in their capacity to engage and address our contemporary condition. 

Today, the intersections of information, life, and matter display complexities that suggest the possibility of a deeper synthesis. As we live in ever-evolving information-rich environments, the question is not why, but how architecture can actively participate. In this expanded field of experimentation, architecture should be understood beyond building, beyond materiality and the inert tendencies that conventionally define it. Architecture in this talk will be argued as a means to interrogate the contemporary condition and to provide a framework within which to operate.

Theodore Spyropoulos is an architect and educator. He is the Director of the Architectural Association’s world renowned Design Research Lab (AADRL) in London. He has been a visiting Research Fellow at M.I.T.’s Center for Advanced Visual Studies and co-founded the New Media and Information Research initiative at the AA. Theodore has taught in the graduate school of UPENN, Royal College of Art Innovation Design Engineering Department and the University of Innsbruck. In 2002 he founded the experimental architecture and design practice Minimaforms. The work of Minimaforms has been acquired by the FRAC Centre, the Signum Foundation and the Archigram Archive, and has exhibited at MOMA, Barbican Centre, Detroit Institute of Arts, Onassis Cultural Centre and the ICA. Previously Theodore has worked as a project architect for the offices of Peter Eisenman and Zaha Hadid. In 2013 the Association for Computer-Aided Design in Architecture awarded him The ACADIA award of excellence for his educational work directing the AADRL.

Spyropoulos returns to Städelschule to give this lecture after having previously been a visiting critic to the Städelschule Architecture Class End-of-Year Reviews.