PUBLIC LECTURE: KRISTOF CROLLA. BENDING RULES: Augmenting Post-digital Architecture Practice

RMIT Architecture invites you to a public lecture by KRISTOF CROLLA, LEAD Hong Kong & HKU in the RMIT Design Hub.

“BENDING RULES: Augmenting Post-digital Architecture Practice”

NOTE: This lecture will not be recorded. Seats limited.
Register via Eventbite: https://rmitkristofcrolla.eventbrite.com.au

In today’s post-digital architectural era, a strong dichotomy exists between the increased agency offered by our design tools and the affordances given by many construction contexts – especially building environments of developing countries or those with limited available onsite means, skill, budget, or time. This lecture postulates that by incorporating computational power and incertitude as productive components in alternative design and materialisation processes, the locally available solution space for built architecture can be dramatically expanded and onsite ability and agency increased.

What gains do our extensive computational abilities bring to architectural design and construction in these contexts? How can the mechanisms driving this extensiveness be creatively and practically employed here? What happens when we radically disrupt the security of architecture’s standard reproductive infrastructure?

Illustrated through his highly unusual and provocative built work, Kristof Crolla proposes and applies an alternative computation-driven design and materialisation methodology that capitalises on digital design and production models’ propensity towards variability. The work demonstrates that identified methods can substantially increase the architects’ agency and local onsite affordance. In doing so, the talk challenges the extent to which computation can further impact architectural practice.

A/Prof. Dr. Ir. Arch. Kristof Crolla is a Belgian architect who combines his practice Laboratory for Explorative Architecture & Design Ltd. (LEAD) with an Associate Dean- and Associate Professorship at the University of Hong Kong (HKU), where he directs the Bachelor of Arts and Science in Design+ programme as well as the Building Simplexity Laboratory research group. After graduating Magna Cum Laude as Civil Architectural Engineer from Ghent University in 2003, he practiced and designed his first built project, House for an Artist, in Belgium. In 2005, he moved to London to both train and teach at the Architectural Association, School of Architecture (AA). He worked for many years as Lead Architect for the Pritzker prize winning Zaha Hadid Architects, for whom he led the design of a.o. the “Antwerp Port House”, before relocating to Hong Kong in 2010. There, his academic research and office work focusses on the strategic implementation of computation in architectural design practice. This work has been extensively exhibited internationally, including at the Venice Architecture Biennale, and led him to receive over 30 international design, research, and teaching awards. Best known projects include “YEZO”, “Golden Moon”, and “ZCB Bamboo Pavilion” for which he received the World Architecture Festival Small Project of the Year 2016 award. In 2018, he completed his PhD studies at RMIT, Melbourne, with the doctoral dissertation “Building Simplexity – The ‘More or Less’ of Post-Digital Architecture Practice” for which received the 2016 RMIT Vice-Chancellor’s Prize for Research Impact – Higher Degree by Research. In 2019, he was appointed by the International Network for Bamboo and Rattan (INBAR) as a Task Force Expert Member – Bamboo Construction.

DATE: Thursday 7 April, 2021
TIME: 6 – 7pm. Doors open 5.45pm
LOCATION: RMIT Design Hub, Building 100, Level 3, Lecture Theatre
RSVP: https://rmitkristofcrolla.eventbrite.com.au
Poster Link: https://bit.ly/3qGg6lF