Diploma Unit 20 marcosandmarjan
The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London
Homo sapiens, Robo sapiens, Home sapiens 1. Homo sapiens Reveal objects/spaces that blur the boundaries between real/unreal, alive/unanimated, human/cyber, soft/hard, skin/circuits…. "Technology is a way of revealing … Techné belongs to bringing forth, to poiesis; it is something poetic …" Martin Heidegger 2. Robo Sapiens Design of the Institute for Future Technology and Imagination as a new extension to the University of Reading (Y4) or the University of Tokyo (Y5). "Around the world, scientists and engineers are participating in a high-stakes race to build the first intelligent robot. Many robots already exist - automobile factories are full of them. But the new generation of robots will be something else: smart machines that act ever more like living creatures. What will happen next? … The next steps are to re-create Homo sapiens itself and then go beyond. Will it be simply a robotic revolution or a true extension of evolution? Could machines and humankind meld into a single species - Robo sapiens?" P.Menzel, F. D'Alusio, Robo sapiens - Evolution of a new Species, Material World Book - MIT Press, 2000. Field trip to Tokyo P. Testa, D. Weiser, Emergent Structural Morphology, p.13-16, in AD #72, guest ed. by Ali Rahim, Wiley-Academy, London, 2002. 3. Home sapiens Association for Future Technologies and Inhabitation Tokyo. S.O.F.T. - Seeking Out Future Territories. "The development of new material and building systems is closely linked with end-to-end process redesign that includes the inventive application of computational tools across design and manufacturing. … Advances in computing technology have made the technique of simulation as crucial to design and engineering today as theory and experiment were in the past." F.L.E.S.H. - Future Labs: Engineering of Sensitive Hybrids "With the astounding advances in biotechnology, superhuman powers that were once the stuff of legend or comic-strip fantasy now seem within our reach. Science fiction is becoming science fact, and the cyborg, an organism enhanced by mechanical, electronic or chemical means, may produce the next leap in human evolution." Marie O'Mahony, Cyborg - The Man-Machine, Thames and Hudson, 2002. |
