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12.2024 Extending his previous work documenting the postwar nexus of design and computing in North-America and Britain, Daniel Cardoso Llach’s current project Provincializing the digital: Computational Design in Germany after 1950 will examine how German researchers, government, and corporate actors conceptualized and gave meaning to computational ideas and methods in Germany’s design and architectural contexts during this period. Drawing on recent science and technology (STS) and media studies perspectives that complicate a dominant view of computational systems as neutral and universal, the project will help reveal how computational design ideas and methods in Germany emerged in conjunction with specific institutional, political, and material histories. Instead of asking what computation and software might mean ‘for’ architecture and design in Germany, Cardoso Llach is interested in asking what these technologies might mean ‘from’ there.

Daniel Cardoso Llach, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor and the chair of the graduate program in Computational Design at the School of Architecture at Carnegie Mellon University, where he also directs CodeLab, an interdisciplinary laboratory aimed to critically rethinking the role of computation in design.

Image Credit: Wisnosky, “ICAM Program Prospectus,” AIR FORCE MATERIALS LAB WRIGHT-PATTERSON AFB, Ohio, ADA051670, Mar. 1978. Accessed: Jul. 02, 2024. p. 18

06.2024 As a part of the Parity Jour Fixe No. 32 at TU-München, Grayson Bailey, Nathalie Bredella and Jonah Marrs (Base Digitale, Beaux-Arts Paris) presented works related to technologies, craft and practice. In his lecture "Prepared Instruments", Marrs discussed artistic experimentation with media technology in the 1960s and 1970s, along with his own video synthesis devices in the lineage of prepared instruments. Afterwards, there was a conversation with the Craft Archaeologies (LUH) and Feminist Craft (TUM) seminars on traditions of craftsmanship in the context of computer-based practices, which explored methodological approaches that address the shaping of technological knowledge at the interstices of theoretical discourse and material practices, and reflect on methods of feminist practices in research and teaching.

10.2023 Anna Boyksen Fellowship

Prof. Dr. Nathalie Bredella was named as the Anna Boyksen fellow in the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) at TU München (Link). As a part of a two-year fellowship, Prof. Dr. Bredella will lead the newly created focus group Feminism and Digital Culture in Architecture. 

In order to encourage a critical engagement with the history of the digital in architecture, the Feminism and Digital Cultures in Architecture Focus Group wants to explore methods of feminist practices in research and teaching. This focus group will bring together the chairs of Theory and History of Architecture, Art and Design, of Architectural Informatics, Urban Design, Building Technology and Climate Responsive Design, Digital Fabrication, as well as the Chair of History of Architecture and Curatorial Practice, in order to explore methods of writing history in the context of digital cultures. Who have been the protagonists in the development of digital practices and how are they situated within local knowledge structures and their social, economic and political contexts? What roles do activism, oral history, and reenactment play in understanding digital cultures? These are among the questions that the Focus Group will address as it explores methodologies and events which have not previously been included in architectural history. By focusing on the history of technology together with an international network of scholars, we will engage with situated precedents of digital practices and how they relate to contemporary discourse.

11.2024 Workshop organized by TUM IAS Anna Boyksen Fellow Nathalie Bredella in collaboration with Pierluigi D’Acunto (TUM School of Engineering and Design and TUM IAS), Kathrin Dörfler (TUM School of Engineering and Design) and Anna Keune (TUM School of Social Sciences and Technology and TUM IAS) supported by Simon Rötsch.

Advanced digital technologies and research in architectural materials and construction processes are transforming work and life towards digitalisation and sustainability. These innovations present opportunities not only to reduce environmental impact but also to address long-standing labour inequities, social injustices, and gender imbalances in the field. This workshop aims to explore how societal discourse and knowledge systems shape and are shaped by new technologies. It will examine design processes at the intersection of craft, systems thinking, and algorithmic cultures, exploring how the knowledge embedded in technology can be made more accessible, and offering new ways to engage with the ecologies of making.

Agentive Matter(s) is a two-phase initiative aimed at identifying novel approaches to teaching and learning about how technologies transport societal discourses of the past into the future. Phase 1 will be an expert workshop that explores techniques for tracing discourses and knowledge across past and present. Phase 2 will take lessons learned from the workshop and translate them into an educational format that asks what societal actions the history of technological artefacts produces today and how we can shape them to increase sustainable outcomes.

05.2024 Nathalie Bredella and Grayson Bailey presented their paper "Computational mapping techniques und knowledge cultures within Landscape, Design and Planning” at the DESIGNSHS Workshop Writing the History of the Computer Visualizations in the Sciences: Production, Uses, Circulation (1940-1990) at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales.

06.06.23 "Constructing the Anti-Architect" by Grayson Bailey was published in the 19th issue of Graz Architecture Magazine (GAM), which focused on the theme of "professionalism."

10.2024 "Link it and Move it" is a collaboration between the TUMlab at the Deutsches Museum and the IAS, TUM. Anna Boyksen Fellow Nathalie Bredella together with Grayson Bailey, Merel de Coorde and Jonah Marrs will lead a workshop exploring the history of Laura and Leonardo Mosso's "Programmable Architecture" through robotic re-enactment. The workshop will bring together architectural history through the presentation of a comic illustrating the life and work of the Mossos, followed by an Arduino workshop. Visit Program

04.2024 Sophia Walk's article on Konrad Frey and Florian Beigel's Fischer House (link)was published in the series Building of the Month on the website The Twentieth Century Society.

Fischer House on Grundlsee in Austria’s Ausseerland from Konrad Frey and Florian Beigel was the first solar house in Austria, with construction beginning in 1972 and completing 1978. The fact that it has not worked perfectly stresses that environmental designs do not have to be totally successful in order for us to learn from them. 

06.06.23 Utopia Computer : The "new" in Architecture? has just been released, edited by Nathalie Bredella from the Architectural Theory, Frederika Lausch and Chris Dähne. Utopia Computer addresses the euphoria and expectations associated with the introduction of the computer in architecture in the early digital age. In addition, the publication also includes a contribution by Grayson Bailey ("Pre-Requisites for Self Organization").

07.2024 Workshop by Anna Boyksen Fellow Nathalie Bredella with Andrea Reichenberger (TUM School of Social Sciences and Technology, History of Technology), Rudolf Seising (Deutsches Museum), in connection with Grayson Bailey („Feminist Craft“ Seminar), supported by Tabitha Goricki-Eickel and  Simon Rötsch. Visit Program

Evolving digital ecologies promise to situate technologies, software systems and mixed actors within new epistemological approaches. Locating digital production processes within feminist labour histories, this workshop will interrogate the narratives which surround computation, the relationships between craft and digital production, and the subsequent interconnections between the human and the machine. In looking at histories of software systems as craft archaeologies, we are interested in the hybrid modes of computation and construction, as well as in the methods of writing these situated histories.

Using a wide set of methodologies (oral history, media archaeology, technical re-enactment, archival research), we aim to bring together historical and theoretical investigations and to bridge the gap between the history of craft, computer science and artificial intelligence (AI). The questions that immediately arise are both concrete and abstract: What tensions have arisen around the automation of craft processes and mechanized calculation procedures? In what ways is the emphasis on productivity entangled with marginalization? How can we capture (situate) industrial and digital practices across disciplines? And what role do theories of contextual knowledge in a feminist framework play in the realm of diversity and epistemic (in)justice? Bringing together perspectives from architecture and technology studies, this workshop will highlight how technical, social, and societal elements interweave, investigating the manner in which material processes form communities.

11.2023 Architektur für Alle?! Emancipatory Movments in Planning and Space

Lecture and Workshop from Insa Meyer, Céline Schmidt-Hamburger, Christian v. Wissel

The exhibition Architektur für Alle?! Emancipatory Movments in Planning and Space was dedicated to a critical inventory of the situation of women in the field of architecture in Bremen from 1945 to the present day. This happened on two, interwoven levels of observation: on the one hand, with a view to the visibility and equality of women in the professional field of architecture and, on the other hand, with a view to the ongoing situation of unequal participation in and conditions of access to public spaces and the spaces of our society in general.

Curation from: Insa Meyer, Frederieke Schons, Céline Schmidt-Hamburger, Jörn Tore Schaper, Christian v. Wissel, Sophia Wolfrat and Sophie Krone.

Accompanying the exhibition, the catalog of the same name was published as volume 19 of the b.zb series by Schünemann Verlag in Bremen (ISBN 978-3-7961-1169-3).