WHAT WE DID
WHAT WE DO
Today, BIG DATA is a GLOBAL MESS. It comes across as POWERFUL, AGGRESSIVE, even DESTRUCTIVE. Meanwhile, as all the ELEMENTS of our OLD WORLD get CONNECTED, they begin to lose their individuality, they become peripheral, THEY DISSOLVE. So we stand confronted with an UNIMAGINABLE and UNMANAGEABLE INFORMATION FLOOD, and from this flood emerges a digital ‘CONTINENT’ that contains EVERYTHING WE KNOW. If we are to inhabit this continent, we will obviously have to CULTIVATE IT.
AS ARCHITECTS TODAY, we therefore need to do three things above all:
1) FACE up to the DIGITAL CHALLENGES that are reshaping the foundations of reality
2) UNDERSTAND how the DIGITAL REALM works, and
3) learn to ARTICULATE OURSELVES and OUR INTERESTS in this digital abundance.
We call this DIGITAL ARCHITECTONICS.
WHAT WE DID
Ludger Hovestadt studied architecture at the RWTH Aachen, Germany and the HfG in Vienna, Austria. Upon completion of his diploma in 1987, he started his academic career with Prof. Fritz Haller at TU Karlsruhe for whom he worked as a scientific researcher for over ten years. Under his supervision Ludger Hovestadt completed his doctorate at TU Karlsruhe and Carnegie Mellon in 1994, expanding Haller’s school of thought of minimalist-functional mannerism into the digital domain, thereby laying the foundations for digital architectonics.
The genealogy of the Chair for Computer Aided Architectural Design – Hovestadt can be characterized by three distinct phases:
Empirical Innovation and Spin-Offs (2000-2008)
Reflection and Theory (2009-2017)
Architecture and Renaissance (2018-
Phase 1// Empirical Innovation and Spin-Offs
The first phase begins with a series of techno-social innovations (like the DigitalSTROM microchip). These innovations are gradually and iteratively introduced into professional practice environments in order to test and harden them socially and technically under market conditions and exposed to real-world needs. As scouts in technologies as machine learning and IoT we are creating a multitude of genre-defining and contributions in these emerging fields.
digitales bauen GmbH: Industrial production of individual buildings with the focus on technical service systems.
www.digitales-bauen.de
DesignToProduction GmbH: A consultancy for the digital production of complex designs.
www.designtoproduction.com
mivune AG: A building operation system, a multi-bus, web based and independent transport network, which connects the various building technology levels
www.mivune.com
aizo AG, digitalSTROM: Smart electricity for more comfort and a whole new style of living.
www.digitalstrom.com
buildup AG: The online platform for the Swiss Building Industry
www.buildup.ch
nexiot AG: Industrial and Enterprise IoT & M2M
www.nexxiot.com
Zieta Processdesign: One of a kind production and design.
www.zieta.pl
These spin-offs are today successfully fairing in globally networked economies employing over 160 people form a multitude of professional fields. At the end of this phase the empirical and marked-tested models of thought and practice are collected and synthesized in an academic publication. After saturating experiences in the fields of practice the publication catalyzes the theoretical work at the chair and thus becomes the initiating spark of a new phase at the chair:
Beyond the Grid, Architecture and Information Technology, Applications of a Digital Architectonic.
Birkhäuser, Basel/Boston 2009
Phase 2// Reflection and Theory
Beyond the grid shifts the focus onto the mastering of strategies and theoretical approaches to methodology and abstraction in COMPUTATIONAL DESIGN and DIGITAL MODELLING. The chair is reoriented to establish DIGITAL LITERACY within the school. The reading and writing of “digitality” becomes the foundation of the research and educational efforts. The following publications, coursework and doctorates establish a wide field of approaches to topics of GLOBAL DIGITAL ECOLOGIES: Global questions of ENERGY in the digital age; ATLASES of digital infrastructure; SPECTRAL SURVEYING (panoramas) of digital phenomena and footprints; indexing and DIGITAL DOMESTICATION of the world; new COMMUNICATION possibilities in architecture and modelling; SELF-ORGANIZING CARTOGRAPHY and DATA DRIVEN MODELLING and designing; as well as DIGITAL NARRATIVES and navigation in QUANTUM REALITIES.
Ludger Hovestadt, Urs Hirschberg, Oliver Fritz (Eds.): Atlas of Digital Architecture: Terminology, Concepts, Methods, Tools, Examples, Phenomena, Birkhäuser Vienna, 2019 (upcoming).
Ludger Hovestadt, Vera Bühlmann, Sebastian Michael: A Genius Planet: Energy: From Scarcity to Abundance – a Radical Pathway, Birkhäuser Vienna 2017.
Ludger Hovestadt, Vera Bühlmann, Miro Roman, Diana Alvarez-Marin, A Quantum City, Birkhäuser Vienna 2015 (June).
Ludger Hovestadt, Vera Bühlmann, Sheaves – When things are whatever can be the case, ambra Vienna 2013.
Ludger Hovestadt, Vera Bühlmann (Eds.), EigenArchitecture, Computability as Literacy, ambra Vienna 2013.
Vera Bühlmann, Ludger Hovestadt, Vahid Moosavi (Eds.), Coding as Literacy – Metalithicum IV, Birkhäuser Vienna 2015 (June).
Vera Bühlmann, Ludger Hovestadt (Eds.), Symbolizing Existence – Metalithicum III, Birkhäuser Vienna 2015 (June).
Vera Bühlmann, Ludger Hovestadt (Eds.), Domesticating Symbols – Metalithicum II, ambra Vienna 2014.
Manuel Kretzer, Ludger Hovestadt (Eds.), Alive, Advancements in Adaptive Architecture, Birkhäuser Vienna 2014.
Vera Bühlmann, Ludger Hovestadt (Eds.), Printed Physics – Metalithicum I, Springer Vienna 2012.
Phase 3// Architecture and Renaissance
The MASTERING OF THE DIGITAL now allows us to describe complex realities, to understand social, economic and spatial relationships (and to communicate them), which were ungraspable without the emergence of quantum technologies. Digital ecologies transform individual global lifestyles and societies. They define how we produce, commute and plan and communicate. The reaction to this new complexity of design and traditional feeling of powerlessness must be an architectonic revolution: An architectonic renaissance of the digital.
Literates of the digital, read and design within digital realities, articulate and formulate environments as digital architectonics. Studio METEORA will become our vehicle to form a new kind of architecture. For her technology serves as a radical tool for architectural design in order to master complex challenges (ecological, digital, topological, economic, social) with the new means and methods (quantum technology: big data, machine learning etc.) and to identify new requirements, contexts, obstacles and potentials for a new digital and contemporary architecture.