BEYOND ENTROPY:

Every year the AA School of Architecture commissions a research cluster on a specific theme proposed by members of the school. This research is entitled “Beyond Entropy, When Energy becomes Form” and it promotes the collaboration of artists, architects and scientists on the making of bespoke installations on a specific type of energy.

The theme of the cluster derives from the urgency with which energy has been raised in the recent years in the political, economical, scientific debates, but not quite in the cultural ones. Indeed, within the architectural debate, energy has often been considered either an exclusively technical issue (to be solved by engineers or by highly specialised technicians) or as something relating to the rethoric of sustainability like “green architecture”, and therefore it was treated from a social, ecological and ultimately technical point of view.

This programme of research offers the architects the opportunity to re-appropriate this theme within the discipline of Architecture and to address the debate on one of the crucial issues of our time toghether with artists, scientists, politicians, philosophers and entrepeneurs. In fact, we aim to consider energy in its wider cultural aspect: rather than focusing on the implications and the consequences of energy in relation to the built environment, the ambition is to consider the very notion of energy, before any conventional form of architectural application.

As Aldo Rossi described at the beginning of “Scientific Autobiography”: Max Planck was thrilled by the fact that work is not dissipated but it remains stored for many years, never diminished, latent, in a block of stone until when, a day, it may happen that this same block falls upon a passer-by and kills him. (…) Indeed, in every artist or scientist, the principle of continuation of energy is interlinked with the research of happiness and of death. Even in Architecture this research is related to the Material and to Energy, without this observation it is not possible to understand any construction neither from the static point of view nor from the formal point of view”

RESEARCH CLUSTER DIRECTOR:

Stefano Rabolli Pansera After graduating with Honours from the AA in 2005, he worked for two years for Herzog & de Meuron where he was involved in projects in Italy, the US and Spain. He is currently teaching at the AA. He has lectured at Naples and Cambridge Universities, and has been visiting professor at Cagliari. He has taught in AA visiting schools in Berlin, Seoul and Barcelona. He is founder of Rabolli Pansera Ltd.

Architects:

Rubens Azevedo lived in Brazil and Portugal before graduating from the AA in 2002. He worked at Foster + Partners, taught with Pascal Schöning in Diploma Unit 3 at the AA, collaborated with Shin Egashira, designed several unbuilt houses, made several films, participated in exhibitions, co-edited the book Cinematic Architecture, cooked some dinners and made many mistakes. He is currently working at JH Architecture in London and on a megalomaniac book project. He also has a very beautiful daughter.

Shin Egashira worked in Tokyo, Beijing and New York before coming to London, and has exhibited artwork and installations worldwide. He is the author of Before Object, After Image (AA Publications, 2006), which documented the workshop he has organised in the remote village of Koshirakura each summer for more than a decade. He has been running his own Diploma Unit at the AA for over a decade.

Julian Loeffler studied architecture in Austria and at the AA where he graduated with Honours in 2004. Since then he has worked for Herzog & de Meuron in Basel and taught at the AA with Pascal Schöning. He is currently based in London where he is involved in a number of architectural and multidisciplinary projects, while continuing his research into Cinematic Architecture.

John Palmesino and Ann-Sofi Rönnskog are founders of Territorial Agency, an independent organisation that combines architectural analysis, projects, advocacy and action for the integrated spatial transformation of contemporary territories. Ann-Sofi was a researcher and John head of a research group on international cities at ETH Zurich, Studio Basel/ Contemporary City Institute with Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron. John is the co-founder of multiplicity in Milan. He is currently pursuing a PhD at the Research Architecture Centre at Goldsmiths, where he also teaches. Ann-Sofi has studied architecture in Helsinki, Copenhagen and Zurich.

baukuh is an office founded in 2004. baukuh produces architecture. Design is independent from personal taste. No member of baukuh is ever individually responsible for any project which goes out from the office. In order to work together without a hierarchical structure and without a stylistic dogma, baukuh developed a rational and explicit design method. This method is based on the critical de-coding of the architecture of the past and on the logical re-coding of this knowledge into contemporary design. The knowledge encoded in the architecture of the past is public. Starting from this heritage it is possible to solve every architectural problem..

Salottobuono was born in 2005 as a collector of research experiences and design production. It investigates the urban space, codifying cognitive devices and triggering transformation strategies. Topics, challenges and programs are occasions for diagrammatic analyses and elaboration of paradoxical visions. Critical nodes, discontinuities and weak points are exasperated through the formulation of visionary objects and performative practicies based on non-authorial concepts and minimal rationality. Salottobuono is grounded in intellectual exchange and relational attitude built around a stable work group. Its experience develops through the participation in competitions, workshops, publications and specific assignments.

Eyal Weizman is an architect and director of the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London. He studied architecture at the AA and completed his PhD at the London Consortium/ Birkbeck College. Since 2007 he has been a member of the architectural collective ‘decolonizing architecture’ in Beit Sahour/Palestine. Weizman is a regular contributor and editorial board member for several journals and magazines including Humanity, Cabinet and Inflexions.

Ines Weizman trained as an architect at the Bauhaus University Weimar and the Ecole d’Architecture de Belleville in Paris. She was a graduate student at Cambridge University and completed her PhD in History and Theory of Architecture at the AA in 2004. In her doctoral research she studied the effects of the collapse of the Iron Curtain on the urbanism of former Soviet countries and the ideological spectacle in what was East Germany. She currently teaches at London Metropolitan University and the AA.

Scientists:

Dario Benedetti has a Master’s degree in Civil Engineering and a PhD in Materials Engineering from the University of Brescia, where he is currently working as a researcher on the use and development of innovative analytical techniques applied to archaeometry and conservation science. In 2006, 2007 and 2009 he worked in the Department of Scientific Research at the Metropolitan Museum of New York as a research scholar. He is founder of ‘START Solutions and Technologie’.

Giuseppe Celardo graduated in Physics at Pavia University and took his PhD at Milan University. He worked as a postdoc at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (Los Alamos, USA), at University of Puebla BUAP (Puebla, Mexico) and at Tulane University (New Orleans, USA). He was originally trained in classical and quantum chaos. His research interests are focused on open quantum systems (electron transport, quantum computing), and magnetic properties of nanostructures.

Amanda Chatten is a lecturer leading research on the luminescent solar concentrator in the Department of Physics at Imperial College London. Her work focuses on developing theoretical models and characterisation techniques for the concentrator with the aim of increasing device efficiency by exploiting the potential of nanomaterials and improving light management.

Riccardo Rossi is a freelance engineer working for private and public companies as well as several research institutes. Most of his work is concerned with energy and industrial processes, including power plants, vehicle power and design, transportation and mobility. For a number of years he has collaborated with artists and galleries on specific projects, providing engineering designs and assistance.

Vid Stojevic completed his Msc in Quantum fields and fundamental forces and an MSci in Physics at Imperial College, and a PhD in theoretical physics at King’s College London. He then moved forward to a postdoc at the Institute of Theoretical Physics at the University of Hamburg. His scientific interests include String Theory.

Roberto Trotta is a cosmologist in the Astrophysics Group of Imperial College London, where he is a lecturer in physics. He is also a science communicator and he takes part in numerous public engagement with science activities, from science festivals to radio broadcasts. Between 2005 and 2008 he has been the Lockyer Research Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society at the Astrophysics Department of Oxford University. He is also been a Junior Fellow of St Anne’s College.

David Clements is a lecturer in astrophysics at Imperial College London working in the general areas of extragalactic astronomy and observational cosmology. The main subject of his research are dust dominated galaxies, the determination of their role in galaxy formation and evolution and the study of the physics that drives them. He is involved with the ESA Herschel and Planck satellites and has used data from previous generations of infrared space observatories as well Hubble, Chandra and numerous ground based telescopes. He also has an interest in science fiction and has recently had a number of short stories published.

Peter Coles is Professor of Theoretical Astrophysics at Cardiff University. His primary research interest is in cosmology and the large-scale structure of the Universe. He works on theoretical aspects of this problem, with an emphasis on statistical techniques to test models of structure formation against observations. His work encompasses both galaxy clustering and the Cosmic Microwave Background. He is also interested in exotic cosmological models, such as those involving magnetic fields or global asymmetries or non-Gaussian fluctuations, and in analytic techniques for studying the growth of large-scale structure in the expanding Universe. He has taken part in the ‘Experiment Marathon’ curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Olafur Eliasson in Reykjavik in 2008.

Andrew Jaffe is a cosmologist. He works on various topics including the formation of structure in the Universe and gravitational radiation, but most of his research involves the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). He has been involved in the analysis of data from various experiments observing the CMB, starting with the MAXIMA and BOOMERaNG balloons which were the first to use maps of the CMB to measure the curvature of the Universe.

Artists:

Massimo Bartolini is an Italian born artist whose work embraces various materials and techniques, from sculpture and performance to photography. His works often sensual, induce in the viewer a meditative state that is still highly experiential, making us reflect on the relativity of what is stable and unchangeable.

Nina Canell installations present themselves as a series of sculptural interludes that question the reliability and fixity of physical forms. Hinged upon a fabric of electromagnetics, communities of objects quietly interact with each other through small arrangements of ramshackle radiation, balancing careful ambitions to sustain certain frequencies, movements and altitudes. An improvisational methodology and a flexibility of form highlight Canell’s quest for sculpture, which exists somewhere between an event and an object, addressing our empirical understanding and willingness to engage with multiple and complex readings.

Attila Csorgo is a Hungarian artist working with lights and photography, kinetic structures and changeable geometrical forms. By observing ordinary phenomena under extraordinary conditions, he creates experiments to foreground questions about perception of physical reality.

Carlos Garaicoa is a Cuban born artist and studied thermodynamics and studied visual arts. He has been an active observer of architecture and has applied this discourse to his artwork. In his most recent work he addressed Cuba’s politics through the examination of modern architecture.

Alberto Garutti has become a prominent advocate of community-sensitive, anti-monumental public art over the last decade. He is an influential teacher at Milan’s Accademia di Brera and IUAV Venice. His projects have included a modest cubic pavilion on the periphery of Bolzano, intended to introduce objects from that city’s modern art museum to residents of a working-class neighbourhood, and an outdoor light installation on a bridge spanning the Bosphorus that acknowledged each birth at a nearby maternity hospital.

Peter Liversidge has worked in almost every conceivable medium, including drawing, performance, painting, sculpture, installation and performances. A key aspect of his practice, and preparation for exhibitions, is the submission of typed and posted proposals, which may or may not be acted upon.

Wilfredo Prieto was born in Cuba. He has a university diploma as a painter but he hasn’t painted anything for the last 10 years. He admires conceptual art but tries to distance himself from any traditional way of making art and also tries to stay free of any particular historical or cultural considerations that could hinder his creativity. He works in a variety of media, depending on the nature of each particular piece of work..

Ariel Schlesinger was born in Jerusalem and moved to Santa Cruz, CA, before leaving school. There he met a community of forest punks, who changed his life completely. Since then his inspiration has been drawn from other individuals, locations, cities, and activities. In his artistic practice he reverses the order of production, going back from the finished item to the prototype, restoring its identity and inventing it anew.

BEYOND ENTROPY TEAM:

Rosa Ainley Digital Platforms Editor & AA Events Lists

Valerie Bennett Photographer

Luke Currall Exhibitions Coordinator

Wayne Daly Graphic Design

Lauren Harcourt Accounts Assistant

Zak Kyes Art Director

Stephen Livett Accounts Manager

Esther McLaughlin Head of Development

Vanessa Norwood Head of Exhibitions

Frank Owen Head of Digital Platforms

Lee Regan Exhibitions Project Manager

Thomas Weaver Manager & Editor at AAFiles

Molly Claypool Publications Coordinator

Luis Costa Project Coordinator

Artemis Doupa Cluster Manager

Merlin Eayres Project Coordinator

Conrad Koslowsky Project Coordinator

Scrap Marshall Project Coordinator

Aram Mooradian Media Coordinator

Madoka Furuhashi Media Coordinator

Marlie Mul Publications Coordinator

Jan Nauta Symposium Coordinator