Soft Architecture

Abstract:
Joe Dahmen and Amber Frid-Jimenez, who practice as AFJD, will present recent architectural installations exploring softness. Soft systems attempt to account for non-linear processes whose complexity derives from the shifting interrelationships between elements whose stability is rooted in dynamism. The move toward soft methodologies across disciplines represents a significant shift with important implications for the way we approach architectural environments and materials. Contemporary architectural explorations of softness build in new and technically sophisticated ways on earlier efforts to reduce architectural space to its primary elements. This talk will look at the effects of physical and operational softness on the experience of architectural space through the lens of recent public space installations using mycelium biocomposites and recycled materials. AFJD uses creative material exploration to provoke fundamental questions about our relationship to architecture.
About the Speakers:
Joe Dahmen is a designer whose work engages resource use in architecture and landscape architecture. He is Assistant Professor of Design and Sustainability Integration at the UBC School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture and collaborates with Amber Frid-Jimenez as AFJD, a transdisciplinary design firm operating at the intersection of design and technology.  He is also co-founder of Watershed Materials LLC, a startup company funded by the National Science Foundation (US) that uses advances in nanotechnology to produce low-carbon masonry materials. He received a Masters of Architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was a 2012/13 Early Career Scholar at the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies.
Amber Frid-Jimenez is an artist and designer who works at the intersection of art, design and technology. She has taught at the Rhode Island School of Design, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Visual Arts Program, at the National Arts Academy (KHiB) in Bergen, Norway and most recently, Emily Carr University, Vancouver, where she is Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in art and design technology. She collaborates with Joe Dahmen as AFJD. She holds a Masters in Media Arts and Sciences from the MIT Media Lab, where she studied with John Maeda.
See the poster here.
The partially subsidized cost of food and wine is $25 per person. Download Menu (pdf).
Please register by 9:00 am, Friday, February 19th, 2016.Peter Wall Institute, East Conference Room, University Centre, 6331 Crescent Road, Vancouver, BC