Future Cities 6 : The Marvellous
An AVATAR Conference (Advanced Virtual and Technological Architecture Research)
Friday 21st April 2017, 10:30am – 5pm
6pm : Drinks Reception + Future Cities 6 Exhibition Private View
TESSA Lecture Hall, Stockwell Street 11_0003
“Let us not mince words: the marvellous is always beautiful, anything marvellous is beautiful, in fact only the marvellous is beautiful.”
— André Breton, ‘Manifesto of Surrealism’ (1924)
Future Cities 6 will be the sixth AVATAR (Advanced Virtual And Technological Architecture Research) conference hosted by the Department of Architecture and Landscape held at the University of Greenwich. It builds on the previous success of Future Cities, Future Cities 2, 3, 4, 5 events – that have been international, cross-industry, multi-disciplinary event themed around pressing architectural issues related to the challenges faced by megacities, the architectural discipline and pedagogical challenges in an increasingly technologically advanced, yet resource-constrained world. This year the theme of the conference will centre on The Marvellous and asks what creative opportunities architectural design in the twenty-first century offers and how it is possible to work with such tensions. It also raises questions about how we may deal with the nature of ecology, urban environments and an increasing global society – all composed of many different, often contradictory bodies.
Accompanying the conference is an exhibition in the Stockwell Street Project Space featuring works by five of the participants. Keynote speaker Michael Hansmeyer is exhibiting prints of his dazzling 3D ‘Digital Grotesques’ that are currently part of the ‘Printing the World’ exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Hansmeyer is also exhibiting a video specially commissioned for the Pompidou show. Young London based architectural design practice You+Pea (Sandra Youkhana and Luke Caspar Pearson) are showing their highly exuberant ‘Tokyo Backup City’ project. Dr Shaun Murray is showing some of the extraordinary drawings that were recently part of an exhibition at the Lightroom Gallery at Carleton University in Ottawa Canada. Professor Neil Spiller will be exhibiting more staggering works from the ‘Communicating Vessels’ project and Nic Clear will be showing a series of new works, ‘Dreamspaces’, studies for his Chthonopolis Project that will shortly be featured at the ‘The Factory’ gallery, London.
The Landscape 