CSA PGR Forum: Knowing and Innovating through Creative Research. ENTANGLED ECOLOGIES of the PUBLIC REALM

ENTANGLED ECOLOGIES of the PUBLIC REALM, A talk by Marcella Del Signore, Associate Professor at New York Institute of Technology, School of Architecture & Design.

The exploration of the public domain is an important parameter to define how we live as collective and how we can rethink the fundamentals of living. The public realm is an expanded field where the deployment of collective ecologies is inherently connected to the socio-cultural production of space and forms of cohabitation of living systems.

The talk addresses the intersection of technologies with the public/social/cultural realm through prototyping, material and fabricated systems, data-driven protocols, and mediated environments. Starting from Aério, an installation recently exhibited at the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale, a series of projects will be the vehicle to speculate on the current and future states of socio-technical apparatuses, interlaced ecosystems, and planetary entanglements.

Bio
Marcella Del Signore is an architect, urbanist, educator, scholar, and the principal of X-Topia, a design-research practice that explores the intersection of architecture and urbanism with technology and the public, social and cultural realm. She is an Associate Professor and Director of the MS. in Architecture, Urban Design at New York Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Design. Her research focuses on interscalar design approaches that engage the notion of socio-technical systems through computation, prototyping, material and fabricated assemblies, data-driven protocols, and adaptive environments. Her work investigates architecture, environments, and cities not as isolated entities but as part of an extended field mediated through the discursive application of technology. In her design practice, she has built a wide array of urban interventions and small-scale prototypes recognized through awards, grants, and publications. In 2018, she co-curated the ‘Data & Matter’ exhibition at the ECC during the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale, and in 2021 she exhibited “Aério” at the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale. She also exhibited her work at the Gardiner Museum, Ogden Museum of Southern Art, MIT Media Lab, Columbia University Buell Center, Rotterdam Biennale of Architecture, Arte Sella, Milan Design Week, Zero1 Biennal, Brooklyn Navy Yard, Duncan Plaza, Architekturzentrum Wien, EME3, and a series of festivals including LunaFete, Urban Prototyping, DesCours, Think Town, Northern Spark, Verdecoprente, and Conflux among others.

This part of the PGRs Forum series at Cambridge School of Art (Anglia Ruskin University). It aims at opening up the conversation about creative practice research and innovation methodologies: how these rise from practice, are applied, and/or lead to interdisciplinary approaches. Through examples of research and innovation projects the sessions will ask questions, give new ideas, or highlight problematic instances of the research journey.Ph Credits: @Marcella Del Signore I X-Topia