rocker-lange blog

Rocker-Lange Architects work is on show in the exhibit “Collective Visions” @ KK Leung Concourse, The University of Hong Kong.

Presented in parallel with the HKU Department of Architecture symposium, 2020:Housing China, this exhibition contains a collection of projects by local and international researchers, designers and architecture firms related to housing in Hong Kong, China and greater Asia. The work presented is a combination of academic research, actual built projects and speculative ideas for the future of housing in an increasingly dense and urbanized China. Projects exhibited are designed for an array of contexts from urban, to suburban, to rural and range in scope from single detached houses to urban scale developments. Projects explore a range of housing topics including the formulation of architecture around specific social issues, new construction methodologies, adaptive reuse of existing buildings, innovative connections to infrastructure, new opportunities provided by digital technology and the historical development of housing over recent decades. Overall, the exhibition seeks to re-frame the development of mass housing over the course of the twentieth century and offers important models for a new century of Chinese growth.

Sponsored by:
Dennis Lau and Associates
Curated by:
Jason Carlow, Assistant Professor in Architecture
The University of Hong Kong

Collective Visions
10-20 May 2013
Opening Reception: May 10th, 18:30
KK Leung Concourse, The University of Hong Kong

Christian J. Lange, Assistant Professor of Architecture is currently co-organizing a symposium entitled 2020: Housing China. The symposium will be held at the Department of Architecture at The University of Hong Kong on May 10&11 2013.

China’s urban population will increase in the next twenty years from about 50 % at present to almost 70% by 2030. With an estimated 300 million people moving to the city by 2020, China will change from a rural into an urban society. This transformation will influence the environment and habitation patterns of almost a quarter of the nation’s population. This rapid urbanization will not only have a significant impact on material resources, the society and the environment, it will also initiate the most prominent housing laboratory in human history challenging designers, planners and builders alike.

As a socio-political microcosm, Hong Kong has been dealing with the impacts of hyper-dense urban environments since the mid-twentieth century. During the past three decades the city has been also an active player in the development of China’s housing through various public and private initiatives. The essential questions are: What are the models at hand and is Hong Kong the right model for China? What are the alternative options and how can we make a difference through critical review and proposition?

The housing symposium entitled ” 2020: Housing China ” will explore issues related to these questions with a focus on housing typology, urban models, and their social and urban implications. Invited architects and scholars from Hong Kong, China, Asia and Europe will review and present collective housing developments within a historical and contextual framework. The symposium will provide a platform for shaping discourses and propositions on how architecture can be spatially and socially proactive by maintaining sustainable and innovative living environments for China in the 21st century.

10-11 May 2013,
KB419, 4/F Knowles Building, The University of Hong Kong

Panel 1: Perspectives | Contexts
10 May 2013, 13:30 – 18:30
William S.W. Lim 林少偉 – Professor, Singapore
Huang Yi-ru 黃一如– Professor, Tongi University, Shanghai
Gu Daqing 顧大慶– Professor, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Carolin Fong Suet Yuen 方雪原 – Director, Dennis Lau & Ng Chun Man Architects & Engineers (HK) Ltd, Hong Kong
John Ng 伍灼宜 – Former Chief Architect, Hong Kong Housing Authority, Hong Kong

Panel 2: Density | Scale | Typology
11 May 2013, 9:30 – 13:30
Dietmar Eberle – Professor, ETH Zurich, Faculty of Architecture; Shareholder, Baumschlager Eberle Group, Lochau Austria
Li Xinggang 李興鋼 – Chief Architect, China Architecture Design and Research Institute, Beijing
Meng Yan 孟岩 – Principal, Urbanus, Shenzhen
Keiichiro Sako 迫慶一郎 – Principal, SAKO Architects, Tokyo / Beijing

Panel 3: Urban Housing | Housing the City
11 May 2013, 14:30 – 18:30
Winy Maas – Professor Delft University; Principal MVRDV, Rotterdam
Dong Yi 董屹 – Partner, DC Alliance, Shanghai
Khoo Peng Beng 邱彬銘– Partner, Arc Studio. Architecture + Urbanism, Singapore
Qian Yuan 錢源 – Director, Vanke Wanchuang Design Management Center

For more information please visit: http://fac.arch.hku.hk/event/spring-2013-housing-symposium-2020-housing-china/

Ingeborg M. Rocker to deliver evening lecture at Sci-Arc

Wed, April 3, 2013,  7pm
W.M. Keck Lecture Hall
Intro by Marcelo Spina

Held in conjunction with the exhibition Henri Labrouste: Structure Brought to Lightorganized by Barry Bergdoll, the symposium focuses on how the work of 19th-century architect’s innovative use of materials and light in spaces of contemplation and public assembly are relevant in contemporary culture and architecture.

Among the participants of the symposium are: Stephen Rustow (The Cooper Union), Neil Levine, (FAS, Harvard University), Dominique Perrault, Anthony Vidler, (The Cooper Union), Mario Carpo, (Yale University), Aranda Lash, and Ingeborg Rocker (GSD, Harvard University).

GSD Associate Professor IngeborgM. Rocker will discuss how new materials and industrialized fabrication of the 19th century challenged traditional design strategies. While Henri Labrouste’scast ion structures have been considered precursors of Modern Architecture’s construction principles, it remains still to be seen if today’s computeraided and manufactured architectural componentsarea critique or rather a hyper articulation of modern material and production logics. What role played ornament then and now?

MOMA New York
Revisiting Henri Labrouste: In the Digital Age
Thursday, March 28, 2013
10:00 am – 5:00 pm

For detailed information see: www.moma.org

Christian J. Lange will deliver a lecture at the University of St. Joseph in Macao. The talk will discuss Rocker-Lange’s specific design approach through a set of projects that have been developed in their design and research practice in recent years.

Wednesday, March 20th 2013
6.30pm
Venue:
Speaker’s Hall
University of Saint Joseph, Macao

For more information please go to: www.usj.edu.mo

Rocker-Lange Architects will present part of their research work at the encodingarchitecture conference at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. The conference is meant to synthesize new trajectories for the profession in a cybernetic context of tectonics, cultural philosophy, architectural theory and geopolitics.

For more information please visit: www.encodingarchitecture.org

Ingeborg M. Rocker to deliver lecture at “Digital Geometries,”
with Ingeborg Rocker, Michael Young & Kutan Ayata, Pablo Lorenzo Eiroa, Branden Hookway, & Yusuke Obuchi

Wednesday, 11/28 2012
6.00pm / Betts Auditorium
Princeton SOA
Princeton, New Jersey 08544

Digital Design Theory Symposium: Digital Post-Modernities
Mario Carpo, Emmanuel Petit, Ingeborg Rocker, Mark Gage, Michael Young, Roland Snooks and Brennan Buck
Friday, 11/02, 2012
11.00 am – 4.30 pm / Smith Conference Room
Paul Rudolph Hall
180 York Street
New Haven, Connecticut 06511

Associate Professor Ingeborg M. Rocker publishes essay entitled “Calculated: formal excesses of digital ornaments,” as a chapter in Ornament Today: Digital, Material, Structural edited by J. H. Gleiter, Professor of architectural theory at the Technical University Berlin.

Rocker’s chapter is part of her ongoing research in the role of computation for the theorization and production of architecture. Rocker’s research of “digital ornament” began in 2009 with her paper “Computation in Command? Fading Flamboyant Architectural Aesthetics,” presented at the Harvard Design School’s Critical Digital Conference.

Her current contribution, “Calculated Excess,” contextualizes the development of ornament within shifts of production logics, from hand-crafted, to industrially produced, to digitally fabricated. Rocker marks the ambiguous terrain between the investigation of production techniques and the ornamental, while drawing parallels between the digital ornament of today and those of the past. Does the computation ability to facilely produce variation through the manipulation of code suggest considering ornament and architecture as a like set of endless differentiations? Or does it rather recommend looking at architecture and ornaments at the level of code itself?

For further details see:
Book:
J. H. Gleiter, editor. Ornament Today: Digital, Material, Structural. Bozen: Free University of Bozen Press, 2012.

Rocker Lange Architects have been recently featured in a video by the Wall Street Journal called “Architects Tackle Density in Hong Kong”

The creativity of architects and designers from around the world, applied to imagining a brighter, more efficient city, is on display at the Hong Kong architecture biennale. WSJ’s Diana Jou talks to chief curator Anderson Lee to get the scoop on some of the most fascinating projects.