rocker-lange blog

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

Christian J. Lange to deliver a talk as part of the Friendly Fire event at the Department of Architecture, The University of Hong Kong.

HKU’s Faculty of Architecture teaching staff: Who are they? What do they do? What are the forces, ideas and topics that motivate and drive them? At a time when student’s schedules are fraught with presentations of their own creative outputs, “Friendly Fire” flips the coin and introduces a casual evening jam-packed with high-speed idea presentations by teaching staff. Compiled in a fully automated slideshow inspired by the Pecha Kucha lecture format, 15 speakers from within the faculty will present their thoughts and ideas.

Event Title: Friendly Fire
Date: 12 December 2012 (Wednesday)
Time: 8pm – 10pm
Venue: KB318, 3/F Knowles Building

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

Rocker-Lange Architects are participating in this year’s Hong Kong & Shenzhen Biennale with their research project entitled “Density & Openness Revisited: Recoding Building Bulk in Hong Kong”. The project will be on display until April 24th and is located in the Hong Kong Pavilion of the show.

Hong Kong’s cityscape is primarily shaped by the typology of the tower. While specifically in Hong Kong the tower is utilized as an extension of the urban programmatic user surface, the question of public space within this vertical urban fabric remains unaddressed.

The research project “Density & Openness Revisited: Recoding Building Bulk in Hong Kong” is the search for an alternative approach to think about open and public spaces in the context of the city. Instead of extruding the maximum boundary condition of a given site to determine the building mass, this model incorporates a ratio of open space in the design process.

At its core is a computational logic that calculates the amount of open space for each city plot. The rule-based model can adapt to different site and programmatic conditions and produces varying spaces and varying densities This approach offers the capacity to generate new forms of public space, semi public and private exterior and interior spaces.

Ingeborg M. Rocker to deliver a keynote lecture at the ACSA 100th Annual Meeting, Boston, Massachusetts. The title of the lecture is “Digital Aptitudes Eco-logics: The role of Computation in Rethinking human Nature and Habitat”.

Digital Aptitudes
ACSA 100th Annual Meeting
March 1-4, 2012 in Boston, MA

Host School:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Co-chairs:
Mark Goulthorpe, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Amy Murphy, University of Southern California

Digital Aptitudes: Opening Panel & Reception:

Sanford Kwinter, Jeffrey Kipnis, Ingeborg Rocker, Kathryn Gustafson, Mark Burry

Thurday, 03/01
6.00–8.30 pm / Boston Park Plaza
50 Park Plaza at Arlington Street
Boston, MA 02116

Theme Overview:
This Annual Meeting culminates the events associated with ACSA 100. The Boston conference will mark the centennial year that educators from diverse institutions have gathered to share ideas with the goal of advancing architectural education. It will be hosted by the first school of architecture in America, MIT, whose department of architecture was founded in 1865. To mark such an occasion, the conference will critically examine the ground covered by the discipline since its inception, as well as speculate on its future trajectory, the central theme of the conference being the profound impact of digital technologies’ computational and communication capacities on architecture.

For more information please go to: www.acsa-arch.org