Exuberance: New Virtuosity in Contemporary Architecture

This title of AD heralds a new era of exuberance in digital design. Having overcome the alienation and otherness of the cyber, having mastered the virtual qualities and protocols of the parametric, having achieved the intricacy and elegance of the digital, and having fully embraced the potential of 3–D computer software and cad/cam manufacturing technologies, it is now time for architects to show off ! Conjure up the extravagance of furniture design, the abundance of cgi in Hollywood, the profuseness of bio–techno ornamentation or the lavishness of Middle–Eastern and Asian super–urbanism. Exuberance not only celebrates new Baroque theatricality, formal sophistication and digital virtuosity; it also debates a plethora of joyful and intelligent ways in which experimental architecture manages to cope with the contemporary turmoil in global politics, economics and ecology.

Editorial

Helen Castle

About the Guest–Editor

Marjan Colletti

Introduction

Exuberance and Digital Virtuosity

Marjan Colletti

DigitAlia the Other Digital Practice

Marjan Colletti

Interiorities

Ali Rahim

Diving into the Depth–Scape:

Exuberance and Personalities

Yael Reisner

Exuberant Couture

Judith Clark

Baroque Exuberance:

Frivolity or Disquiet?

Robert Harbison

Let s Rock over Barock

Wolf D Prix

The New Delfina

Peter Cook

OrnaMental POrnamentation:

The Abstract and the Exuberant

Body of Ornamentation

Marjan Colletti

Surrealistic Exuberance Dark Matters

Neil Spiller

Exuberance, I Don t

Know; Excess, I Like

Hernan Diaz Alonso

Extreme Integration

Tom Wiscombe of EMERGENT

Relying on Interdependencies:

Snøhetta in the Middle East

Kjetil Trædal Thorsen and Robert Greenwood, Snøhetta

Cultivating Smartcities

CJ Lim

Leading Lady: Monica Pidgeon,

Editor of Architectural Design,

1946 to 1975

Peter Murray

Interior Eye

Morphosis Architects Cooper Union

Academic Building, New York

Jayne Merkel

Building Profile

Winter Olympic Buildings,

Vancouver 2010

David Littlefield

Practice Profile

Francis–Jones Morehen Thorp (fjmt)

Fleur Watson and Martyn Hook

Unit Factor

Emergence and the Forms of Metabolism

Michael Weinstock

Yeang s Eco–Files

Biodiversity Targets as the

Basis for Green Design

Mike Wells and Ken Yeang

Spiller s Bits

Strategic Plots and Spatial Blooms

Neil Spiller

McLean s Nuggets

Will McLean

Userscape

Urban Interactive

Valentina Croci

Dr Marjan Colletti is co–founder of the studio marcosandmarjan in London, and currently a lecturer in architecture at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London (Unit Master, Unit 20), and the University of Westminster (Unit Master, DS10) with Marcos Cruz. He has been a guest professor at ucla and Innsbruck University, Austria and design instructor at various institutions in Europe and Asia. His projects and texts attempt to bridge the gap between architectural theory and the built environment by expanding the vocabulary of digital architecture. On various platforms research, education and practice he endeavours to establish a debate in which experimentation, technology and innovation do not exclude personal emotions, local traditions and cultural identity. His work has been widely published and shown in more than 50 exhibitions in Europe, Brazil and Asia.

marcosandmarjan s portfolio includes the competition–winning entry for a 180,000–square–metre (1.9 million–square–foot) entertainment complex in front of the gates of the Summer Palace in Beijing, the built pavilions and general layout for the 2005 Lisbon Book Fair, as well as the ongoing nurbsters series and the runner–up project for an estate Sales Centre and model homes display in Cairo.

Marjan s phd on Digital Poetics (Bartlett, ucl), the co–authored book marcosandmarjan: Interfaces/Intrafaces (SpringerWienNewYork, 2005) and the print collection 2&1/2D Twoandahalf Dimensionality (Bucher Hohenems, 2006) favour a poetic digital avant–garde developed through 2–D, 3–D software and computer numerically controlled (cnc), rapid protoyping (rp), and computer–aided design and computer–aided manufacturing (cad/cam) technologies. Parallel strands of research are developing novel morphologies (Convoluted Tectonics), new urban strategies (InterPolis), higher education syllaba in digital design, computation and technology  (ac—dc Architectural Curriculum for Design Computing), as well as sustainable manufacturing strategies (InterTech). 1