The Architecture Program at Georgia Tech presents

TEXTILE TECTONICS

Lars Spuybroek
Professor and Thomas W. Ventulett III Distinguished Chair in Architectural Design
Principal, NOX

Since the 19th century architecture has been struggling with the opposition of Polytechnique and Beaux-Arts (or Tectonics and Stereotomy), with architecture being a technical art on the one side and a sculptural, formal art on the other. Lars will argue that from a contemporary materialist viewpoint there cannot be any fundamental separation of matter and expression - thus finally closing the chapter of criticality and language in architectural discourse.

Lars Spuybroek is the principal of NOX architecture studio in Rotterdam. Since the early nineties he has been researching the relationship between art, architecture and computing not only by building but also by writing, speaking and teaching. He received international recognition after building the Water Pavilion (HtwoOexpo) in 1997, the first building in the world fully incorporating new media. In 2004 NOX finished the D-Tower, the Son-O-house and a cluster of cultural buildings in Lille, France (Maison Folies). In the same year Thames & Hudson published his 400-page monograph, NOX: Machining Architecture.

Spuybroek has won several prizes and has exhibited all over the world, among them presentations at several Venice Biennales, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Victoria & Albert in London and the Guggenheim Bilbao. He is a Professor and the Ventulett Distinguished Chair in Architectural Design at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.