Disruptive Technologies: The Convergence of New Paradigms in Architecture

Through a series of highly speculative contributions by both leading and highly acclaimed practitioners and theorists, this book gives a new comprehensive overview of architectures’ most recent practical and theoretical developments.

While a few chapters are mostly dedicated to a historical analysis of how we got to experience a new technological reality in architecture and beyond, all chapters including the most forward looking, have in common their rigorous understanding of history as a pool of radical experiments, whether one speaks of the history of architecture, or of sociology, technology, and science.

Disruptive Technologies: The Convergence of New Paradigms in Architecture is required reading for anybody student, practitioner, and educator who wants to do serious research in architecture and all disciplines dealing with the shaping of our environment, beyond the important but restricted domain of computational architectural design.

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Philippe Morel is an architect, theorist and entrepreneur, co-founder of EZCT Architecture & Design Research (2000) and initiator and founding CEO of the large-scale 3D-printing corporation XtreeE (2015). He currently teaches as an Associate Professor at the École nationale supérieure d’architecture Paris-Malaquais, where he headed the Digital Knowledge department (co-founded with Pr. Girard), and at UCL Bartlett where he held a Visiting Professorship position. Before teaching at the Bartlett, he was a seminar and studio Professor at the Berlage Institute in Rotterdam, and a history and theory seminar and AADRL tutor at the Architectural Association in London. In 2017, he co-edited the book Computational politics and architecture: From Digital Philosophy to the End of Work (Editions ENSAPM). In February 2007, he curated the exhibition Architecture Beyond Forms: The Computational Turn at the Maison de l’architecture et de la ville PACA in Marseille. Explicitly departing from Eisenman PhD’s dissertation from 1963 - The Formal Basis of Modern Architecture -, the exhibition addressed both historically and theoretically the current linguistic and computational turns in architectural design. Philippe Morel has published more than 30 essays, lectured in many universities around the world and presented his work in numerous exhibitions. His work and the one of his office are part of private and public collections, including FRAC Centre and Centre Pompidou permanent collections.

Henriette H. Bier, after graduating in architecture (1998) from the University of Karlsruhe in Germany, has worked with Morphosis (1999-01) on internationally relevant projects in the US and Europe. She has taught computational design (2002-03) at universities in Austria, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands and since 2004 she mainly teaches and researches at Technical University Delft (TUD) with focus on robotics in architecture. She initiated and coordinated (2005-06) the workshop and lecture series on Digital Design and Fabrication with invited guests from MIT and ETHZ and finalized (2008) her PhD on System-embedded Intelligence in Architecture. She coordinated EU-funded projects E-Archidoct and F2F Continuum (2007-10), led NL-funded projects Scalable Porosity and Adaptive Stiffness (2015-18), and ESA-funded project Rhizome (2021-22). 2017-19, she has been appointed professor at Dessau Institute of Architecture and 2020 visiting researcher at PoliMi. Results of her research are published in books, journals and conference proceedings and she regularly lectures and leads workshops internationally.

Dr. Gerber holds a joint appointment at USC’s Viterbi School of Engineering and the USC School of Architecture as an Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering Practice and of Architecture. Dr. Gerber is also the program Director for the Civil Engineering Building Science undergraduate program and the program Director for the Masters in Advanced Design and Construction Technology Program. He teaches in both the Viterbi School of Engineering and the School of Architecture.
Dr. Gerber’s professional experience includes working in architectural, engineering and technology practices in the United States, Europe, India and Asia for Zaha Hadid Architects in London; for Gehry Technologies in Los Angeles; for Moshe Safdie Architects in Massachusetts; The Steinberg Group Architects in California; and for Arup as the Global Research Manager. Dr. Gerber’s research has been industry, fellowship, and NSF funded and is focussed on the development of innovative systems, tools, methods for design of the built environment. He currently advises, and co advises PhD students from Architecture and Engineering on topics that integrate computer science, robotics, engineering, with architecture. David Gerber received his undergraduate architectural education at the University of California Berkeley (Bachelor of Arts in Architecture, 1996). He completed his first professional degree at the Design Research Laboratory of the Architectural Association in London (Master of Architecture, 2000), his post professional research degree (Master of Design Studies, 2003) and his Doctoral studies (Doctor of Design, June 2007) at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.