Smartgeometry 2012 - a Call for Workshop Cluster proposals

We are now accepting proposals for Workshop Clusters at the Smartgeometry 2012 event.

The sg2012 Workshop will be organised around Clusters. Clusters are hubs of expertise. They comprise of people, knowledge, tools, materials and machines. The Clusters provide a focus for workshop participants working together within a common framework.

Clusters provide a forum for the exchange of ideas, processes and techniques and act as a catalyst for design resolution. The Workshop is made up of ten Clusters that respond in diverse ways to the sg2012 Challenge Material Intensities. The Call for Clusters is now open to proposals which respond in innovative ways to this year's challenge.

Deadline: September 19 2011

More information can be found here:

http://smartgeometry.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=arti...

sg2012 takes place from 19-24 March 2012 at EMPAC (http://empac.rpi.edu/) and is hosted by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, upstate New York USA. The Workshop and Conference will be a gathering of the global community of innovators and pioneers in the fields of architecture, design and engineering.

The event will be in two parts: a four day Workshop 19-22 March, and a public conference beginning with Talkshop 23 March, followed by a Symposium 24 March. The event follows the format of the highly successful preceding events sg2010 Barcelona and sg2011 Copenhagen.

sg2012 Challenge Material Intensities

Simulation, Energy, Environment

Imagine the design space of architecture was no longer at the scale of rooms, walls and atria, but that of cells, grains and vapour droplets. Rather than the flow of people, services, or construction schedules, the focus becomes the flow of light, vapour, molecular vibrations and growth schedules: design from the inside out.

The sg2012 challenge, Material Intensities, is intended to dissolve our notion of the built environment as inert constructions enclosing physically sealed spaces. Spaces and boundaries are abundant with vibration, fluctuating intensities, shifting gradients and flows. The materials that define them are in a continual state of becoming: a dance of energy and information.

Material potential is defined by multiple properties: acoustical, chemical, electrical, environmental, magnetic, manufacturing, mechanical, optical, radiological, sensorial, and thermal. The challenge for sg2012 Material Intensities is to consider material economy when creating environments, micro-climates and contexts congenial for social interaction, activities and organisation. This challenge calls for design innovation and dialogue between disciplines and responsibilities.

sg2010 Working Prototypes strove to emancipate digital design from the hard drive by moving from the virtual to the actual in wrestling with the tangible world of physical fabrication. sg2011 Building the Invisible focused on informing digital design with real world data. sg2012 Material Intensities strives to energise our digital prototypes and infuse them with material behaviour. They have the potential to become rich simulations informed by the material dynamics, chemical composition, energy flows, force fields and environmental conditions that feed back into the design process.

More information can be found at http://www.smartgeometry.org