BILBAO/SAN SEBASTIAN AA VISITING SCHOOL

The Bilbao/SanSebastian visiting school will unfold in partnership with the Guggenheim museum, Bilbao Cityhall, Tecnalia and the University of the Basque Country which belong to the arts, research and innovation technologies and academic realms. We believe that this association will allow participants to be part of the art community of the Guggenheim museum and the academic environment of the UPV -more particularly the ETSASS Escuela Tecnica Superior de Arquitectura de San Sebastian. Moreover, the partnership with Tecnalia will enable us to work together with their most advanced media and research and innovation groups.

The program will start with a symposium in June at the Guggemheim in Bilbao and will be followed by a workshop in July at the Alhondiga in Bilbao and ETSASS digital fabrication laboratory in San Sebastian. The works produced at the visiting school will be exhibited from September on at the Alhondiga in Bilbao:

-To introduce the research topic of the visiting school, the workshop will be preceded by a one-day-long symposium. This event will initiate a debate between professionals, theoreticians and scientists from the field, to discuss about alternative and critic methods of environmental adaptability.

-The workshop will investigate new design processes to produce context sensitive environments from a critical perspective. Local ‘materials’ such as user behaviour, social patterns or environmental analysis will inform the design process.

In order to construct this agenda, the workshop will invest on digital design and fabrication strategies by studying data-feed protocols, environmental simulation software and algorithmic design. To work within actual conditions, the site will be proposed by the Bilbao authority as part of the future city and planning intentions.

-A prototype of the best project from the workshop will be fabricated in the Tecnalia installations. To build this prototype, we will take advantage of the robotics and fabrication department in Tecnalia. In September 2012, an exhibition will be held at the Alhondiga comprising the works developed at the visiting school and the prototype produced in collaboration with Tecnalia.