“The Depth of Surface”

Architecture Building, Room 402, Byblos campus

The lecture will be given by Dr. Sophia Vyzoviti.

Summary:
Since the early 1990s, the notion of surface has evolved into a formal trait among the avant-garde architectural discourses. Conceptualized within the Deleuzian ontology of the fold, it has become associated with diagrammatic techniques and digital morphogenesis, prolifically materializing in the projected and the built by continuity, curvature, smooth layering and manipulations of the ground. Liberating architects from typology and the order of the box, the focus on surface processes diversifies architectural research in exploring and making explicit form defining strategies that envision a redefinition of architectural performance. As a diagrammatic practice that appeals to morphogeneticists as well as urban conceptualists, the surface has acquired conceptual, operational and material depth.

About the presenter:
Sophia Vyzoviti studied architecture at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, the Berlage Institute and Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands where she completed her Ph.D. in 2005. She has taught architectural design at Delft University of Technology, the National University of Singapore, University of Cyprus, and the University of Thessaly, Greece, where she is currently assistant professor. She has practiced as an architect in the Netherlands and is founding member of matrix g.sea architects based in Thessaloniki. She is author of Folding Architecture: Spatial, Structural and Organizational Diagrams (2003) and Super Surfaces: Folding as a Method of Generating Forms for Architecture, Products and Fashion (2006), and the upcoming Soft Shells: Porous and Deployable Architectural Screens (2011), internationally distributed by BIS Publishers Amsterdam.

Event organizer: LAU’s School of Architecture and Design – Department of Architecture and Interior Design