5:30–6:30 pm
Zoom Lectures are open to the general public via Zoom. Register here.
Lecture 3: Living Materials
David Benjamin, The Living
David Benjamin is Founding Principal of The Living and Associate Professor at Columbia GSAPP. His work combines research and practice, with a focus on an expanded and actionable framework of environmental sustainability. Exploring the intersection of biology, computation, and a circular economy, Benjamin has articulated three frameworks for harnessing living organisms for architecture: bioprocessing, bio-sensing, and bio-fabricating. The Living has won many design prizes, including the Emerging Voices Award from the Architectural League, the Young Architects Program Award from the Museum of Modern Art and MoMA PS1, and a Holcim Sustainability Award. Recently, Benjamin appeared in Rolling Stone as one of “25 People Shaping the Future,” and The Living was ranked third on Fast Company’s list of World’s Ten Most Innovative Architecture Firms. Recent projects include the Airbus NIS Engine Factory (a low-carbon lighthouse project for the future of manufacturing), the Princeton University Embodied Computation Lab (a new building for research on robotics and IoT), Pier 35 EcoPark (a floating pier in the East River that changes color according to water quality), and Hy-Fi (a branching tower for MoMA PS1 made of a new type of biodegradable brick).
Professors Heinrich Jaeger and Sidney Nagel of the Physics Department at the University of Chicago are pleased to offer a public guest lecture series, about innovative approaches to resolving physical forces in architecture and design, as part of their spring 2022 course. This lecture series is supported by the College Curricular Innovation Fund and organized in cooperation with the Arts, Science & Culture Initiative at The University of Chicago.