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BABAK GOLKAR

Grounds for standing and understanding
Babak Golkar is a multi-disciplinary artist whose practice, at its fundamental roots, takes aim to deconstruct, recontextualize and rearrange our perceptions of the world around us. Marked by an intellectual iconoclasm and an unbridled philosophical spirit of inquiry, many of Golkarʼs works mischievously reveal that the fixity of meaning is merely an illusion, which he systematically disassembles and exposes. Like Zen koans, Golkarʼs work seems to arrive at new understandings by setting up impossible questions; ultimately focusing on the nature of truth; a truth unobstructed by the oppositions or differentiations of language, or perspective.

rachel garrard

Body Systems I
British-born artist Rachel Garrard creates a range of multi-disciplinary work that explores the great unknown, looking to quantum physics and other theories of the universe for inspiration and guidance. Both her video performance pieces and works on paper capture, despite their earthly limitations, the infinite nature of life on this planet and beyond. In a personal statement on her blog, the artist explains “that exploring the outer reaches of the universe can be similar to exploring the inner reaches of the human psyche and that both are governed by the same forces.

KEIICHI MATSUDA

Augmented (hyper)Reality
Keiichi Matsuda (BSc. MArch) is a designer and film-maker. He began working with video during his Masters of Architecture at the Bartlett school (UCL) as a critical tool to understand, construct and represent space. Keiichi’s research examines the implications of emerging technologies for human perception and the built environment, focusing on the integration of media into everyday life. He has a multi-disciplinary approach to his work, using a mixture of video, motion graphics, interaction design, and architecture to create vibrant “hyper-real” environments where the distinctions between physical and virtual start to dissolve.

NELLY AGASSI

נלי אגסי
Borrowed Scenery

Nelly Agassi is a multi-disciplinary artist who uses media as diverse as sketching, knitting, video and performance. Her work deals with materials, body and space. For example, in her dress-centered performances, Agassi knits and sews a dress around herself – a dress that expands into the gallery (or outdoor) space and transforms itself from an item of clothing into a voluminous object.

ICD and ITKE Research Pavilion

bionic research pavilion

The Institute for Computational Design (ICD) and the Institute of Building Structures and Structural Design (ITKE) of the University of Stuttgart have constructed another bionic research pavilion. The project is part of a successful series of research pavilions which showcase the potential of novel design, simulation and fabrication processes in architecture. The project was planned and constructed within one and a half years by students and researchers within a multi-disciplinary team of architects, engineers and biologists.
The focus of the project is a parallel bottom-up design strategy for the biomimetic investigation of natural fiber composite shells and the development of novel robotic fabrication methods for fiber reinforced polymer structures. The aim was the development of a winding technique for modular, double layered fiber composite structures, which reduces the required formwork to a minimum while maintaining a large degree of geometric freedom. Therefore, functional principles of natural lightweight structures were analyzed and abstracted in cooperation with the University of Tübingen and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. Through the development of a custom robotic fabrication method, these principles were transferred into a modular prototype pavilion.