ENAC Seminar Series by Prof. Iman Fayyad
Event details
| Date | 27.06.2023 |
| Hour | 16:15 › 17:15 |
| Speaker | Prof. Iman Fayyad |
| Location | |
| Category | Conferences - Seminars |
Prof. Iman Fayyad
Assistant Professor of Architecture, Syracuse University
Transient Geometries
The art historian Ernst Gombrich reminds us that the two-dimensional image is ambiguous. It represents infinite possibilities of three-dimensional configurations. This lecture identifies a fundamental element of architectural thinking and practice—the intractable relationship between flatness and three-dimensional form—as one that has had profound and complicated effects on the identity and practice of the discipline. Techniques of projective transformation—from orthography and stereography, to surface development and oblique distortions—challenge the capacity of the flat plane to map spatial relationships. This lecture will present historical and contemporary methodologies that exhibit use of the flat plane as a motivator for form production and venue for spatial imagination. Drawing from examples in cartography, photography, mathematics, art, and linguistics, we explore how geometric projection—a process that necessitates the selective obfuscation of information—becomes one of architecture’s most political acts; it governs our cognitive and visual perception, subjective experience and bodily movement, material behavior, and assembly processes. The lecture will demonstrate examples of historical work and contemporary research projects that have contributed in their own ways to this relationship through a study of tectonics, typology, aesthetics, material economy, construction practices, and social and environmental equity. Projection is a proactive agent in producing, at once, clarity and ambiguity, conformity and defiance, and stability and transience, in architectural form.
Short bio:
Iman Fayyad is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at Syracuse University, where she coordinates the first-year studio curriculum and conducts research in computational geometry and design with a focus on tectonics, construction, and representation. Fayyad is founding director of project: if, an award-winning practice that places architectural geometry in dialogue with material economy, visual perception, and the politics of physical space and building practice. Her work has been published and exhibited in venues including Nexus Network Journal (Architecture and Mathematics), Technology | Architecture and Design, Log, PLOT, Carnegie Museum of Art, and the Roca Gallery in London. Her work on zero-waste geometric techniques has received recognition by the Architects' Newspaper Best of Design Young Architects Prize, the ACSA Faculty Design Award, and Architizer's Design For Good Award.
Prior to Syracuse, Fayyad served on the faculty at Princeton University, MIT, and Harvard University, where she was also the inaugural Irving Innovation Fellow. Fayyad holds a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from MIT and a Master in Architecture with Distinction from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where she was the recipient of the American Institute of Architects Certificate of Merit, Faculty Design Award, and the Araldo A. Cossutta Prize for Design Excellence.
Assistant Professor of Architecture, Syracuse University
Transient Geometries
The art historian Ernst Gombrich reminds us that the two-dimensional image is ambiguous. It represents infinite possibilities of three-dimensional configurations. This lecture identifies a fundamental element of architectural thinking and practice—the intractable relationship between flatness and three-dimensional form—as one that has had profound and complicated effects on the identity and practice of the discipline. Techniques of projective transformation—from orthography and stereography, to surface development and oblique distortions—challenge the capacity of the flat plane to map spatial relationships. This lecture will present historical and contemporary methodologies that exhibit use of the flat plane as a motivator for form production and venue for spatial imagination. Drawing from examples in cartography, photography, mathematics, art, and linguistics, we explore how geometric projection—a process that necessitates the selective obfuscation of information—becomes one of architecture’s most political acts; it governs our cognitive and visual perception, subjective experience and bodily movement, material behavior, and assembly processes. The lecture will demonstrate examples of historical work and contemporary research projects that have contributed in their own ways to this relationship through a study of tectonics, typology, aesthetics, material economy, construction practices, and social and environmental equity. Projection is a proactive agent in producing, at once, clarity and ambiguity, conformity and defiance, and stability and transience, in architectural form.
Short bio:
Iman Fayyad is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at Syracuse University, where she coordinates the first-year studio curriculum and conducts research in computational geometry and design with a focus on tectonics, construction, and representation. Fayyad is founding director of project: if, an award-winning practice that places architectural geometry in dialogue with material economy, visual perception, and the politics of physical space and building practice. Her work has been published and exhibited in venues including Nexus Network Journal (Architecture and Mathematics), Technology | Architecture and Design, Log, PLOT, Carnegie Museum of Art, and the Roca Gallery in London. Her work on zero-waste geometric techniques has received recognition by the Architects' Newspaper Best of Design Young Architects Prize, the ACSA Faculty Design Award, and Architizer's Design For Good Award.
Prior to Syracuse, Fayyad served on the faculty at Princeton University, MIT, and Harvard University, where she was also the inaugural Irving Innovation Fellow. Fayyad holds a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from MIT and a Master in Architecture with Distinction from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where she was the recipient of the American Institute of Architects Certificate of Merit, Faculty Design Award, and the Araldo A. Cossutta Prize for Design Excellence.
Practical information
- General public
- Invitation required
- This event is internal
Organizer
- ENAC
Contact
- Clivia Waldvogel & Sarah Feller