Diploma 18

Atmospheric Architecture of Particles

DIP-18

After four years of work on global warming scenarios, Diploma 18 spent this year researching the Atmosphere, specifically the ‘Architecture of Particles’. We interpreted the environment on the molecular level to design strategies of intervention in both the tectonic/material and the climatic/incorporeal. At this particle level, computational dynamics were used to explore nano-scale behavioural patterns. This modelling of computational ecologies led us to understand relations in macro-scale environments. In search of these particles we embarked on an expedition to the lignite mine in Gartzweiler, Germany. On the islands of Heligoland we witnessed sustainable alternatives and met environmental activists. On Tenerife we met people who live in harmony with their surroundings. We have witnessed the anthropocene at the origins of pollution but also followed the rhythm of nature. Diploma 18 atmospheric projects proposed empathic solutions, from the infrastructural to the molecular scale, and attempted to raise green consciousness and activism in architecture. They include:

• Utopia of weathers: Soft infrastructures, domestic experiments, visceral enquiry, anthropogenic unity
• Spaceship Mind: Quantum entangled migration to exoplanets - expansion and preservation of humanity through space-time
• Splintering Architecture: The Inequality of Technological Singularity
• Sensational Landscape of Data-scenarios: Layers of terrain physicality and invisible reality of our senses (° C, RH%, Lux, dB, Kohms)
• Spring Stations: Nomadic landscape healing the environmental disaster of the Aral Sea
• Ethical gold - retrofitting nature and employment in the Peruvian Amazonia.”
• Helgoland: [iwussasasdcnsdinobeycyrmeoeyantlilmtntasmtstfrfqfbieilipwtaouusivrflgloerdiuoigicnermmetfssychaxksartfimiapistyisanptiyismanrtoclgoyniaeasenscindbhmcnipyagltieumrrpuaallcetscompchaos]
• Ocular City - Decrypting the invisible urban contamination
• Airpocalypse: Inventory of the world resources, pollution harvesting
• ATLAS of inadvertent invention hybrids
• Terra Violet: A Living Lab for UV Mutation Research
• GMO Civilisation: Journey to bio-eternity with GMO, magnetism and permaculture

Assistant

Ioana Giurgiu

Thanks to

Olga Subirós, architect and curator
Samantha Hardingham
Barbara-Ann Campbell-Lange
Javier Castañón
Nacho Martí
Theo Sarantoglou Lalis
Julia Tcharfas, artist and curator
Hans-Willi Notthoff, artist, Museum Island Hombroich
Hareth Pochee, physicist
Katrin Wittwer, Greenpeace
Henrik Düker, Greenpeace
Karen Wiltshire, biologist
Jan Beerman, biologist
Biological Institute Helgoland (BAH) of the Alfred Wegener Institute
Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research
Detlev Bruckhoff, architect
Magdalena Lodzinska, yoga professor
Denis Devaris, environmental architect, Hacienda Cristoforo
Dr. Marco Koschorreck, quantum physicist
Dr. Christoph Schäfer, CMS Collaboration, CERN
Dr. Peter Adams, physicist, CERN
Marc M. Cohen, astrotecture, NASA
Dr Jim Haseloff, biologist, University of Cambridge

Unit Staff

Enric Ruiz Geli is the founder of Cloud 9 office, in Barcelona, recipient of the Best Building of the World Award at WAF 2011 for the Media-ICT. He belongs to the Scientific Committee of Tecnalia and is one of the members of the HP Experts Committee. He is the architect of projects such as Villa Nurbs, Airbus FoF, Ampo Retrofitting, Audi Urban Mobility and elBulli Foundation. After participating in the On-Site exhibition, part of his work is in the collection of MoMA NY.

Pablo Ros graduated from the ETSAB and received his MS in Advanced Architectural Design and Archi- tectural Research from Columbia University. Before founding Neolexia, he directed FOA in Spain and was Head of Studio at Cloud 9. He has taught at Columbia, Barnard College and IAAC.

Felix Fassbinder graduated in 2005 from the TU Berlin where he has also teaches. He has worked for Herzog & de Meuron and for OMA, and he is currently Head ofStudio at Cloud 9.