Greg Lynn

Giant Robot Architecture

Date 2/4/08

Affiliation Architect, UCLA & Angewandte, Los Angeles/Vienna

Abstract

Robots. In my office, my staff keeps asking for more new machines, and every time I get a new machine, I fire two or three people. By extrapolation, in the next few years I will be sitting in an office by myself with a bunch of robots. We have is a very large CNC (computer numerically controlled) cutting machine, a laser cutter, a 3d printer, and soon we will have a robotic articulated arm. All of these things let us do studies of models, which are very important to architects, but what they also let us do is learn machine language. We spend more and more time talking to machines; speaking their language. It is very easy for us to go to any country that has an automobile industry or an aircraft industry and give their machines instructions and do things with these large machines at an architectural scale that is very perfunctory and affordable. The spread of machine language and programming is more significant than the Anglicization of the world. Learning to talk to robots is very important to my field of design.

Bio

Greg Lynn is a leading pioneer at the intersection of computing, design, and architecture. His architectural designs have been exhibited in both architecture and art museums including the 2000 Venice Biennale of Architecture where he represented the United States in the American Pavilion. His work is in the permanent collections of CCA, SFMoMA, and MoMA and has been exhibited at the Pompidou, Beyeler, Cooper Hewitt, MAK, MoCA, NAI, Carnegie, ICA and Secession museums among others. In addition to his architectural work, his Alessi "Supple" Mocha Cups and his Vitra "Ravioli" Chair are in production and have been inducted into the Museum of Modern Art's Permanent Collection. He received the American Academy of Arts & Letters Architecture Award in 2003. In 2002, he left his position as the Professor of Spatial Conception and Exploration at the ETHZ (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich) and became an Ordentlicher University Professor at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. He is studio professor of Architecture at UCLA and the Davenport Visiting Professor at Yale University. Greg Lynn holds degrees in architecture and philosophy and received an Honorary Doctorate degree from the Academy of Fine Arts & Design in Bratislava. In 2001, Time Magazine named him one of 100 of the most innovative people in the world for the 21st century. In 2005, Forbes Magazine named him one of the ten most influential living architects.

-- As of 2/4/08