WORKSHOP: AA Shanghai Visiting School Workshop – Friday 20 July-Saturday 28 July 2012

AA Shanghai Visiting School Workshop, from Friday 20 July-Saturday 28 July 2012 inclusive, at the University of Hong Kong Shanghai Study Centre (HKU SSC) in Shanghai.

Programme Director: Professor Tom Verebes
Tutor Group includes: Professor Wendy W Fok, among other tutors from around the world.

Evolutionary Urbanism will investigate new computational design approaches in architecture and urbanism within the context of Shanghai, one of the world’s most rapidly growing cities. This year’s topic concerns the challenges facing the megalopolis of Shanghai as it feeds the insatiable demand for land for urban growth, expansion and densification. We will experiment with technologies associated with evolutionary approaches to urbanism and architecture through a variety of time-based, dynamic models of complex growth and change. Design proposals will negotiate the paradoxical forces of urban development and environmental change.

The course will be taught by tutors from the AA, HKU and other visitors in a two-part programme. Over the first three days of the workshop, computational design systems will be introduced in a series of intensive tooling up sessions as the basis for investigating associative design concepts and methodologies. The aim of these exercises is to introduce expertise in generative, algorithmic and parametric design approaches. In a second stage, students will develop design proposals responding to a shared studio brief focused on developing new models of urban evolution. Students will apply code-based modelling, simulation and fabrication techniques towards multiple, variable and recursive prototypes for a range of urban systems driven by scenarios of future incremental, adaptive growth and change.Alongside studio-based design tutorials, seminars and a series of lectures, a public symposium will address contemporary topics related to the theme of the workshop.

Source: http://www.aaschool.ac.uk/STUDY/VISITING/shanghai.php