7:00pm for 7:30pm Wednesday 2 December 2009

Speaker: Iris Asaf

Birkbeck College
Centre for Film and Visual Media
43 Gordon Square
London
WC1H 0PD

Nearest tubes: Euston Square, Warren Street & Russell Square.

The creative process has always constituted an essential mechanism: that of an uncertain exploration, the development of premeditation to envision something that has not yet been made, or that may surprisingly appear. Interestingly, this relation between creativity and unpredictability has been especially prevalent with the enhanced use of generative systems in architectural design.

The presentation will discuss the way in which various approaches to generative systems in design set the stage where the architectural design process can be viewed as an uncertain quest of potentialities. In this quest, design is a way of algorithmically thinking and conceptualizing ideas, and the potential for creativity lies within the dialogue between what has been algorithmically defined and what has surprisingly emerged.

Iris Asaf is an architect and a PhD candidate at the Bartlett Graduate School, University College London. Her doctoral work focuses on developing a critical theoretical perspective on the use of computerized form-generation tools (or generative systems) in relation to creativity in design. She is also interested in the cultural and conceptual transformations of the design process as a result of the developments of information technologies and evolutionary tools.

She has practiced as an architect and taught theory courses in Architecture, and she holds a B.Arch (Cum Laude) and an MSc (First Class Honours) in Architecture from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. She is currently teaching on the Bartlett Graduate School's MSc in Adaptive Architecture and Computation. Iris has also been the recipient of numerous international grants and awards in design and research, such as The Gertrude Award for research excellence and UCL's ORS and GSRS Research Awards.