At a time when our world seems to become increasingly ephemeral and artificial, with technology expanding the notion of digital representation, mediated perception of reality and self-generated content are the new normal. Immersive VR and deepfakes are nothing but a highly sophisticated simulacrum of our own desires.
However, despite the enticing prospect of hyperreality, the real life —as mundane and conventional as ever—still happens out there. Forty years of iterations and reflections of architecture as urbanism, architecture as event, architecture as journalism, architecture as philosophy, architecture as parametric algorithms, and architecture as anything that is not architecture, has not stopped the rest of the world building (real) buildings. Reality is the ultimate thing architecture can still offer. Accepting and dealing with the real issues—ecological, political and social aspects of our contemporary condition—and providing physical space for everything that life in all its complexity presupposes, is finally the utmost responsibility of architecture and architects. This lecture will present recent OFFICE work, focusing on architectural form and materiality as a means for shaping our urban and social reality.
The lecture was followed by a discussion moderated by Nader Tehrani.
