Foreign architects will come to Prague to give lectures

Prague - Students and those interested in architecture will have the opportunity to listen to lectures by foreign architects this autumn. They have been invited to Prague by the organizers of the Digital Architect project, which includes lectures and a workshop. The highlight of the entire series will be a visit by American architect Frank Barkow. Petr Vaněk, one of the organizers, stated this to ČTK.
    "We invite foreign educators, guests, architects who lecture about what they do in their scholarly endeavors at foreign faculties," Vaněk noted. This year, personalities from the world of architecture will come for the fourth year. Five lectures are held each semester. Their topics include, among other things, shapes that cannot be expressed in rectangular geometry and that are not defined by precise boundaries. "Each of the creators who has gone in this direction has found their own way of embracing digital architecture," said Vaněk.
    In the preparation of the project, it has become a tradition in recent semesters that one lecture is the main one and is held outside the Faculty of Architecture at the Czech Technical University, unlike the others. This year, Frank Barkow will lecture on November 8 at the Ecotechnical Museum in Prague Bubenč.
    Barkow is from the USA but works in Germany. He collaborates with Regine Leibinger, and they made a significant impact on the world with their success at the Miami Biennale in 2005. The current work of the Barkow-Leibinger atelier shows how traditional modernist architecture in Central Europe can be enriched with a new, digital dimension.
    Another guest is the pioneer of digital architecture, Marcos Novak, who works in America. The project starts on October 16.
    "In architecture and related construction, digital technologies are advancing very slowly, but there are the first successful attempts," Vaněk stated. According to him, a digital architect is not one who drafts on a computer but one who can utilize digital technologies to come up with a new idea for designing and then realizing a building. "The work of a digital architect balances on the edge between experimentation and scientific research," Vaněk added.
    Last year, the lecture by Mexican and former drummer Michel Rojkind captured the audience's attention the most. About five hundred people attended the event at the Veletržní Palace last year. The program and additional information about the project can be found on the website www.digiarch.cz. They also offer information from the field of digital technology, which is gradually being applied in practice.