IoA Sliver Lecture: Martin Tamke

Martin Tamke is Associate Professor at the Centre for Information Technology and Architecture (CITA) in Copenhagen.

He is pursuing a design led research in the interface and implications of computational design and its materialisation. He joined the newly founded research centre CITA in 2006 and shaped its design based research practice. Projects on new design and fabrication for wood and fiber based materials led to a series of research projects and digitally fabri-cated demonstrators that explore an archi-tectural practice engaged with bespoke materials and behaviour.

Martin initiated and conducted research projects in the emerging field of digital production in the building industry and architectural computa-tion. The research connects academic and industrial partners from architecture and engineering, computer and material science and the crafts. Currently he is involved in the EU framework 7 project DURAARK, the Danish funded four year Complex Modelling research project and the adapt-r and InnoChain PhD research networks.

?Technology is the answer … but what was the question?? (Cedric Price, 1966)

The Greek term téchne, is a term which up until today in European philosophy, coined the notion of Art, Science and Craft. The history of technology could be described as the history of inventions in form of tools and techniques. At the same time, it is closely connected to the history of science, economics and social agendas – a history of the very human condition itself. Weather viewed through the topic of energy, information, productivity, machines, or social development, today most of the world is accommodating a ?technically civilized life? to some extent.?It is the moral, economic, and political choices we make, not the machines we use?, Lewis Mumford argues, ?that have produced a capitalist industrialized machine-oriented economy, whose imperfect fruits serve the majority so imperfectly.?