23.04.-01.07.24 - Lecture Series: "Methodologies of Matter"

22. April 2024

Starting on April 23rd, the research training group "Urban future-making: Professional agency across time and scale" organizes a lecture series on the topic "Methodologies of Matter".

With climate change fully underway, professionals of the built environment can no longer ignore the epochal challenges that lie ahead of them. The building industry is responsible for 40 % of annual global CO2 emissions. Disciplines such as architecture and civil engineering face a pressing need, therefore, to radically question and audaciously redefine their long established values, principles and standards. Not only is the use of materials and technologies to be reviewed critically, also the methods and actions of professionals themselves are under close scrutiny as is the role of state legislation that frames and sometimes severely limits possible change. Such change transcends size: territories, urban areas, infrastructures, buildings and their components – each scale has its own implications and impact and needs to be rethought.

It is vis-à-vis in this multitude of challenges that the lecture series "Methodologies of Matter" explores new pathways for the built-environment disciplines. It brings together experts working – in theory and practice – on those aspects, scales and methodologies that are likely to shape the future (re)creation of matter. If what we can touch, touches our existence, if materials are no longer matters of fact but matters of concern, then how can we rethink and creatively re-appropriate the substantiality and sensuality of the built environment in its production, tectonics and perception? How can we re-imagine more sustainable ways forward for the disciplines of the built environment? These are only some of the questions that the lecture series will address.

The following lectures will take place: 

• April 23rd, 5pm (Holcim Auditorium, HCU): Prof. Kerstin Kuchta (TU Hamburg), "Circular material for circular cities"
• May 7th, 5pm (Holcim Auditorium, HCU): Lukasz Lendzinski (Umschichten), "How can dreams be made tangible?"
• June 4th, 5pm (Holcim Auditorium, HCU): Prof.  Jörg Schröder (Leibniz Universität Hannover), "Circular Design: An urban and territorial perspective for systemic and cultural change"
• June 4th, 5.30pm (Holcim Auditorium, HCU): Prof. Maddalena Ferretti (Università Politecnica delle Marche), "TRANSSCALAR: Beyond architecture, towards a creative holistic approach for the reactivation of habitats"
• June 11th, 5pm (HS 200, HCU): Prof. Harald Kloft (TU Braunschweig), "The unity of material, process and form in the digital age"
• June 18th, 5pm (Holcim Auditoriun, HCU): Prof. Neil Thomas (Atelier One), "Two worlds: The world of modern technology and the natural world"
• July 1st, 5.30pm (Gleishalle Oberhafen): Prof. Fabio Gramazio (ETH Zürich), "Digital Materiality"

All lectures can be found on the poster [pdf].

The research training group "Urban future-making" is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and jointly organized by the HafenCity University Hamburg (HCU), Universität Hamburg (UHH), and Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH). It investigates the agency of the built environment professionals in the face of pressing challenges for transformative change. More information can be found on its website [link].