Two presentations which show the radical effect of digital, interactive, time-based media on architecture and urban space. Reed Kram presented his collaborations with OMA to introduce interactive media as communicative spaces in architecture, Mark Goulthorpe looked at the sustained disorientation and cross-wiring of the senses engendered by a digital medium. Both have gained a reputation as innovators within the field of architecture and new technologies.

'The meeting of architecture and multimedia creates battle lines on many fronts. Yet multimedia thinking and multimedia making have the very real potential to affect urban spaces beyond mere autocad functions.'
(Reed Kram)

Decoi was founded in Paris in 1991 by Mark Goulthorpe. DECOi stands for research which is flexible and informal, exploring the changing psychology of creativity in the face of new technologies, and stretching the possibilities offered to architecture and built space. He collaborates with architects and specialists - robotics experts and mathematicians, programmers and choreographers, and has gained a reputation as an innovator within the field of architecture and new technologies. Without the communication possibilities offered by the internet, such international research would have been unthinkable several years ago - dECOi combines a coherent social vision with an emerging electronic society. "Aegis", a façade commissioned for a public building in Birmingham, is one of the projects which he presented within urban drift, and which was capable of rapid deformations in three dimensions, reacting to electro-magnetic impulses, and manipulated through a combination of pneumatic engineering, and computer-controlled mechanisms.

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Reed Kram works as an Engineer and Designer, a Researcher and Practician. He is involved in research in design, as well as in Technology and Software development. He is one of the founding members of the legendary Aesthetics and Computation Group of the MIT Media Lab established around John Maeda, and has carried out a number of research and design projects together with Maeda. His research deals in particular with the phenomenon of interactivity, and with the relationship between new media and architecture - he is, for example, involved in designing reactive spaces. "There is now a new generation developing in architecture, and interactivity as a discipline and movement is being extended and broadened. The perception and increasing flexibility of design methods is now a reality, where in the recent past this was a debate on form and aesthetics.” ‚Reed Kram wants to go beyond his colleagues` interest in replacing physical space with virtual space by directly exploring the potential of graphic media to become spatial. Such a project ultimately challenges our conception of architecture.` Leo Gullbring

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Joachim Sauters main interest lies in the possibilities offered by the compuer as tool and medium. He founded ART+COM e.V.together with partners, and currently runs the company. He has been awarded frequently for his design and research activites and his design work has been presented worldwide. Since 1991 he has been professor for design with digital media at the HdK Berlin

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